Heart of post-COVID agility

When I in my previous article [1] tried to sum up my attempt of getting the ball rolling towards a post-COVID Agile Manifesto and Principles, I have to admit to never heard about the "Heart of Agile" [2] initiative by Alistair Cockburn. As one of the founders of the original Agile Manifesto and Principles [3, 4, 5], he wants to try to capture, describe, and promote the essence of being agile and move away from getting stuck in framework politics and bureaucracy.

In this article, I will try to relate my effort to "Heart of Agile", and comment on some aspects of the latter.

Don't hesitate to comment and disagree, as this is the essence of the evolution of agility.

This article is not intended as a claim of one organizational setup or way-of-working to be better or worse than any other, as each has benefits as well as problems heavily dependent on where, when, and how they are applied. The purpose is to invite to discussions on benefits and problems, as well as myths, paradoxes, and misconceptions with past, current, and future organizational models.

My take of Heart of Agile

Sadly, I cannot afford to spend $500+ on training to get an in-depth understanding of "Heart of Agile" and have to base my interpretation and comments on a great presentation Cockburn gave in Denmark in 2018 [6] and some posts I found on the topic.

The essence of "Heart of Agile" is the four ingredients of Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, and Improve intended to be "reminders" when, for instance, discussing how agile a group of people is or should be. For example, how well do we collaborate, do we deliver in line with the expectations, do we spend time on reflecting on our collaboration and delivery, and do we try to improve these? Hence, frameworks like Scrum and SAFe become means to address these essentials for agility.

I have to say that I like Cockburn's effort and urge everyone with an interest in agility to watch the Danish presentation, but would like to take the whole thing one step further by abstracting the essentials into the activities to Probe and Evolve. But, whatever we do it never happens in a vacuum. When I'm writing this article both the outcome and creative process are shaped by my physical abilities (biology), mind (psychology), relations to others (sociology), and background (culture). I don't know what to call this slime which both acts as a glue between people and a substance forming us as individuals so, for better or worse, let's call it the Environment.

Agility is about adapted probing in an evolving environment

Probe

In his presentations, Cockburn describes Deliver as a (continuous) effort of "probing" the world, and if we look at the etymology of the word it means to show, demonstrate, judge, or test. Hence, the subject who probes both shares (show, demonstrate) something with the object being probed, as well as obtains or concludes something in return (judge, test). Moreover, intrinsic in "probing" there is an assumption of "more to come", that is, it is only one step towards an expected outcome or result verified by the (hypothetical) "last probe".

If we compare this "probing" to the continuous deliveries by an agile team, I think the term very well reflects the essence of the "delivery" process of an agile team. Consequently, any agile framework which honors "probing" as a way to realize a customer's expectations is in line with the first ingredient of agility.

It's also worth noting that Cockburn often returns to the core of Delivery to not being about "producing" something, but all the decisions one makes along the path towards an outcome. In relation to the "probing" analogy, we may say that it is not the "probe" itself that is in focus, but the decisions made as a result of it. Hence, we could replace Probe with Decide, but I prefer the former as it also highlights the bidirectional instrument of "probing" used in the decision process.

By probing you reveal the history and learn the next step to take

Environment

In my interpretation, Cockburn calls one ingredient Collaborate as the act of Delivery needs to be realized by people working together to achieve the expected results. Even though this may be the most important facet, I would like to highlight some characteristics of the environment, or world, where this is to take place reusing the acronym VUCA introduced 1987 by the U.S. Army War College [7] to describe the world at the end of the cold war as volatile (nature and dynamics of change), uncertain (lack of predictability), complex (multiplex of forces) and ambiguous (haziness of reality).

It may feel far fetched to say that the part of the world inhabited by software and product developers is VUCA, but many scientists claim this is the kind of society we need to adapt to and the leaders of tomorrow to be visionary, understand their capabilities and strategies, be courageous, and adapt to the rapidly changing environment [8]. Cockburn also uses VUCA to characterize the world wherein Delivery is to take place, and agility to be a way to survive [9].

In other words, as humans, we need to adapt at all levels to get the "probing" to work as expected in a VUCA world. Hence, as agilists we have to recognize and adapt our behavior to, for instance, the biological need of feeling safe, the psychological wish to feel valuable, the sociological importance of "we-ness", and the underlying culture with its beliefs, symbols, and values as the "fabric of meaning in terms of which human beings interpret their experience and guide their action" [10, p. 157-158].

Agility is not genetics, it's a learned behavior

Evolve

In a VUCA world, nothing is fixed and both our adaption to the Environment and Probing need to evolve as time passes. In Cockburn's terminology, this happens through Reflection and Improvement, and to me, these are terms as good as any else describing the process of continuous learning and adjustment to a changing environment.

We need to evolve to stay agile

The heart of post-COVID agility

Returning to my thoughts on a post-COVID Agile Manifesto and Principles (see [1] for details), the manifesto states to "show progress by working solutions, and continuously adapt to customer needs and feedback". The first part reflects, in my opinion, very well the intention of Probe, and the second part the need to Evolve in line with the Environment consisting of, among many others, the customer and her (changing) needs and feedback.

Hence, we could generalize the manifesto to "Probe and evolve". But, as will be discussed below, leaving out the Environment from the equation will, in my opinion, result in a risk of downplaying the importance of the biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural aspects as key ingredients in a successful agile transformation and operations which make them differ from more traditional approaches.

The heart of post-COVID agility is, for better or worse, humans

Considering my proposed Principles, the first and third relate to the volatility and uncertainty in a VUCA world:

• A solution is working when a customer says so
• A customer is anyone who depends on a solution
• Agile progress cannot be predicted, or planned, only verified in retrospect by a customer
• Agility must be based on, and nourished by, trust in the team and customer
• An agile framework shall focus on why, before how

In a volatile and uncertain world, a strategy as a suggestion of an "ability to look up from the short term and the trivial to view the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees" [11, preface] needs to be an ever-evolving ability where the customer dictates its change over time. However, considering the history from the biblical master strategist God to military, ideological, and managerial ones, in a VUCA world the time horizon for a strategy is shorter than ever, and as Rumelt [12] argues "the heart of a good strategy is insight into the hidden power in a situation, and into an appropriate response". Hence, agility is not about a clueless trial-and-error strategy, but an ability to listen to the customers, ie Probe, and learn to adapt, ie Evolve, to the outcomes.

The second principle stresses both the complexity in a VUCA world with many interdependent parties, but also that the customer is part of the Environment within which the Probing takes place.

The three first principles clearly point at the importance of collaboration among interested parties. Hence, it's not hard to see why Cockburn decided to emphasize Collaborate as a key ingredient in "The Heart of Agile". However, as discussed in [1, 13] what stands out is the need for a high degree of mutual trust, expressed by the fourth principle, not required in, for instance, waterfall-like project collaborations. That is, due to the belief that in a VUCA environment risks are not tried to be mitigated through bureaucratic structures in the sense of Weber with hierarchies based on legal authority leading to a clear division of labor [14], but by flexibility through visions, understanding, courage, and adaption [8], both a disposition to trust and belief in the institutions (ie structures and situation) and collaborators become crucial [15].

In an agile setting, collaboration is based on trust instead of structures

Still, it's interesting to note that Cockburn in [3] hints that the agile principle that "the best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams" might not be completely in line with his own thinking, as also sparks when he in a podcast [17] doesn't criticize SAFe as categorically as many agile purists tend to do. I don't know if my reflection is correct, but support for the challenge of scaling agile without (partly) relying on bureaucratic structures and processes is found in works by the Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom on social dilemmas related to collective action, that is, "whenever individuals in interdependent situations face choices in which maximization of short-term self-interest yields outcomes leaving all participants worse off than feasible alternatives" [18, p. 122], see also the LinkedIn article [19] where I asked if it is really possible to scale agile.

Finally, my last principle states rather fluffy to "focus on why, before how" and is closely related to the uncertainty in a VUCA world and the importance of a common understanding of where we come from, where we are heading, and why, before we try to, for instance, shape a culture of artifacts (structures, processes, behaviors), espoused beliefs and values (ideals, goals) and underlying assumptions (taken-for-granted beliefs and values) [16] aligned with any agile framework. This reflects partly, in my opinion, Cockburn's motivation for the need of going back to the roots of agility, since we today may be losing ourselves in, more or less, bureaucratic frameworks. For instance, an emphasis on co-location has little to do with the biological, cultural, or psychological aspects of the Environment, but is a way to address the sociological importance of a common identity of "we" promoting effective and efficient collaboration [20, ch. 9]. To me, it implies to never begin with a framework as an almost religious set of commandments without first reflect on the current and needed Environment for an efficient Probing. And even more important, these are to Evolve and not being something bought as a pair of shoes.

Reflections

The intention of this, possibly too philosophical and long for some, article was to share my interpretation of some aspects of the great initiative "Heart of Agile" by Cockburn [2] and to view my proposed post-COVID Agile Manifesto and Principles in its light.

First of all, when writing my previous articles I was not aware of neither the concept of VUCA nor the "Heart of Agile" initiative, hence I'm glad that my thinking, as far as I can see, doesn't contradict the work by Cockburn et al. At the same time, I realize that, in the terminology of Cockburn, I'm a wax-on-wax-off (jap kokoro) learner and teacher believing that "brilliance in basics" [2] is the way to master agility, as well as many other things in life. But, as in the case of the first Karate Kid movie, this is probably not the path to quick wins, or a path appreciated by everyone.

An open question, also touched upon by Cockburn in [17], is the amount of structure, or buracreacy, needed to scale an agile way of working to enterprise level. In my opinion, not even Rigby et al [21] promoting the concept of an agile enterprise focusing on "creating agile business systems [..., by] transform[ing] bureaucracy and innovation efforts into symbiotic partners that collaborate to deliver better results" [ibid, p. 47] actually describe in practice how this "symbiosis" is to happen.

In my previous article, I promised to address the concept of trust in the context of agility. But, being agile means to adapt and I will return to this very important topic in a future article, and the next one probably to further elaborate on the culture facet of the Environment or something else that attracts my interest.

All views expressed in this article are my own and do not represent the opinions of any entity whatsoever with which I have been, am now, or will be affiliated with.

The author has more than 20 years of international experience in supporting organizations to utilize Information Technology to achieve business excellence. His assignments span AI and data analytics in pharmaceutical research to e-commerce and supply chain management in the fashion industry. Often with a focus on digital transformation combining traditional management with approaches like Lean, Six Sigma, Kanban, and Agile to reach new frontiers for development.

References

[1] M Andersson, Next steps towards an agile future, LinkedIn, 2020

[2] A Cockburn et al, Heart of Agile - more powerful, more human, YouTube, 2020

[3] A Cockburn, 2020 08 25 Alistair & Steven Denning, History of Agile, Youtube, 2020

[4] Agile Manifesto Organization, Manifesto for agile software development, 2020

[5] Agile Manifesto Organization, Principles behind the Agile Manifesto, 2020

[6] A Cockburn, The heart of agile, Presentation IT University of Copenhagen, YouTube2018

[7] Wikipedia, Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, 2020

[8] B George, VUCA 2.0: A Strategy For Steady Leadership In An Unsteady World, Forbes, 2017

[9] A Cockburn, Agile Greece Summit 2019 - Applying the Heart of Agile, Youtube, 2019

[10] C Geertz, The interpretation of cultures, Basic Books, 2000 (original edition 1973)

[11] L Freedman, Strategy - a history, Oxford University Press, 2013

[12] R Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Profile Books, 2013

[13] M Andersson, Continuously adapt to customer needs and feedback, LinkedIn, 2020

[14] M Weber, Ekonomi och samh?lle - f?rst?endesociologins grunder I (Swedish), Argos, 1983 (original edition 1914)

[15] D H McKnight et al, Trust and distrust definitions - one bite at a time, Trust in cyber-societies LNAI 2246, 2001

[16] E H Schein, Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed), Wiley, 2017

[17] E Hultgren, 83. Agile Manifesto with Alistair Cockburn, Agilpodden, 2020

[18] E & V Ostrom, Choice, rules and collective actions, ECPR Press, 2014

[19] M Andersson, Is it really possible to scale agile?, LinkedIn, 2020

[20] S A Haslam, Psychology in organizations - the social identity approach (2nd ed), Sage, 2004

[21] D Rigby et al, Doing agile right - transformation without chaos, HBR Press, 2020