How to flog a half-dead agile transformation / The golden laws of agile delivery

The lure of Agile as an approach to developing and delivering software is huge. Who could say no to the promise of faster releases with regular cadence, near-zero defects and teams being in ludicrous states of productivity and wellbeing?

So, I decided to jump onto the agile transformation bandwagon. After a while, I ran out of steam as well as funding. Was I ripped off or were we just unlucky to not hit the mark in terms of outcomes?

When Agile isn’t agile enough

I now have daily stand-ups, fortnightly sprints, Post-it cards on our agile wall, Scrum Masters instead of Project Managers, and a swanky scaled agile framework? Wasn’t all these supposed to make me agile and give me the delivery nirvana I was hoping for?

Now, the real question should be whether it is half-dead or half-alive. If you are an optimist and believe it is still half-alive, only then you might want to read on.

It isn’t meant to fail, but it often does

Unfortunately, many an agile transformation falls flat on its head on take one. There are several reasons for this:

1. Organisational benefits ensue only when the transformation is strategic and aligns with the end-to-end value-chain. Without a holistic strategy, you usually end up with pockets of agility without much organisational impact.
2. Companies have their specific nuances, be it culture, organisational structure or ways of working. Agile frameworks may not provide pages and pages of detailed implementation steps and decision-making tips to deal with every surprise on your way.
3. Frameworks are not often implemented in entirety. Have you been warned by the experts about the impact of those wheel nuts you decided to leave out?

So you are not alone if frameworks, coaches, scrum masters, Post-Its, stand-ups and sprints have not given you what you were promised. However, if that unfortunately happens or has already happened, it is time to step back and look at why agile works and why it may not yet be working for you.

It was at this point I came really close to coining a new term ‘flagile’ based on the slang flail to mean “to engage without results in a repetitive behavior with extreme dedication and in excess, while under the influence of an agile framework.”

It all starts with behaviour

One lesson I’ve learnt over the years from multiple transformation experiences is that agile works because of certain behaviours across the board. This is often collectively referred to as the mindset. As a side note, unfortunately the very term “mindset” tends to get a bit divisive and alienating as it seems to marginalise a section of people as innately being not-so agile.

What exactly are agile behaviours? My simple definition is that agile behaviour recognises three things which are the three golden principles of agile delivery:

1. Business or customer value as the primary rationale for prioritisation.
2. Competency and focus as fundamental enablers of progress.
3. Feedback mechanisms improve assurance and quality.

Let’s delve into these one by one.

Value-based Prioritisation

In its early days as a delivery approach, the key differentiator for Agile was the emphasis that the customer loves to see value being delivered. Continually and efficiently delivering value to the customer is so core to Agile.

When should you start tracking value in your delivery chain? Prioritising funding for work based on perceived value is a good place to start. In fact, most organisations already do it. However, as programs get broken down into projects and further into releases and features, it often becomes increasingly difficult to track value proposition.

The concept of a single prioritised backlog is a good technique to ensure value. The role of the Product Owner is equally important as the chief orchestrator bridging between value and solution delivery. Within non-technology organisations that I’ve worked with, my observations is that agile transformations have only started to recognise the significance of product ownership as a competence critical to value tracking and realisation.

Skills and competence enables faster delivery of quality outcomes

Recently, I requested a conference audience for a show of hands if they ever assessed or audited the availability of needed skills before they embarked on a project. One hand went up.

Is it a modern myth that professional knowledge work can be delivered without the necessary technical and leadership skills? The problem seems to become worse with the presence of middle and senior managers who haven’t risen through the ranks as they often are unaware of the breadth and depth of skills required within their own teams. And craftsmanship tends to be viewed as indulgence due to lack of appreciation for skill maturity levels.

Resourcing skills and competence is just due diligence or sound project management. It has nothing to do with waterfall or agile. Which could be the reason many agile or transformation frameworks skip it. Or have we put the focus much on the transformation and and behaviour that we put the cart before the horse?

Ready availability of skills saves time otherwise required to learn through mistakes. Mature competence results in better quality and also saves time lost due to rework.

Focus facilitates progress

Why are offsite meetings seen as more effective? Why do some people wear headphones to concentrate?

As humans, distractions or lack of focus is one of the biggest hindrances that prevent us from completing our goals. This is a corollary from Miller’s law and other cognitive limits. As if those six senses weren’t enough, within organisations it is just constant tussles between strategic and operational work, new development versus production support, funded program one vs two, and many more.

Agile frameworks are effective when they provide sustainable mechanisms to ensure focus across the value delivery chain. 

• At the business level, program scheduling and funding creates a contained scope to focus on.
• At the delivery level, cross-functional feature teams or squads (ideally) concentrate on everything needed to deliver value without working on multiple programs.
• Breakdown into releases and features provide medium and short term focus for feature teams.
• Sprint backlogs provide high-level focus within time-boxed iterations or sprints.
• Stories and tasks help breakdown windows of focus to a handful of days, so that people can collaborate and deliver small distinct pieces of value with less distraction.

In short, breakdown (strategic goals -> programs -> projects -> releases -> features -> stories -> tasks) along with delivery timeboxes (daily standup, sprints, releases) is the Agile mechanism of providing teams the required focus to deliver value.

That said, focusing on timeboxes alone without equally looking at value is a common reason why transformations fail to delivery agility as promised. If this sounds like what you are observing, it is time to emphasise value-based breakdown and establish islands of focus.

Feedback to improve assurance and quality

Fast, frequent feedback is the agile mantra. There are three key areas or purposes where Agile methodologies rely heavily on feedback mechanisms:

1. Ensure that value is delivered: Early business reviews via prototyping and low-fidelity artefacts and regular showcases are all examples of such feedback.
2. Validate delivery quality: All forms of testing give feedback on intrinsic quality. Automated and continuous testing provides fast regular feedback.
3. Maintain effective ways of working: Retrospectives at team and organisational levels help learn from experiences and uplift productivity and efficacy.

If you are not seeing any of these outcomes, it is worthwhile to check if a specific feedback mechanism is missing or ineffective.

Recognising agile as multidisciplinary and multidimensional

As a methodology, Agile combines insights and best practices from several disciplines that contribute to delivery. This includes soft-skill areas such as leadership, cognitive behaviour, collaboration and team dynamics along with technical areas such as software engineering, solution architecture and project management. An agile transformation is much more than an an organisational change initiative.

Here are a few more things frameworks do not talk about: 

• The role of processes and templates in achieving consistency on a repeatable basis, especially at scale when several teams need to work together. 
• How engineering practices and tools allow simple, fast and efficient ways to enable focus, feedback and quality. In fact, most of the speed boost from agile can be traced down to availability of improved tools. 
• The power of collaboration tools like Atlassian JIRA and Confluence to capture and manage knowledge on a daily basis while facilitating traceability and visibility for lean operational and executive reporting.

Are we there yet?

Having competent transformation strategists and agile coaches who have in-depth experience in both behavioural and technical aspects of delivery can go a long way in ensuring a holistic transformation with outcomes that make everyone proud. However, without all the bells and whistles, you can still be agile if you

• Practise value-based prioritisation and work breakdown.
• Provision teams with every required skill and competence for the delivery at hand. 
• Ensure focus for teams and individuals without competing priorities.
• Enable fast, frequent feedback all across the organisation to assure early and efficient delivery of value with quality.

On that note, it is time to skip the manifesto and do a fresh read of the principles behind the Agile Manifesto. Because that is where it all began!

—

Bejoy Jaison is a veteran agilist and technologist who has been facilitating agile transformations and maturity initiatives for more than 12 years while leading product engineering teams and project delivery. He can often be seen wearing multiple hats in his quest to understand how different roles and skills come together to create efficient and accelerated value delivery chains.