How to get from “Doing Agile” to "Being Agile" - and how the cloud can be a shortcut

By now, there is hardly a company that has not already taken steps to increase its agility. In an increasingly complex and digital world, agility is mostly intended to help companies bring products and services to market faster, in higher quality and tailored to individual customer needs. In addition, companies also hope that the transformation to an agile organization will improve employee engagement and thus give them an advantage in the prevailing "war for talent".

The agile transformation stagnates

What starts with good intentions, however, proves difficult to realize. Many companies report that their agile transformation stagnates after initial successes. Many organizations have found that although agile methods are being used, the promised "outcomes" of time-to-market, quality, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, etc. are not being realized. At the same time, it is also noted that employees initially tried out the new methods with an open mind, but increasingly lose the desire to experiment for continuous improvement. Thus, although the processes according to the methodology are basically adhered to, the principles behind agility are not lived. For example, old processes and artifacts are renamed without changing anything. Be it that classic team meetings are now called "sprint reviews", that projects are now "features" or "epics" or that the team head is now a "squad lead".

Agile is a culture, not a mindset

These widespread symptoms all point to the fact that the application of agile practices does not yet automatically lead to the organization actually being agile - i.e., being able to bring its products and services to market faster, in higher quality, and better suited to individual customer needs. In this context, it is often said that the transformation from "doing agile" (organization applies agile practices) to "being agile" (organization "is" actually agile) is not successful. Often, the reason for this is found in the mindset of the employees because agility is, after all, a mindset.

However, this claim is false. Agility is not a mindset. This is the same as claiming that a well-sounding orchestra only exhibits this professionalism because of the "right" mindset of its musicians. As with an orchestra, which only produces its euphony through the interaction of the individuals, agility as a capability of the organization only functions when the employees working together harmonize adequately. So, while mindset is an individual attitude or approach to something, agility is an organizational capability. Or put another way: Agility is a culture. While influenced by individuals, it is clearly more than simply the sum of individual behaviors due to its complexity.

How to develop agile culture

The extent to which individual behavior can be influenced by external framing conditions is illustrated by the example of Swiss Post. There, the sales staff in the post offices were to be trained to sell digital products such as their own "e-banking" or their own "app". Despite intensive training, however, customers were hardly made aware of these digital products. The culprits were quickly found: The mindset of the employees. However, a survey of the sales staff then clearly showed: employees were very open minded to digital products and were already using them in their private life. However, their work performance was measured by how many customers they served per day. Their internal incentive system therefore encouraged the behavior of getting rid of customers as quickly as possible. Explaining digital products did not fit into this performance metric.

The example clearly shows that for culture to emerge, competent individuals are needed on the one hand, but on the other hand adequate framing conditions so that the desired behavior can also be applied. Individual competence means that the individual employees have the potential to exercise the desired behavior. Framing conditions mean that the organizational environment is also designed in such a way that an individual behavioral potential also gives rise to a collective behavioral pattern.

Figure 1: Agile culture based on agile competence of the individual and the adequate framing conditions

Development of agile competence of the individual

If agile culture arises from the interplay of individual competence and adequate framing conditions, then cultural development succeeds if these levers are holistically pulled. Thereby, agile competence consists of three dimensions:

●???????Mindset, how the individual evaluates certain circumstances;

●???????Skills, in the sense of the ability to actually do something;

●???????Knowledge, theoretical knowledge.

If these three dimensions are promoted with adequate learning offers, competence develops. This means that the individual then has the potential to behave in comparable situations in the way he or she has learned. To build up a holistic competence, classical classroom training is hardly sufficient. Rather, it requires versatile support of the individual learning processes, such as role plays, classical training, holistic learning journeys, decision dilemmas, etc. (see Figure 2). ?

Figure 2: Agile competence and possible learning opportunities

?Fostering the adequate framing conditions for an agile culture

As mentioned, however, the competence of the individual is not yet sufficient for an agile culture to emerge. Only when the right framing conditions are in place for employees do competencies also become concrete, collective behaviors - in other words, culture.

Framing conditions that enable the desired culture can in turn be influenced by three dimensions (Figure 3):

●???????Actors shaping the environment. Depending on the team setting, different behaviors are encouraged. Who is accepted into the team, who takes on which role, who is promoted, or even who is excluded from the team and how. All of this influences the actor network, which affects the behavior of the individual and thus leads to other collective behavior patterns.

●???????Interactions that make up the collective behavior patterns. These can be communication patterns, but also practices of collaboration, etc. So, the team works according to Scrum, according to Kanban or according to other methods. All this influences the interactions in the system and thus the collective behavior patterns or culture.

●???????Systems that influence the decision-making and behavioral processes from the outside. These can be governance and organizational structures, incentive systems, work infrastructures or even technologies.

Figure 3: Levers for Culture Development

?How cloud has a substantial impact on organizational culture

The cloud is a very illustrious example of how technology affects organizational culture. This already starts with the users. Cloud technologies have made it much easier to use tools regardless of work location. The flexible and agile collaboration, often referred to as "new work", could never have entered our work culture to this extent without the diverse cloud solutions.

Cloud is also substantially changing how different entities within companies bring technology solutions to market. For example, cloud technology is significantly simplifying the development and deployment of technology solutions by making the use of IT infrastructure much more flexible. This enables developers to go to market faster with new applications. The cloud also increases flexibility in the operation of applications, as the resources and infrastructure required can always be adapted to requirements. The cloud as a systemic framing condition thus also changes the culture of how IT infrastructure is purchased: away from the purchase of capital-intensive servers and towards computer performance on demand. Or how software is developed, namely towards containerization (the packaging of software codes for greater flexibility and stability in further development) and microservices. Or how the collaboration between development and operations is happening, namely higher autonomy for the developers, while operations is more focused on enabling the development teams.

Conclusion: Agility is a culture, not a mindset. And Cloud supports culture development

As a conclusion, it can be summarized: Agility is not a mindset. This is because agility is a competence of the organization to bring products and services to market better, faster, more reliably and with higher customer and employee satisfaction. The attitude or mindset of the individual does contribute to the individual being competent - that is, having the potential to behave according to the desired culture. However, for the individual to actually be competent, the appropriate skills and necessary knowledge are needed in addition to the adequate mindset.

If the individual employees have the appropriate competence for agility, however, this does not guarantee that the team or the organization will behave accordingly. This also requires the appropriate framing conditions. These in turn can be divided into three dimensions:

●???????Actors (who shapes the behavior of the collective?),

●???????Interactions (how do employees communicate and work?)

●???????Systems such as Technology, Governance & Organizational Structures or even Work Infrastructures (what shapes the behavior of the collective?).

Thus, for the organization to be agile, the collective behaviors of employees must support agility. This culture development succeeds when both the competencies of the individual and the various dimensions of the framing conditions are adequately ensured. Effective cultural development therefore determines which of these levers must now be pulled so that the agile culture can be promoted. Mindset is only one of numerous levers for successful culture development.