How PMO’s Can Avoid The Biggest Mistake Companies make when applying an Agile Framework

I’ve been helping companies apply Agile to their business models with noted success for years now, and it seems the masses are finally starting to catch on.

But, as with anything new or cutting-edge, there is no shortage of mistakes to be made while applying this iterative work approach. And of course, mistakes can be costly, so let’s get them out in the open right here, right now.?

One of the biggest mistakes that I’ve seen companies make when applying the most commonly used Agile approach, Scrum, is that they deviate too far, too fast from the core practices of the framework. Much like the saying, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” the Scrum Framework has a specific set of roles, events, and artifacts for a reason — they work. If you lose sight of these, you lose sight of the winning formula.?

A few years ago, I was coaching some Agile teams in Chicago. We were transitioning 70 teams from a traditional project management approach, to using Agile (specifically, the Scrum Framework. )

One day, I was working with one of the teams I was coaching, using a whiteboard to visually map out specific challenges they were experiencing in order to determine the root cause of each obstacle. As we were working through this exercise, I started to feel like Tom Cruise in Minority Report, when he’s viewing all this information unfolding and floating around him. Basically, it was a mix between that and Goodwill Hunting or A Beautiful Mind, with all the writing on the window.?

I had an epiphany.?

As we continued our root cause analysis, all of the challenges that I was seeing unfold on the board revealed that they had come to fruition for the same reason: the core practices of the Scrum Framework weren’t being followed.?

In this specific case, the team wasn’t delivering. Why? Because too much work was being added mid sprint, task clarity was lacking and backlog refinement wasn’t happening. There wasn’t a clear vision and the direction from leadership kept changing. Keep in mind that one of the ScrumMaster’s primary responsibilities is to remove roadblocks and protect the team, thus keeping new work from interfering with the team’s focus during the sprint. This wasn’t happening. The team also needed an empowered and engaged Product Owner.

As we began to trace back the root causes of these and several other challenges, I realized that if the team was just following the core Scrum Framework the way it was intended in the Scrum Guide, that almost all of their challenges would go away.

It was that simple. Actually do Scrum.

At the Global Scrum Gathering held in San Diego several years ago, I had a chance to catch up with Jeff Sutherland, one of the creators of Scrum, after his keynote presentation. He talked about how so many people were not getting the hoped for results of using Scrum because they weren’t actually doing Scrum.

Using Scrum to accomplish work should result in an exponential increase in productivity. Jeff talks about doing twice the work in half the time in his latest book, however in San Diego, he said that you should really be getting much more than twice the output when done properly.

While hearing several of Jeff Sutherland’s successful case studies on companies that have gotten this type of exponential output, this only reinforces that the key elements to success are the basics of Scrum actually being done as intended.

As I lead Agile training courses around the world, I notice that most companies face the same, common challenges. Included in these challenges are people not feeling empowered — they feel as if things are outside their control. They feel like the work they are trying to do keeps changing, and they’re not allowed to focus and see a task through without interruption. They’re feeling pushed down by pressure from management and the market to the point where they’re always being reactive, never proactive. They’re being sent to a training class and told to do Scrum, but then they’re not supported when they try to escalate roadblocks.

Scrum works. But you have to actually do it to get results.

Ultimately, some of the biggest mistakes you can make in Agile is to not follow the core practices as intended, not having leadership support, not creating the right environment for success, and not having focus in the right places. Remember that the way leaders set the tone, impacts an entire organization. If leaders say, “We want to go Agile, and we want to support our teams,” but their actions don’t show that, there’s a misalignment. That’s where the disconnect happens, and where Scrum falls apart.?

Enter the Project Management Office (PMO). There is an opportunity for the PMO to be supportive to teams in escalating organizational impediments, to listen to your people, to encourage true leadership support. Rather than just focusing on compliance across projects, imagine embracing a servant leadership approach and providing support for teams to apply an Agile approach properly to maximize results.

If you’re truly able to commit to an approach such as Scrum throughout your organization, create an environment for success, and empower your people, you can in turn empower your entire organization to create greater results than ever before. This is what creates that perfect recipe, the recipe for people to feel empowered, valued, and engaged in what they do to get the results you’ve hoped for with Agile.

That’s the Agile way.