Leading the Agile transformation

People around the world are taking steps toward an agile mindset. New frameworks have come up as a way to organize teams and projects to deliver valuable solutions for complex problems. What already proved truly valuable a few years back, mainly for startups facing market unpredictability and risky initiatives, is now starting to be considered a mainstay in modern corporate management.

Although Agile is practised in non-hierarchical environments, most big organizations are starting this journey guided by their customary top-down perspective: decision-making, ways of working, resource management and allocation, are decided according to the hierarchical pattern.

So, what can directors, senior and middle managers do to support and have an active role in the transformation? Let's explore some ideas:

-Study and learn about Agile

Business managers spent years at the university studying books written by the founders of modern management, such as Drucker, Kotler, Porter, to mention a few. Therefore, if Agile is a radical update of these theories, a similar approach should be embraced. Even though Agile is thought to be easy to understand, mastering it requires significant reading and tons of hours of practice in order to achieve a deep comprehension of the matter. Believe me, some colourful powerpoints and HBR articles won’t be enough. 

With new teams that are self-managing by default, the obvious question is: regardless of their position in the chain of command, how will not-so-well-prepared managers be able to lead?  

- Understand when to follow an Agile framework and when not to. 

Agile’s main goal is to keep risks at the lowest possible level when facing projects in which uncertainty is a significant factor. A future-proof company should have a clear understanding of the challenges ahead in order to promote agile or traditional management accordingly. Agile is not the best way of working, it is the way you should use to fix some particular problems and managers must know that it is not about practising it by default, but by design. 

- Stop using it as a tool to go faster

Firstly, Agile is not a tool. It is a mindset that enables the management of the unknown, fostering creativity in risky environments. Secondly, going faster is not an agile feature, so managers should avoid using it to accelerate projects and reach deadlines on time. By the way, deadlines are not a part of Agile either.

- Stabilize teams

Humans are not “resources” that can be moved from one area to another as if they were robots. To be able to practice Agile values and principles, people need to work together in stable and self-organizing teams. Therefore managers will need to understand that, grouping people coming from different silos who do not know each other, just to have a minor and temporary collaboration on projects, has nothing to do with building real teams. The systematic use of external resources for staffing projects won't help either as it creates a false sense of productivity whilst reducing cohesion and common understanding.

- Act more as coaches

This new style of stable, cross-functional and self-recruited teams will be naturally oriented and inspired by thinkers from around the world. More than corporate leaders they will need coaches - as "true leaders" paraphrasing the new scrum guideline - to unlock flexibility and creativity. 

In a world with fewer and fewer managers and directors, these teams will also need to be coached in decision-making processes.

- Allocate static, fixed budgets

Contrary to traditional approaches, in Agile, the scope remains flexible to address complexity while the team, the time (set in a number of iterations) and the budget, are fixed. Founding the entire project does not need to be available in advance. Furthermore, as the project’s output is not known with certainty, having enough resources to support teams will be sufficient. 

Depending on the validation of the main assumptions in the project, spending can be stopped and the team, seen as one and indivisible, can switch to a different challenge, always looking for value creation opportunities. 

Although these ideas are just a glimpse of a bigger picture, they work as a trigger for directors and managers to accelerate the journey toward a more agile organization. Ultimately, the setting of companies that need to play agile and lean by design falls under their current authority and responsibility.

If you are modelling your role as an Agile Leader, this journey could look like a crusade. And certainly, it is. But you are not alone, there are people around the world (literally) waiting for you. Count on us. Count on me. 

Nicolas Lovagnini