Lean-in to Fail-fast !

One of the biggest pitfalls I have encountered during the journey to DevOps, Scrum or any form of the use of Agility is the use of its famous pseudo name and adage; 'Fail Fast'.

 Organizations today love to focus on the 'hyper-agility' side of everything 'Agile', especially when it comes to Scrum and its younger, more techno-savvy cousin DevOps, for the exciting promise that 'Fail fast' brings, in leading every project, program and product team to the top floors of epochal towers of 'Success'. So much so, that the other tenet of 'Lean Management' is almost overlooked altogether !

 But ask any seasoned DevOps coach or practitioner worth their blood, sweat and experience, and they will tell you, that 'fail fast' is a religion; an organizational religious combination of lean and agile practices, in the sense that it deeply impacts the culture of the organization, where a 'blind' following of 'fail fast', can quickly turn into 'fail longer and harder' instead. They will also tell you how monstrously painful it can be, if not initiated or adopted, in good relations, with its older and wiser cousin - 'Lean'.

Jumping right in -> to drown everyone

Ever-so-often we hear leadership and teams that have ended up adopting a massive operational headache than the actual benefits they once dreamed about, where more time is lost in a cascade of unpredictable performance downfalls and upswings, time waited moving people around, negotiating delays with consumers, over utilization, under utilization, productivity drops, morale drops, burnouts, exits, rehires, product quality and others.

 To avoid this pitfall it is important to adopt extensive change and transformation management using Lean Management principles for process design.

 'Lean Management' principles for process design ensure that we conduct the necessary SWOT analysis, lay out a maturity roadmap, chart out the skills required, gauge the psychological impact, conduct a systemic assessment, plan to upgrade and then lay out the plan to all. It aids cultural change in that teach us to focus on the long term objectives of such a transformation, ensuring we understand every part of the value stream, its impacts on our existing ecosystem and the need to fulfil the gaps BEFORE we turn to regular operations.

 Without an orderly change management or transformational journey undertaken to do a . What follows is what you wanted. You wanted to fail fast and you did. One may justify this as teething issues to maintain a false aura of success, maintaining that egotistic stance for a while, and pushing teams harder, throwing blame around; but, it is bound to get the better of you sooner or later as a leader of the change and I've seen so many heads role in the process

Pushing your team in -> drowning them first !

It is easy to forget that ultimately it is people that run our processes and systems. Taking the time to run a very diligent transformation exercise to impact the very core of each and every participant and stakeholder's belief system ensures that everyone 'Matures' into the process equally.

 A DevOps or Scrum process flattens the organization significantly, exposing every individual in the organization exponentially to higher access to executive help and sponsor resources, but, it also exposes them exponentially to higher management scrutiny on their performance and skills. Not everyone can handle the sudden exposure to limelight, the power and responsibilities it brings, equally. An unequally matured organization will not be able to adopt the changes to pace together and some of your key performers may succumb and 'burn' in the increased exposure to the 'fast failures' making them extremely nervous.

 Many organizations today love to go by the keep what works and throw the rest out principle. But, a study conducted on the efficacy of organizations who take time to nurture their existing talent during such changes, tells us that the benefits far surpass disposing their resources. Teaching to swim is important part of expecting your teams and processes to handle the 'rapids' of 'fail fast'. Lean principles teach us to weigh our boundaries to 'failing fast', strengthening them first, and then testing them.

 In the end, organizations will probably just about float, but too much time would have passed managing a rocking boat and drowning team members and their clashes. What you would be left with is a fraction of what you set out to do.

Providing shiny new boat and oars -> The river to nowhere !

Many organizations will look very diligently to brand new end-to-end tools that promise out-of-this-world automation and artificial intelligence where one day you'll never have to worry about people and processes anymore. The moment you hear that, its time to run, in the opposite direction; back to your teams.

 The most proficient agilests still use excel as their primary tool ! Add to that ANY decent planning, build, automation and testing tools and you're already on your way to DevOps !

 Ensuring discipline to the ceremonies that teams follow, the skills that they have, the SLA and OLAs that you put together and the education you provide to the stakeholders about your processes far exceeds the benefits you can possibly hope for from any one tool.

 Tools are important, don’t get me wrong, but they're the in the mix there. Not the be-it and end-all for all the other holes inherited in a wrong journey.

A lean approach to the process automations you actually need to build will help you ensure you don't waste precious organization money, focus and time on bringing in something you don't use. In DevOps specially, unlike many other business functions, you can build lean continuous improvement systems using part-tools at hand like a combination of open source ansible, kubernetes, docker, jenkins and other tools without having to buy orchestration behemoths at the get go.

Throwing in the Towels -> Instead of the floats !

So you managed to officially get everyone on the boat, and unfortunately after a few days riding on it, you realize it's so rickety, you're constantly wondering how long it's going to hold.

 Well, here's the real good news. Any agile journey, no matter how messed up, can be salvaged very easily using the same principles above that you perhaps missed utilizing when you began.

 The beauty of Agility, DevOps, Scrum and its entire grand family is that they are all based on the principle of continuous improvements. No matter where you start, the journey to success will always still lie ahead of you.

 Learn where you went wrong, and start applying it immediately.

 For example, ensure that you use continuous planning principles effectively to dive into only chartered waters. Plan your posts only as far as you can swim, take requests and whet them to only take what you can manage, break it down to doable portions measured by the individuals who're going to do them and then spend some time every sprint, training your swimmers if you couldn’t before. These are principles of Continuous Planning, Skilling and Design.

 Identify your worst systems and processes and then work your way up to fixing anything you can. For example, that 'niggly' environment that causes you to retrofit your code each time an enhancement request comes in. Fix it today ! Make time to do it. Ensure your architects are constantly feeding your teams buckets with tech debts that cause you trouble.

 Build an innovation and ideas pipeline where your engineers can literally drop their pain points while in action. Do your retrospectives diligently and then look at your automation pipeline. Train your engineers to look for issues that continuously break your incoming data flow or build integrations. Make it a part of their OKRs or KPIs and instantly see the improvements.

 Drive a common User Experience in your processes as well as your systems where all users and stakeholders feel comfortable providing feedback.

 And most importantly, communicate. Push you communication pipelines, your feedback systems and your most intelligent automation to the farthest corners of your supply chains and then a little more. You'll be surprised of all the places a helping hand of rescue will be extended to you and save you from drowning anymore.

 Soon, you'll be sailing into the sunset with a smile on your face and a thankful set of team and stakeholders !

 I would love to hear your thoughts so do write in !

PK is an enterprise IT delivery, transformation, programs & products specialist who loves creating smashing enterprise solutions and experiences with his fantastic team, helping users succeed through technology and helping businesses execute valuable technology road maps.

He also loves writing and a good chat over any hot, cold, soft or hard beverage !