Myth Busted: Agile is a blank cheque

When moving to an Agile way of working, there is common misconception that Agile provides a ‘blank cheque’ with no strings attached, where Agile teams are free to do as they please, whenever they please, with a lack of control over scope, spend and outcomes; it can also be seen as good practice to disband and reform Agile teams as priorities change. 

We’ve decided it is time to bust these myths, outlining how stable teams deliver superior outcomes, ways to maintain the checks and balances of good governance and to discuss if the freedom that Agile teams are given is actually a good idea.

There are four main levers which steer the direction of work, provide alignment & autonomy, measure outcomes and manage the associated budget.

1.   Agile roles & structures 

The creation of long-standing stable teams introduces new roles and organization structures that are different to traditional ways of working. Leadership and teams in these new structures have accountability and responsibility to manage the outcomes achieved and the associated budgets. Key structures:

• The ‘Team’ or ‘Squad’: At the helm of the team is the Product Owner. While they are not the team boss, they are responsible for maximizing the impact of their team; they are the primary voice of the customer and ensure the team delivery is consistently aligned to strategic imperatives and desired customer value. Their team has a fixed (and funded) capacity which avoids the team needing to frequently change or be disbanded, hence they have and predictable pace of delivery
• At scale, groups of Squads are often known as ‘Tribes’ or ‘Product Areas’ grouped around common products, geographies, processes, outcomes etc. This structure allows teams to minimizes hand-offs and dependencies to ensure end-to-end value delivery at speed. At the helm are the Tribe leads, who have overall accountability for impact maximization and responsibly for funding the fixed capacity within the Teams. They are often supported by a Tribe Financial Controller

 2.   Agile events cadence

Agile formalizes a set of regular events that provide alignment to organizational strategy & priorities, transparency, validate the value each team is delivering and support course correction if required. As we discuss in point 3, in many organizations there is also a major shift from deliverable and milestone tracking to value/impact tracking via OKRs, this often has a liberating effect on the teams involved as they are told less what to do and align more on what to achieve. Key supporting Agile processes:

• The Quarterly Business Review (QBR) is a Tribe process where leaders, team members and stakeholders gather every three months with the mantra of aligning strategic priorities and delivery of the maximum impact within the available capacity. In the QBR process, teams look back at the past three months and validate of the real outcomes vs. agreed goals, allowing teams reflect on the value they are generating, they then agree priorities and outcome commitments for the forthcoming quarter with their stakeholders
• The Demo is a review of a team’s delivery at the end of each sprint (typically every 2 weeks) with the purpose of transparently demonstrating what has been delivered to the team and stakeholders, whilst gaining their input and feedback. This transparency allows a regular check with core stakeholders that the value the team is delivering is aligned to the key business priorities agreed in the QBR
• Backlog Refinement is performed continuously throughout a sprint to ensure the backlog is ready for the next sprint planning. The team priorities are continually refined, elaborated and discussed with core stakeholders (incl. customers, users and leaders) allowing the product owner to effectively articulate the next prioritized work items (user stories) to the team, it also provides assurance that work is aligned to the key strategic imperatives and needs

 3.   Outcome-based prioritization and reporting – Objectives & Key Results

The Objective and Key Result (OKR) framework is commonly used to provide a vehicle for outcome-based goal setting, work prioritization, impact measurement and reporting. This framework, when combined with the delivery roadmap, replaces traditional RAG (Red/Amber/Green) status and milestone reporting, which often provides an unrealistic reflection of a team’s delivery status and value creation.

An OKR is a specific set of metrics that allow business stakeholders and change teams to track the achievement of their goals based on the strategic priorities. At larger scale, groups of teams (Tribes) would typically agree 3-5 objectives per quarter, with 3-5 key results per objective.

OKRs are used as an outcome indicator within Agile events. They provide full transparency of progress toward key goals and allow early intervention to adjust approach, provide further support or change priorities to avoid dedicating capacity to & spending money on sub-optimal priorities.

4.   Funding capacity

To truly grasp the benefits of speed, impact and reliable delivery of value that Agile can bring, a fundamental shift in how change delivery teams are funded is required. Unlike traditional management practice where budget is tied to projects and milestone delivery, the accepted wisdom in Agile is that budget is used to secure stable capacity i.e. people in teams. Therefore, project funding is abolished in favor of stable cross-functional multi-disciplinary teams who work with autonomy to deliver mutually agreed outcomes.

 Conclusion

We have busted the myth that Agile provides a ‘blank cheque’ with no strings attached. While Agile teams are significantly empowered, they are not free to do as they please, they work in an environment of aligned autonomy. The types of controls put in place in an Agile way of working differ to traditional project management and it is important that leaders embrace this change to fully enable the pace and performance Agile can deliver.

In short, the freedoms discussed are a good for both the teams and leaders who can expect ruthless transparency and strong alignment to priorities in return.