Organisational Behaviour and the Agile Mindset
Colin Wilcox MBA
Director / Director of Engineering / Head of Software Engineering / Engineering Manager/ Agile Leader
In some quarters Agile, and anything vaguely related to it, has acquired a bad reputation. It is seen as a 'process that doesnt work' and more often or not is deemed the cause of many high profile projects failing. Many businesses see Agile as the holy grail that will solve all their process and delivery woes. Many of these same businesses subsequently end up blaming Agile for their lack of delivery or failed projects by trying to gloss over the real reasons for their failures - lack of genuine 'buy in', inadequate processes and an unsuitable culture.
I have personally heard statements from seasoned industry professionals at all levels come out with such gems as 'We do standups, so we are agile, right?' and 'Agile doesn't work for us because we didnt have a project plan to follow so the developers produced the wrong thing'. I'm sure people reading this will have their own list of excuses that would equally apply.
Obviously such statements are complete nonsense.
The underlying reasons for many failures tends to fall into a number of categories and comes down to the organisational behaviour of these companies. Many businesses like to appear 'on trend' by having 'Agile' in their buzzword portfolio; while at the same time trying to gloss over their historic micromanagement styles by advertising positions with such eye catching titles as 'Agile project manager' (whatever that is) or some hybrid Product Manager/Scrum Master abomination (which really just ends up being a flavour of Project Manager). They think moving to a more agile way of working is just a question of changing employee job titles. Business Analyst and Project Manager suddenly becomes Product Owner and Scrum Master, or heaven forbid an Agile Project Manager, while the job functions themselves remain the surprisingly similar.
Craig Larman introduced a number of rules [1], based on organisational behaviour to describe such business practices. In summary (and heavily paraphrasing) he states that:
- Organisations prefer the status quo. They tend to make decisions that avoid significant changes to methods of operation and power structures.
- Any change to (1) will be limited to redefining or overloading the roles that maintain the status quo with new terms and technologies (i.e. job titles and tech stacks)
- Any such demand for change will be deemed 'revolutionary' (replace with any other isolating adjective you see fit) thereby deflecting any focus on genuine weaknesses within the business structure and preserving the existing power hierarchy.
- If any significant changes are adopted those that are displaced, tend to be redefined as 'coaches' or 'trainers', thereby reinforcing (2) & (3) above.
- Culture follows structure, not the other way round (well sometimes). Many business think that by changing the culture of the business then employees will start to work in a more Agile way. In fact the complete opposite is true. Cultural change is an effect of adopting new working practices not the catalyst.
Number 5, however is largely dependent on the size of the company. For small startups the culture is almost always as a consequence of the way of working of its employees. However as the company size grows the reverse becomes true, in that changes to aspects such as groups, roles and responsibilities and team communication plays a more moulding role in cultural shifts. It important to know when to shift this focus
Systems-thinking guru John Seddon sums this up in his statement, 'Attempting to change an organization’s culture is a folly, it always fails. Peoples’ behavior (the culture) is a product of the system; when you change the system peoples’ behavior changes. [2]
Thoughts?
[1] Larman, C. 'Larman Laws'
https://effectiveagile.com/larmans-laws-of-organizational-behavior/
[2] Seddon, J. (2009). 'Culture Change is Free', First published by Quality World, 2009.
https://vanguard-method.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/culture-change-is-free.pdf
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6 个月Whether it's increasing familiarity with Agile methods or gaining a grasp of new communication channels in a flatter hierarchy, the success of any solution is contingent on the workforce's ability to execute it in a competent manner
Since the world is a different place than it was when the right honourable Curious Tortoise wrote this article almost three weeks back, it does somewhat beg the question of there being Darwinian paradigm shift occurring right now. Organisations who would have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Agile now embrace the concept in much the same way a drowning man would cling to a lifebuoy (or blow-up doll; who cares as long as it floats, right)? So the new thing to consider is: will the dinosaurs really be able to go back to the tried and tested, tired old regimes or will the seeds of discontent have been sown with those at the sharp end who have adapted to a flexible way of operating? After all, who wants the milk when you've tasted the cream?