So, You Think You’re Agile… Think Again!

Agile… what does that mean nowadays? Is it a mindset? Is it a methodology? Or could it possibly be a way of working? Its meaning has become more and more fuzzy and clouded over the years, to the point that its original meaning has been totally obscured. Agile is a mindset that is all about developing the ability to rapidly respond to change. What it is not is a methodology. It was not intended to be a structured set of procedures that if followed to the letter, allows you to proclaim to the world that you are now agile! More times than not, that approach results in creating a situation where you are “doing Agile,” instead of “being agile” without really understanding the mindset behind what really should be driving you to seek better ways of working and interacting with your customer.

Agile’s intent has always been to produce delighted customers. Are your customers delighted with your products and/or services, because they deliver value? Are you capable of rapidly responding to changing customer demands to exploit shifts in their wants, needs, and desires? Can you bring a product idea or new features to market in hours, days, or weeks? Or does it take you months or possibly even years from ideation to release?  If the answer is the latter, you are not agile my friend, and the sense of urgency to change is upon you… like now… to change your ways of working! However, even though Agile must be your mindset, the end goal of adopting Agile ways of working must be to foster agility. That is, responsiveness, nimbleness, and the ability to move or think quickly and easily.  So, the telltale question becomes, is your product development process quick and easy or laborious and time consuming?  

In an attempt to build more agile product development processes, many leaders have spent millions of dollars on converting their technology organizations over from traditional waterfall to Agile only to find that it really hasn’t made that much of a difference. In the end, the benefits expected have just not materialized. Leaders are then left asking, “Why doesn’t Agile work here?” Actually, the opposite is true, it does work. The root of the problem lies in the way, more times than not, how it has been narrowly implemented from a vertical perspective within side of organizations. That is, teaching the technology teams the Scrum Framework and getting them to Sprint, without changing the operating model or organizational structure to support Agile ways of working.  Vertical scaling must encompass all of these activities.

However, we cannot stop there if our goal is to achieve agility. Leaders must also link strategy to execution by focusing on connecting the horizontal end-to-end flow of work processes to the product delivery engine, as well as implement behavioral changes to support a culture of agility. It is an incomplete paradigm if you take Agile in isolation of a vertical perspective and expect to achieve agility as the end result. Agility equals vertical scaling plus the horizontal end-to-end flow of work plus behavioral change. To leave any one of these components out results in merely “doing Agile” verses actually “being Agile.”

Unfortunately when the equation is not complete, more times than not, what you end up with is a company that is merely going through the motions and labeling themselves as agile, when that is just not reality. What good is it to be really, really fast at producing products and/or services, but ask yourself are those the right products and/or services that your both workforce is delighted to produce and your customers are delighted to buy? How do you know unless you make that connection and link strategy to your delivery engine?

Here is a test for you to try in an effort to answer that question… Go ask your product development folks if they think you are delighting both your workforce and customers through the products and/or services you are releasing out to the market. I think you will be shocked at the answer. I’ve found through my work as a transformational change agent over the years, that more times than not, the answer to that question is a resounding “NO!” If that is the case, bringing Agile into a company isn’t going to have that much of an impact, because of the resistance encountered by not understanding the importance of ensuring the Agility equation adds up. You must ensure that you are satisfying both your workforce and customers, because both are crucial to your survival. That is, your workforce from the perspective that you are giving your most highly skilled employees challenging work that keeps them engaged and retained, as well as satisfying your customers to ensure you stay in business.

And lastly, many business leaders make the mistake of believing that Agile is something that only affects the technology organization, which could not be farther from the truth. As we’ve established, Agile is a mindset and the pursuit of agility is something that must be embraced throughout the organization. And yes, implementing Agile in your technology organization is important, but it is only one piece of the equation. It is a beginning, and not an end. If the business is not engaged in the process and the teams are not supported and enabled by the fast, flexible flow of quickly turning ideas into value-producing products, you are only tackling a small portion of the problem. Agility must be a holistic approach that requires the business, technology, and operations to all work together and move in the same direction to produce products and/or services that generate value for both the customers, as well as the company.

So, achieving the type of agility necessary to be able to rapidly respond to changing market conditions in hours and days verses weeks and months, only happens through ensuring the Agility equation adds up. Vertical scaling AND the horizontal end-to-end flow of work across the entire enterprise, as well as ensuring the behavioral change necessary to support and sustain these new ways of working are all part of that equation. It is only through this ensuring this equation adds up that leaders will be able to completely scale, transform, and change the entire organization from one of “doing Agile” to truly “being Agile!”