Transforming! Clear the decks and reset.

What is the collective noun for a group of Agile-Transformations? Personally, I like the collective noun A Murder.....

In Australia, there is a Murder of Agile-Transformations that are either underway or are being completed. As a country, Australia has been transforming from waterfall to an Agile way to deliver products for over a decade. And in that time the transformations within the Murder has evolved.

• From being processes that a few strange development teams did to becoming a cultural vision for larger corporate.
• From being a process that small start-up style teams used to the expected default process at large companies like; REA, MYOB, NBN, Telstra, ANZ, CommBank, Australian government (And loads more...).
• From being a better way of developing software to the future vision of companies themselves; More customer centric, More innovative, capable of responding to market changes etc. 

The only things that haven't seemed to change for transforming companies are that they continue to be under pressure to perform, their people and teams are under the pump and as it seems to be a stretch to think that they have any spare capacity to take on the extra challenges of the transformation effort itself.  Before your company becomes another one in the Murders of Agile-Transformations consider clearing space, resetting your performance expectations and make time for the transformation itself to be successful.

"We are transforming because we have so much spare time, capacity and idle cash!" - I can't remember ever hearing that! Most companies have lofty goals, tight timelines, budget constraints, market competitions, performance scrutinization. I'd suggest that the reason companies decide they need to transform in the first place is because they aren't reaching their goals, timelines or market expectations - Or being cynical, maybe it's just a management Jedi-Mind-Trick for misdirection - "This financial year we have not met our X% growth projections... Oooh Ooooh, that's not the information you're looking for, We are transforming to a new way of doing things.... Agile, Ummm a much nicer message". Radically changing the way people work takes an enormous amount of effort and it's unrealistic to expect that you can change and adapt the way you work and immediately meet the current goals, targets, and expectations you're already missing.

You need to clear room to transform because contrary to what you're being told Agile is not faster, cheaper or more innovative than the alternatives. Don't get me wrong an Agile-Transform, done right, will create a better working culture, you'll work more effectively and you get the opportunity to fine tune to make sure you are working on the right things. But it's not going to make you deliver like-for-like faster, spending less, with fewer people or suddenly invent a new revenue stream.

It's not faster because you will have to do more work than you currently do. Agile is more intense, it turns the heat up on doing things properly. Take the software development process, to be Agile you need to get working software out regularly. “Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.” is one of the principles of Agile. To meet that principle you’ve signed yourself up for automating & scripting your production environment, automating your testing, continuously integrating your systems, elaborating your architectural design, seeking feedback, reacting and replanning on feedback etc. Before you transform you're probably not doing these things, or not doing them effectively enough to release frequently. Moving to Test Driven Development (TDD), or even its poor cousin unit-tests after coding, as a process means developers will write more than double the amount of code they used to - the tests are you know! Taking on the practices of Agile isn't faster, it is better because you develop systems that are; probably a better functional fit, more likely higher quality, should be more reliable, should be more repeatable, should be more extensible - But the practices that enable you to release frequently in a reliable fashion are extra practices piled on top of what your already doing, you're not substituting like for like, your more work on.

It's not cheaper! Firstly because you now need to do more, over a longer period which costs! You're immediately going to need more people for roles you have never heard of before; Agile Coaches, Iteration Managers, Developer Operations, Automated testers??? If people in your company understood and were Agile then they would probably be doing it right now and you wouldn't need to transform. So take it that they need training, coaching, mentoring, which all costs. Thirdly there is the agile tax to pay! To transform you need coaches, mentoring, consultants, you start hiring people with Agile experience to help you. Agile people apply a tax and cost $$$$. As soon as a person has Agile X, Y or Z experience on their CV they automatically want more money. A BA with no Agile experience is probably 30% cheaper than someone with experience. A developer with TDD experience, a operations engineer who can write scripts, A BA who can write cards, An automation tester…. Cha-Ching you better start adding 30% to your salaries or consultant rates!

It's not more innovative - because! it's not more innovative. It's not an innovation process, it doesn't instill a culture of innovation, it doesn't make people think out of the box, think left-field, create the new startup unicorn - People do that, not the process. it's not the innovative process you're looking for! You need people who are innovative, think left-field, don't follow rules etc - You need a tool or a process.

A company that is looking to transform needs to set itself up for the multi-year journey ahead. A journey that needs more effort, time, money and space than the current one you're on. You can't keep doing what you have been doing and heap more work onto your already overworked teams and expect a good result. So clear the decks, make space and reset for your new journey: 

• Reset your companies goals. The transformation is your new goal. An Agile-Transformation is a big enough task on its own and it needs to be the #1 priority, not returning shareholder value or reducing staff costs or making a profit. You may get all of the later once you've transformed, but won't during a transform. 
• Reset your current goals, projects, budgets, and scope. You need to increase your budgets and timelines for anything you are currently working on or have in plan. You need to reset expectations that you can't meet the current objectives of time, scope and budget at the same time as radically changing everything your teams do. 
• Reset your teams and peoples priorities with the transformation goals being the highest priority and things that don't break the company having the lowest priority. Get people to work on the highest priority items only, not multitask on meaningless activities. By doing this you're giving the teams the right leadership, direction and provided them with space they are going to desperately need to transform. I'd work on removal of anywhere between 30-50% of the current objectives and tasks.

No team can take on a new way of working and be successful at it unless it is given the leadership, support, time, and space to do so. There is no sporting team in the world that practices set shots on game day. Game day is just a re-enactment of the things they practiced over and over and over again. A club will practice months before a season starts and during a season it will train and drill in-between games. Most clubs will spend more time practicing then actually playing on game day. That's how teams get to know how to play a game or follow a new game plan, it takes time and effort.

You need to accept that to be great at something you need to practice. You need to commit to the fact that this practice is something new and will take more effort than you currently put in. You need to re-plan as you don't have this extra effort accounted for. Your doing all of this to make space, so that you can be a successful Agile company sometime later in the future, but definitely not sometime soon!

Companies who are looking to transform need to clear the decks and reset their expectations otherwise you're just going be another Agile-Transformations in the Murder of Agile-Transformations.