When Agile doesn’t work

The term Agile Working has been bandied about for long. It has been loosely connected to Working from home, Virtual Meetings, or even the Lean Methodology of Eric Reis. To define it simply though, Agile Working is the most efficient way of doing something. It shifts the focus from ‘how’ to the ‘what’ of any task.

When it comes to running projects, Agile is the process where individual tasks are broken to its lowest denominator. Each member of the project then performs these tasks in Sprints, and hands it over to the next person to perform theirs as predefined in the network. This improves the productivity of the project.

As Covid-19 smashed the traditional ways of working almost overnight, companies set on a race to adopt Agile. However, not everyone is benefiting from this. Agile tends to fail under these specific set of circumstances:

1)    Prerequisite of a large team where individual dependency of below 20% is not met

Agile Working can best be explained by the Penny Game. Every individual in the game feels they can be more efficient by taking over the task themselves. Yet, they are forced to complete only a small part of overall task and pass it on to the next person.

What you observe is that when everyone does only the small task and passes on to the next person, the overall group finishes the project much faster. This is the key nuance of Agile Working.

It’s the team that comes first, and an individual’s task need to be optimized for the highest productivity of the team, even if it is at the cost of their individual efficiency.

Therefore, Agile can only be implemented when task distribution is democratic between the team and the dependency on no single person is over-bearing.

Usually if there are individuals in the team, on who the overall project is dependent on more than 20%, Agile Working may not be the best option.

20% is a generic figure. This could vary in certain functions or even basis the maturity of the team. For example, if a team has been working with Agile for a considerable amount of time, then even if the dependency on one person increases, the rest of the team can optimize accordingly.

Have you considered the quantum of contribution for every member within a project?

Are there projects that are over-dependent on only few individuals?

2)    Individuals in the team shift between Agile projects and other day-to-day functions

When faced with a decision between what is urgent and what is important, most individuals chose what is urgent. A considerable amount of work experience and a spot higher up the corporate ladder gives you the maturity and privilege to select or only work with the important tasks.

Therefore, in cases where individuals are forced to chose between the urgent tasks of their day-to-day functions and the important tasks in their Agile projects, they tend to pick the former. This compromises the team’s delivery on the Agile project.

Therefore, optimal output from Agile projects can be expected when the team members are all only on Agile projects.

Are employees in your organization shifting between Agile projects and other operations?

Are you injecting Agile only in certain projects, and not moving people entirely into Agile?

3)    Talent risk for high performance individuals

Agile is a team sport like no other. There is almost no space for an individual to shine. Tasks are broken down to small denominators for the sake of the overall team’s efficiency.

This could potentially demotivate high performance individuals. These are people in an organization who thrive on recognition from high quality output. When they consistently miss out on this, they are likely to get demotivated to an extent that they pose a talent risk.

Attrition among high performers are not something any organization wants.

Are you taking people competence into account while deploying them in Agile projects?

Are you customizing your R&R programs for Agile ways of working?

4)    Employee job dissatisfaction due to multi-tasking induced stress

43% of health issues today are stress induced. The correlation between Agile and stress tends to be high because Agile requires us to multi-task. As humans, we are not wired to multi-task.

Try speaking aloud this sequence “A 1 B 2 C 3 D 4..”, you will find it a lot tougher than saying “1 2 3..” and “A B C..” separately. Our brains are over-worked when we multi-task and studies have proven this to cause stress.

Coaching, therapy, frequent breaks, stress buster activities, are all things that can be implemented alongside Agile to ensure employees don’t burn out.

Have you considered the detrimental health impacts caused by Agile?

Are there employees in your team more susceptible to stress induced health issues?

Agile is a great new way of working that can significantly increase the productivity of the organization. But there are things to consider before implementing it en masse. Including the fact that Agile may not even work at all.