When your Agile is just Fragile.

Agile is The Big Thing in change these days because it helps us deliver results fast, whilst they are still relevant. Agile is The Big Thing in business, public sector and enterprises because it helps our sluggish organisations respond faster to disruption and uncertainty. It's a Lean approach to give us focus. We all know that.

Some of us know how to select from a smorgasbord of methods and to persuade colleagues to undergo behaviour change. Some of us know the MUSTs such as ‘Environment matters – use one centralised room’. Some of us understand when to use agile and when not to, finding it useful for taking confident sprints through the fog which prevents the traditional methods working. Some of us know Agile means seeing your colleagues daily, having a sandbox to play in, using talking to substitute for documentation and reconfiguring office spaces for more whiteboards and collaboration.

Most of us think that this is enough. And it is. If your business enterprise is small and your project team are co-located and you have few external dependencies. Then it is. Your teams and key business leaders can meet for a stand up as frequently as they wish. But what if team members have to commute for an hour to come to the office for a stand-up? What if you are a global business and that instead means a flight? What if you have team members in other organisations and widely dispersed? What if your work crosses time-zones? What if talking can get in the way because people have different first languages and writing is clearer?

What all of us know and what only some of us know is not enough to fix what none of us know!

In those cases, and in many more, it is not enough. And none of us have an obvious solution. Instead we move from weekly to monthly sprints which are expensive as they involve flying people around the world. And we can’t fly everyone so many are left out. Stand-ups are replaced by conference calls which in turn become one person talking and 23 people, on mute, doing their emails. The Product Owner becomes remote and is always out of touch. Slowly, originally distant on the time horizon, key event deadlines jump closer and closer at each review finally getting too close to feel comfortable about. ‘Calming panic’ ensues and teams are rushed together into one physical place for a couple of weeks, at vast expense to “get the job done”. In short, your Agile approach has become Fragile.

“ No thanks mate. We’re too busy!”

Imagine if you will, that you could simply step through a door, from anywhere you are into a dedicated Agile workroom. Imagine if you can walking round the room. It’s a huge room with two skylights through which you can see the clouds scurrying across the blue sky. The brick walls give it a modern edgy feel. But you are here to work so you are now visiting whiteboards with last week’s stickies from the last stand-up you had. You can simply read them to remind yourself of what was agreed without having to resort to your notes. As you cross the room to a team area you see individual kan-ban boards for each of your team members. One of your key supplier’s team members is stood up at his kan-ban typing in a sticky note. You feel a jolt of surprise as you know that it must be late at night for him. After all he’s on the other side of the world. Dedication? Or panic? You wander over to speak to him.

‘ Calming panic’ ensues and teams are rushed together to “get things done!”

Imagine how you feel two minutes later as your short verbal conversation has resolved a tricky challenge you had which would have taken about twelve emails or at least 40 lines to understand and resolve on Slack. Then imagine. you wander across to the Product Owner’s board and watch a short video of the last thoughts of the Product Owner. This is much better than discovering the requirements second or third hand. Their vision is your vision.

And now imagine you walk through the door to another room dedicated to a different project you’re involved in. The layout is familiar. You glance upwards at the blue sky with scurrying clouds. This one is a bit more noisy. Fifty of your colleagues from the scrum teams are sitting at café stools just catching up and sharing stories for a few minutes before the Product Owner’s stand-up. It’s great for motivation and relationship building and you remember why these Agile projects seem to go twice as fast as ones in the past. You join in a conversation at a table with a joke. It feels great.

You have just imagined Agile-on-QUBE. Through eight years of development and research we’ve created for you the perfect agile working environment. The Agile Manifesto was written before most of us entered the digital age. On QUBE we take it to the next level

You may even decide that it’s better than life. We think so. The consensus is that it is ground breaking.

“I found the experience extraordinary. It is a credible alternative to physical events of this kind, in fact more than that.” Jonathan Norman Gower Publishing

QUBE* is lining up to be The Next Big Thing. Everyone who experiences QUBE* leaves it touched and inspired by the opportunities. With thousands of registered accounts featuring many of the world’s top businesses and public sector organisations, and combined working/learning campuses equivalent to the square footage of six Empire State Buildings. And don’t worry that somehow your other tools will be duplicated, replaced or made obsolete. And most important of all, don’t worry that you are far too busy to adopt QUBE working. You aren’t. The step change you will gain will mean the longer you leave it before getting on QUBE, the more you will have struggled needlessly. Think of that famous cartoon of the stone age men dragging a cart filled to the brim with heavy rocks but on square wheels. The cartoon shows them panting and sweating with the effort. Alongside them there is a stone age inventor, a prehistoric Steve Jobs who is offering them round wheels to which they reply, “No thanks mate. We’re too busy!”

The Agile-on-QUBE *(AoQ) community consists of five groups:

• AoQ coaches – people who are skilled at agile and have participated in the QUBE eFacilitator programme and therefore can be reliable and valuable guides to the users. Depending on your level of mastery you can work on programmes with us.
• AoQ promoters – people who help us spread the message and evangelise to attract more users and coaches. We reciprocate by sharing our success with you.
• AoQ users – people who want to move from Fragile to Agile for their businesses, organisations or projects. You win because on QUBE, on average, projects go at twice the speed and require half the resource. Plus, the boost in your relationships and team spirit are hard to put a price on.
• AoQ learners - people who want to learn more about Agile, more generally about New Ways of working or understand some off the Effectiveness tools and behaviours available on QUBE*
• AoQ Pentacle Leads – Our team who provide the learning, the spirit and concrete results are led by Simon Cooper, formerly Global Head of Agile Transformation at the global financial leader JPMorgan. It really doesn’t get much better than Simon.

Well you can’t be Simon so which one will you be?

[email protected]

Discover QUBE is a 1.5 hour session costing ￡1000 with a full money back guarantee if you are unconvinced. When you proceed this QUBE Discovery fee will be taken off the cost of the project. We have to charge so we are not overwhelmed with less serious requests

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*What is QUBE?

QUBE is the integration of three powerful processes.

1. An immense portfolio of Effectiveness and Efficiency tools & behaviours
2. Working &learning supported by Experts & Educators
3. An Engaging highly functional but easy to use, digital Environment.

More at https://QUBE.cc