One of the more famous re-tweetable quotes is, “Don’t do Agile, Be Agile.”
Some ask is “Scrum Agile?” It’s got boxes, edges and ceremonies. It’s got good old fashioned processes and meeting that are ‘required.’
I’m going to suggest that Agile is all in your mind.
That is to say, the concepts of agile software development are summarized in The Agile Manifesto. In fact, the manifesto describes a mindset, not a process.
One of the most impactful books that I read in the last five years isMindset by Carol Dweck. It aligns almost perfectly with the manifesto.
Dweck demonstrates, through numerous studies, that success in life (achieving higher degree of your life goals and life satisfaction), has a direct correlation with your ability to view yourself with humility and embrace every opportunity as a learning opportunity (failure is learning what not to do, not learning that you are a failure).
And that is why Agile is in your mind. It’s in your mind because agile thinking is really the ability to embrace ambiguity and change as an opportunity to learn something … and also realize you can fail … and you probably will.
And then your mind must adjust to the thinking that you learned something. You are faced with people who just call it a failure, but you must have resiliency in your mind to know that it may have been a failure, but like Thomas Edison you remind yourself , “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” And then you can get busy on the other 9,999.
How does an organization institutionalize the Agile mindset?
Like most revolutions in process engineering, things take time to seep into the greater culture. Really successful people already apply Agile thinking. And it’s becoming a mainstream vernacular and in many cases a mainstream capability. However, it’s a mix between Agile as a process and Agile as a mindset. Agile as a process produces marginal returns on the order 10-20%. Agile as an applied mindset can produce 100%-400% according to Jeff Sutherland, co-founder of Scrum.
The applied mindset of Agile is highly collaborative and empirical.
To increase agile collaboration in an organization requires a series of steps.
(Note: when I say customer below, I mean internal or external customer. Also, I’m assuming the development organization is a different unit from business. And if the company has different business units and organizational units, I’m assuming a company size of 100 or greater people.)
1. Everyone in the organization gains an understanding that they are all in this together.
This step requires leaders to set an example and create the alignment of thinking for the entire organization. This can take place is pockets, but is very difficult to sustain unless it’s part of a company’s culture.
2. People mature their organizational awareness such that they believe other people’s actions and words are not intended to harm, but always assume the best.
This step also requires leaders to set an example and to make trust an important part of the culture and part of the company vernacular. This is a difficult step and requires significant maturity of leaders throughout the organization. In fact, I would say you need an unbroken chain of mature leaders from CEO to the Scrum Master. I’ve seen this work in one specific business unit with an unbroken chain of trust, while other units don’t work as well because the chain is not yet established.
3. The customer and delivery organization agree to experiment with time box delivery of small features.
Organizations that are not quite Agile are likely to have a history of large and long time-horizon deliverables. The expense and success (or failure) of those endeavors will give the customer serious hesitation if indeed previous results of ‘agile projects’ cost a lot and didn’t provide a good product.
Since the Agile mindset is also a learning mindset and because people believe in the scientific method, I usually find that just about anybody is ready for an experiment if the cost is small and the results can be measured easily. The nice thing about starting with Agile Scrum is the experiments are usually 2-4 weeks. That’s doable and it’s much more doable if you have internal customers rather than external customers.
4. The customer develops a trust in the delivery organization such that they are willing to create the list of feature, add details and schedule them for the delivery organization.
“Show me the money.” Nothing says successful execution better than a production release (every sprint). If you don’t have a team that is disciplined to deliver, you’ve got to get your ducks in a row. You will need to set a precedence for delivering with quality and consistency.
5. The customer and delivery organization become indistinguishable as they collaborate
Experimentation, high interaction and success are now part of the regular dialog with the customer and the delivery organization. It’s still hard work to keep the wheels moving, but the level of trust and ability to collaborate are high.
At this point, it’s possible to begin adjusting process more and more.
Perhaps there is a desire to increase delivery frequency? Maybe Kanban is an option.
Perhaps an Agile Project Management Office can emerge. If an organization begins to get things done with a higher pace and cheaper cost, there will be a need to figure out how to prioritize a larger scope of valuable work with great speed.
At which level do you think your organization is functioning?
Leave a comment I’m interested to know.