Agile transformation — what kind of company are you?

Agile_Ed
Agile_Ed
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read

I came across a fantastic series of talks last week by Mike Cottmeyer from Leading Agile, and one part in particular caught my eye.

The Problem

There are various methodologies for implementing Agile at scale, with a couple (LeSS and Scrum@Scale) coming from some of the original authorities on Scrum, in addition to some larger more heavyweight methodologies like SAFe and The Disciplined Agile Framework.

All of these approaches define how your organisation can look with (some variation of) Scrum operating at some kind of scale. What I haven’t seen before are the questions “what kind of a company are you now”, “what kind of company do you want to be”, “what are the core attributes your company operates around?” and most importantly “how do those answers effect how to you try to implement / transform to Agile?”. These answers are obviously vital if you are going to understand how you might begin to implement such a significant change.

An Approach

The Compass by Leading Agile is a fantastically clear way of understanding what attributes companies value, and what that can mean in a day-to-day sense. For example, if your company highly values Predictability (ie producing plans, forecasts, revenue streams, product commitments) then moving straight to a “pure Agile” way of working is probably doomed to fail right from the start, as there will be too much resistance due to the fundamental shift in the change you are trying to bring.

The Compass breaks down a couple of opposing ideas. Is your company more focused on being:

  • Predictive or Adaptive. Is it more important that you know how the plan for your company’s next year is going to look so it is Predictive, or is it more important that you are easily Adaptive to new markets and changes of focus?
  • Emergent or Convergent (here they admit the names are not the best!). Is your planning Emergent because you are looking at the market in order to try and give they customer what they want? Or is your planning Convergent because you are more focused on hitting obligations for scope, budgets and contractual reasons?

They then give examples of the kinds of behaviours you’ll see for companies who work in each of the combinations (4 quadrants on a compass) and what kinds of problems each may see, as well as what the first steps are for them to take when trying to transform.

In a much more detailed video they also state that depending on your market, technology and needs, it may be OK for an organisation to stay where it is! That’s got to be the most pragmatic piece of Agile at scale thinking I’ve heard.

An inescapable transformation truth

Depending on what kind of company you are and where you want to get to, your transformation journey will be different. But the Compass breakdown highlights one very simple but often overlooked fact when thinking about transforming an organisation to Agile:

Buy in for successfully making such a change has to come from the absolute top of the organisation, because it’s the whole organisation that will change. They must be bought into it wholeheartedly, be transparent, be seen to support it and be unwavering. Without such a significant drive behind it any Agile change is fighting an uphill battle from the start — and those never go well.

Summary

Take a look at the Compass, it’s the first time I’ve seen these kind of issues even acknowledged (if I missed something please let me know!) let alone have concrete steps in order to work through them.

I think a reason that Agile is getting a bad name these days is because of a lack of understanding that for existing organisations (big or small) Agile is not a “one size fits all” approach. You have to understand where you’re starting from if you’re going to make useful change.

If you have a bit more time the video I mentioned is also extremely interesting, building a common basis for what you want to head for (the basics of Agile in other words) but then gives detailed steps on how to go about it, based on what kind of organisation you currently have. It’s really great stuff.

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