Many companies claim that they are Agile or even that they are Lean in delivering their software projects, products or services. But are you (they) really Agile or Lean?
When someone says “We are Agile! We work within Agile teams” I often wonder if this is the truth. I usually respond “So what does being Agile mean to you?”. People usually answer that they have implemented Scrum (or Kanban), or that they have created Agile teams with their Product Owners and Scrum Masters. They mention continuous integration, automated testing, creating a backlog that is prioritised by customers and more. In some cases, they say that they are Lean and that they reduce waste at every point in the process, from reducing the amount of documentation needed, to beginning development very early and delivering an MVP very quickly (after several Sprints).
After finding that Agile works for them, companies usually build it into their own company process framework so that they make sure that they repeat the same good practices and processes in every project they do.
Does this sound familiar to you? And do you think that this is what Agile means? The answer is not that simple and I answer it as any typical Agile coach would — “Yes and No”.
The practices stated above are good practices to start with. They can help to create an Agile and Lean culture, but this is only the beginning of a long journey.
For me, Agile and Lean are a company ideology and vision you work towards, but are unlikely to ever fully achieve. Projects and teams that I currently work with are not perfectly Agile or Lean — I admit it. But we are getting closer every day.
In my opinion, Agile and Lean are company ideologies that advocate continuous improvement to deliver better outcomes (rather than outputs) to a customer, while using all resources (in most cases, people) as efficiently as possible.
Agile is defined by The Agile Manifesto, which I always have at hand when I am working on any project. Using this manifesto and Lean principles as a guide, the following questions can help us to understand just how Agile or Lean a team is:
- Do you talk to customers about outputs (features) rather then outcomes (how you can solve a business problem)?
- Do you do a lot of upfront planning in any of your tools, only to re-plan it again and again?
- Do you design first (even wireframes or initial visual design) and then present it to a development team? Or do you involve the whole team in the design process?
- Do you openly include the customer in the whole process of software development? For example do you do retrospective or planning together?
- How do you know that you are building the right thing?
- What roles and people are in your team?
- Who can make critical decisions in your team and how they are made?
- Do you allow your people to fail in order to learn something new? Are your team and people scared of a failure?
- Does an MVP mean a Release 1.0 with a minimal functionality or is it a proof of concept for one of your assumptions (experiment)?
- Do you look into your task tool to see what the status of a project or task is or do you ask people?
- Do your tools affect how you deliver your project? For example it is hard to do a continuous deployment, because your tools do not support it.
- How often do you deliver value to your customer?
- What do you report to project stakeholders (customer, manager)?
- Do you continuously improve how you work? (not only on project level)
- How do you optimise your way of delivering software? Do you try to optimise sales, product / project delivery teams and service support separately? Do you optimise just a subset of your whole delivery chain to a customer?
- At the end of project, are you forced by the customer or any other stakeholder to deliver the backlog that was initially agreed as a high level plan?
- How do you measure the success of your project?
I think that by answering these questions, you will understand for yourself just how Agile and Lean your team is. If you don’t know the correct answers to some of these questions, you may not have a full understanding of the Agile and Lean. These questions cover basic, but core principles of Agile and Lean. Over the next few months I will be posting articles to cover all the questions, what the right answer should be, and how you can apply what you’ve learnt to your own team.
