3 Reasons not to go Agile in 2020
Removing the angst around “We’re going Agile”
If you’ve worked in the digital space in the last 10 years in any industry there’s no doubt you’ve at least heard of agile.
It’s hard to escape the concept that has a myriad of definitions as to what it truly means. Perhaps that’s the reason there’s so much misinformation and angst when we hear those dreadful three words:
“we’re going agile”
Instead of trying to convince you to look towards an agile adoption, I’ll give you my top 3 situations when you shouldn’t.
1. Someone senior has agile on their agenda and wants the business to ‘be more agile’.
Being told to ‘be more agile’ is like being asked to be taller. There are certainly things I could do to appear taller like wearing shoes with larger heels. I could wear longer pants and stand on stilts. However, these changes are cosmetic and only create the illusion of change. Being told to ‘be more agile’ has the same effect and such requests should be rejected and met with protest. A lack of clarity diminishes the necessary conditions for a successful agile change.
Simply speaking, your agile change is destined for failure from the start. If you’re unclear on the need for agile, dial back and focus on the underlying reasons for change.
2. You don’t have a clear strategy or defined business benefits for adopting agile.
A lack of corporate strategy, or rather a failure to link your goals of agile transformation to corporate strategy provides a very compelling reason to avoid the agile adoption. Becoming an agile business for the sake of agility is one of the greatest failures within the modern agile movement. The zealots who promote agile as being the silver bullet for every organisational problem deserve some blame, but the lion’s share is more deservedly placed with leadership teams that fail to strategise, align and collaborate for the benefit of the customer.
3. Other companies have gone through transformation and you don’t want to be left behind.
Since its 2001 inception, the agile manifesto has spread across the globe and many organisations have adopted Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, LeSS, DAD, the Spotify Model or one of many other agile flavours. Now these methods have shown up at your doorstep and you need to select which framework to use. Selecting a methodology and choosing to go agile because similar sized organisations in your industry have done so is not a viable long term strategy. The decision to use agile and the approach selected must be aligned to your overall strategy, and not simply replicate what’s been going on over the fence at your neighbour’s organisation.
The need for business agility is inescapable. To truly realise the benefits of digital technologies, companies and institutions require new paradigms of organisation and most importantly culture and collective thinking. When we embark on any large scale agile change without creating alignment at the highest level of the organisation, we end up tarnishing the brand of that particular change while at the same time realising zero benefits.
While some prominent authors of the agile manifesto are calling for some to abandon agile all together I suggest utilising an approach that allows for designing an organisation and ways of working that are congruent with your strategy to create real value for customers.
Hi, I’m Rob. By day, I’m a General Manager at Beaker & Flint, where I help organisations unlock their potential and get on the digital front foot. By night you can find me making a bbq or planning my next overseas adventure.
If this post sparked a question or idea you want to run by me, I’d love to chat it over with you. Reach out via the comments below or by email here.
