Agility as seen through the Ecocycle
My insights about past and present approaches
I have experienced firsthand how agility in general, and Scrum in particular, can turn the ship around for a company that is stuck. What I have seen work in my situation back in 2017:
- Start at the level of a team that builds (part of) a product.
- Start using Scrum.
- Start with the software development part of the value creation chain.
Nevertheless, in recent years, whenever people told me that their organization chose the same way to become agile, I felt slightly uncomfortable. Something felt off. For a long time, I could not nail it down.
Reading Barry Overeem’s article about applying the Ecocycle concept to Agile, I got an epiphany. Nowadays, I would never introduce agility using the same path again even though it was a success!
Why would I advise against something that did the trick for me? Isn’t that against empiricism? That is very appropriate for a complex environment. Success in a specific context does not have to be repeatable. Even approaches that once were a decent choice can feel out of touch with the needs of today. Every choice comes with potential side effects. I have experienced three antipatterns emerge:
- Agility is perceived as “for teams only”.
- Companies spend a lot of time and effort on “rolling out” elements of Scrum (often without understanding them).
- Change agents hit a glass ceiling with management (bottom-up syndrome).
In other words, the change stops and is considered “a success” when teams (allegedly) work in an agile way. A lot of the initial investment is spent on overhead which is easy to measure but not the most important step to becoming agile. Leaders do not consider listening to Scrum Masters or other agile practitioners because they want more “exquisite” advisors.
What do I propose instead? Luckily, for every antipattern, there is a cure:
- Start at the level of leadership.
- Start using goals and measures.
- Start with the overall flow.
Sponsors and managers, people with formal power, go first or it does not count anyway — any attempt to transform will eventually fail. Change needs to be based on what matters (to the business, the overall organization, and the people involved) and be measurable continuously. To improve, it is necessary to look at the whole system and only then at the micro-level.
What would be my tactics at this point? If I were asked today, I would use Evidence-Based Management to start the conversation about business goals and how to measure progress. This does not even require everyone to read the EBM Guide. As I have experienced myself, only the facilitator needs to have a solid knowledge of it. (If the leadership teams want to formalize this, Objectives & Key Results can do the trick. The only caveat is that because OKRs have been a hype topic, it is important to ensure everyone has the necessary and shared understanding of the concept. For that purpose, I recommend Felipe Castro’s Beginner’s Guide to OKRs as a basic step.)
Once the leadership team has a shared set of goals and metrics, it makes sense to inspect and adapt the organization. Usually, the current org chart and processes are not an intentional choice for value discovery and delivery. This is where Value Stream Management helps identify, visualize and ultimately improve the overall flow of (potential) value through the system that is the organization (and its surrounding environment). Kanban provides the Flow Metrics and a strategy to optimize flow. Because Value Streams and Kanban have their roots in Lean Manufacturing, not everyone might understand how the concepts translate to knowledge work. It is important to start with the ultimate goal (instead of the terms): “Cutting down the time until a customer opportunity is satisfied and we make money with it” and “Every day we can assess the risk whether we will make a certain date or not” are attractive capabilities and easy to understand. If you are nitpicky, you will argue that they are not the whole deal. You have to start somewhere! While I have not seen a full Value Stream or Kanban implementation yet, every time I used them to initiate improvements, it worked.
Based on these insights, when leadership is ready and willing to make changes to the organizational structure to better support value creation, the unFIX patterns come into play. They are based on Team Topologies, extending the concept. Leadership can easily design a future setup — even several different proposals to gather feedback. Instead of managers spending a lot of time shifting people around between teams, the people themselves can choose their future workplace as part of a marketplace. Leadership retains the right level of control by deciding upfront on specific boundaries (e.g. “every team has to have the right mix of skills” or “we want every team to be co-located again” — what matters depends on the context). I have seen this work out nicely with up to 200 people, both in-person and virtually. My experience is that in the end, 80% of the people are done after the first round and after three rounds, 90% of the participants can claim they chose their position in the upcoming teams. Doing this first time requires a leap of faith, but it has a tremendous effect on work motivation.
These approaches work best when the relevant information is easily shared, disagreements can happen and everyone feels free to bring in ideas. There is a set of recipes that can be used to get the most out of every session: Liberating Structures are a great help to include and engage everyone involved. They are best learned by trying them out as a participant.
Best of all, for all concepts there are free sources available! At the very start, no budget is required.
To wrap it up: Change needs to start at the level of people who can initiate it in the larger environment. Goals and metrics (applying EBM and/or OKRs), transparency about the flow of potential value (using Value Stream Management and Kanban Flow Metrics) and reorganization (through unFIX and a marketplace) can support that purpose. Liberating Structures enable everyone to make their voice heard.
D:Ream: Things Can Only Get Better
