Agile and its variants / frameworks like Scrum, Kanban’s has been around us for more than 2 decades now, but very few organizations have been able to apply and reap the benefits of the same to the degree of investments made by each organization.
We want to be Agile, but do not want to embrace the value and eco system of Agile, I see a lot of organizations wanting to do Spotify ways of doing things, they have gone ahead and labeled their teams as Squads, Tribes and Chapters … but has anything changed, has the approach changed? Or the culture undergone a transformation? Has labelling teams made them adopt the Spotify ways of working …. I do not believe so.
Any change needs to be driven, its needs to anchored, its needs support and needs to be groomed for survival. It needs time, patience and attention from the Leadership or the sponsors who are putting the hard dollars ($$$) on the table, but alas dollars ($$$) are available, but the sponsors or the leadership team is missing from action.
Why is it so difficult to follow in practice 14 pages of PDF called Scrum Guide? Have we understood the intent of the document? Or it was just a new buzz word or a new kid on the block?
Historically if we see we had 7S theory, Lean, ISO, CMMI, Six Sigma’s and many more … where they now, if organizations have used them, have they got tangible cum measurable benefits? Why would an organization adopt ISO and CMMI and also Six Sigma (either together or one after other) … at the end of the day all speak the same language but with a slight difference, the end result is supposed to the same, the outcome needs to be the same. Why would any organization need improvement approaches using different models and methods, well the harsh truth is that we never implemented the initial one in the true spirit, therefore news ones would be required.
I would like to present an analogy over here … Each day when I get out of my bed, I would brush my teeth (well – Let’s say I use Colgate as a toothpaste), once done and dusted with Colgate, would I use Close-Up as new toothpaste for doing the same job, well my response would be a BIG “NO”, why No … Well, if I have done my job clearly and well with Colgate / 1st option, I should not be needing the second option.
Over a period of years based on my experience, I am jotting down a few elements to be implemented or practiced to gain the true value of using Agile as a framework for developing solutions and products.
As mentioned in of my earlier post, we need a beginner’s mindset and attitude to be succeeding in Agile. Beyond this a few more elements as food for thought:
Start with understanding the problem statement:
Whenever we develop any product, solutions, or any output, it is critical to understand the user base, end user behavior, their needs, their requirements, their current pain areas, problem statements. By doing this we as a Scrum Team would start to understand the big picture of our purpose and create the right vision and objectives for development. In order for the team to create a solution, it needs to internalize the problem, understand the depth of the need, impact of the wrong solution or no solution.
Visualize how our developed solutions and products would change the working pattern or the social behaviors of the society and people who would use it or be impacted by it.
I would like to sound critical here … In real life our Product Owners directly jump to the explaining the user story … but the science behind the story is missing for the team, they are unable to see the vision and visualize the trances of their incremental solution on how it would lead to the potential solution.
Start with Human Beings
Remember our solutions would be used by real people, we need to start engaging and interacting with potential end users for understanding the needs, possibilities, experience, knowledge for creating a deeper understanding. End Users know their pains and gains of the system better than anybody else.
Interdisciplinary Teams
Collaboration is a key element of working on any project (irrespective of using Agile or not), Projects cannot be done by a single source or an entity, we would require collaboration of skills and talent to come together and ensure there is a healthy chemistry of working and all of us are working towards a common goal. Teams with varied skills and talent help in developing a creative process and continuous reflect on the same to see its feasibility of applicability
Our current challenge is that our teams are having different objectives, vision, goals and KRA. Each of us are focused on getting our KRA done to meet the performance appraisal objective. We are conveniently missing the client goals and objectives
Experiments and Prototypes
Only final product when used by the real end users would we know if our development has been successful or not, but to get intermediatory feedback, Scrum team should heavily depend upon experiments and prototypes, this is a quick way to get feedback and understand if our course of direction needs to change. Reviews should always be at 2 levels, one at the Product Owner level and other with the team that would be in touch with the end user community. Both the reviews should be looking at the holistic approach. One should always practice that “Less is More”. Emphasize that solutions have to be proven, ones that have got feedback should be actioned upon … Important – do not focus on only negative elements (actually there should be no negative element, it is more about a feedback).
Be mindful of the process
As in project, there would be some degree of process, that is either pre-defined or the scrum team would define it for itself. Process could be on how the Product Backlog Refinement would occur, Of Defining and agreeing on Definition of Ready/Done, What approach the team would adopt on Daily Standup / Scrum and so on … It could also lead into how conflicts have to be managed, how issues / impediment management would be taken care of.
The idea is to have simple and effective processes that would enable the team to work on a cruise control mode and deliver value
Accept Complexity
At times our solutions would be very complex even for a simple set of problem statement, we may have to integrate multiple 3rd party tools and products, that itself would raise a level of complexity, sometimes working in some cultures could have its own set of challenges, the stakeholder community is changing regularly, this puts additional burden on getting re-aligned with the ever-changing thought process and new stakeholders.
Co-Create and Grow with the concept of Co-Create
Agile is to solve problems, create new solutions, have happy customers. All this cannot be done in isolation, we need to engage multiple vendors, stakeholders, partners, business models, financial elements.
At times systems thinking along with Lean Start up approaches would be critical. Agile recommends collaboration with the stakeholders and the best approach would always be to co-create, It would help us pose right questions to the right people at the right time to get feedback and enable our journey to the next logical stop.
We need to regularly converge and diverge to reconverge back. This is a constant process and should be helping and assisting scrum team along with the decision makers.
All that is described above is nothing new, we all know it, we have read it, heard it, but are unable to put all of these elements in practice.
It takes 3 things to make Agile work in any organization …
- Willingness of the Leadership to embrace agile (it cannot be just a lip service)
- Attitude of the Scrum Team towards Agile
- Aptitude of all involved stakeholders to respect the agile ways of working.
How many of us are willing to say that all 3 happen in our respective organization.
It is time that Leadership wakes up and smells the coffee … before its too late (remember they close the Check In Counters at the Airport 45 mins before the scheduled take off) … we being late would only impact us … as the flight has got its money and flown without you, with this analogy, Industry and Users would move forward and provide their dollars and business to your competitors, if you are not there.
Choice is always yours. Exercise the right one.
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