Agile: Remembering Why It's Successful
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan
Many companies have been embracing Agile over the past decade, trying to capture that lightning in a bottle that produces great software, quickly and right in line with customer's wishes. Right. I am sure there was plenty of eye rolling at that. As long as Agile has been around companies have been struggling to see the success that it promises. Developers often embrace the "over comprehensive documentations" bit and Project Managers bite their tongues every time they are asked to "go Agile" but tell us when everything will be done and according to a plan (see "over following a plan").
It is this "go Agile" and having a delivery date desire that have spawned things like Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and drives business leadership crazy when they want to know when are things going to be done and the Agile IT shop says "depends." Agile transformations are still lagging with 80% of organizations stating they are at or below "still maturing" their Agile practices.
The challenges that companies are facing with implementing Agile is their failure to appreciate the first line of the manifesto: Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools. But this is understandable because organizations and the people that work in them are more receptive to processes, tools and checklists. "It is something someone else has done and all I have to do is check the boxes and I too will have the same success!" Right. Just by doing sprints, user stories, retrospectives, etc organizations believe they have achieved Agile but missed the point.
Agile succeeds when companies work toward enabling the core tenants behind Agile rather than following the practices. Sprints, story points, user stories, etc are all processes and tools which should be accepted, discarded and/or adapted based on the needs of the organization's culture, strategy and customers. Success comes when transformation efforts and Agile practices are implemented that focus on supporting the team, instilling trust and facilitating collaboration between business and IT. My advice to those companies struggling with seeing great results from their Agile change is use those watch-words (trust, team, collaboration) as a filter to the practices, metrics and tools they are implementing / changing.
