5 signs your agile practices will lead to digital disaster

According to Tim Ottinger, senior consultant at Industrial Logic, leaders need to get back to basics when there’s tension between defining timelines and committing to big-rock objectives. “The first three words are the best in the manifesto: We are discovering. I think that many people lose this context,” he said.

3. Your agile principles are too vaguely defined

Beyond the tension between leadership and teams, there is often a secondary tension across and within agile teams.

James Grenning, co-author of the Agile Manifesto, said, “Agile adoptions usually start with introducing iterative management, but we can’t expect development teams to know iterative engineering instinctively. There are skills to learn and master, and technical excellence is a key factor to successful agile adoption.”

Today’s agile organizations are staffed with employees, contractors, and freelancers who have experienced different agile frameworks, methodologies, and tools. What are the decision-making authorities? What are the organization’s agile principles? Where can teams self-organize and make decisions? What practices are standard?

Our “back to basics” conversation led to several insights about where organizations often fall short on practicing agile effectively in support of their digital initiatives, including the following:

• Missing the point on key agile principles: “99% of agile shops don’t have a cross-functional team, and they aren’t self-managing. It was written right there on page two of the manifesto,” Ottinger said.
• Allowing self-organization to overrule business sense: “If we just leave the team to their own devices because they’re self-organizing, in a couple of weeks, we’ll probably see that the checks aren’t cashing anymore. Agile has to work within the context of the organization, whether it’s the process of financial reporting, estimation, or forecasting,” said Phil Heijkoop, general manager of Aligned Agility.
• Getting drunk on metrics: “Sometimes we get overly zealous about our metrics, have too many of them, and try to measure too many unmeasurable things,” said Jim Highsmith, co-author of the Agile Manifesto. He recommends that leaders identify a metric that focuses on value to the customer.

Digital transformation initiatives often require the coordination of multiple agile teams, so misaligned expectations on principles, team authorities, and standards lead to conflicts. The challenge for CIOs and agile leaders is to create a structure and process for an agile center of excellence chartered with evolving the organization’s agile principles and standards.

4. You treat change management and feedback as afterthoughts

Agile teams, especially ones using CI/CD and other devops practices to enable continuous deployment, can easily leave out key practices required in digital transformation initiatives.

Agile teams aren’t done when they deploy the code. Successful transformations require change management activities to ensure end-user adoption, capture meaningful stakeholder feedback, and review operating metrics.

Are these activities within the scope of agile programs? If not, the disconnect can lead to poor end-user satisfaction and angry stakeholders. Additionally, agile teams operating without customer feedback may overengineer features and miss opportunities to realign priorities.   

Here, Kern offered one suggestion. “Tell people to think of the smallest thing they can do and then do something slightly uncomfortably less. You can always add more, but you can never get back the wasted time. Aim to fall a little bit short and get some early feedback.”

5. You’re ignoring the culture aspect of agile — or not aligning it with business objectives

Transformation requires a culture change for people to look beyond how things work today and to challenge assumptions. Agile leaders seek agile mindsets and cultures, but defining what this means in the context of digital transformation goals should be on the CIO’s agenda.

One example paradigm to avoid in defining agile culture is “we’re not agile enough” without aligning process improvement to business objectives. A second, and my pet peeve, is hearing teammates say, “That’s not agile,” and I share several stories around this anti-pattern in my book Digital Trailblazer.

So, how can CIOs define an agile mindset in their organizations? “An agile mindset is developing habits through our behaviors, and those behaviors must be pervasive across the organization,” said Behers.  

And how can CIOs know when trust and an agile mindset are forming across the organization? Roth answered, “The conversation between agile teams and stakeholders shifts to the right one, which is not about the team’s capacity but instead is about the priority of the work.” 

Highsmith added, “The purpose of an agile mindset is to prepare us for a turbulent future.”

For CIOs looking to accelerate digital transformation and improve business outcomes, aligning agile methodologies and seeking an agile culture can be a game-changer.

My recommended CIO action plan:

• Require vision statements for all digital transformation initiatives.
• Apply agile methodologies to the full lifecycle of an iterative program, including planning, delivery, change management, and communications.
• Create an agile center of excellence chartered with evolving self-organizing principles and standards.
• Lead the discussion on what an agile mindset and culture should mean in your organization.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all playbook for agile methodologies or digital transformation, and success requires the CIO to take on many leadership responsibilities.