How to Avoid Agile Transformation Pitfalls
6. Failing to understand how deep a transformation goes
Over the years, I have been part of many organizational transformations. Almost without exception, the goal was a worthy one. Some did succeed, but many of these transformation efforts failed, either entirely or at least to a large degree.
The reasons for failure were often the same. I listed the ten most painful pitfalls in this article. Understanding the possible pitfalls is step one. Then, you can start fixing the situation.
Today, I will discuss what helped me successfully avoid the pitfall of failing to understand how deep a transformation goes. I will spotlight the practices I experienced that were particularly helpful rather than a complete guide.
It boggles my mind and saddens me when Agile transformations are about tools and techniques only. I have seen Scrum implementations fail because it was about doing the events and forgetting empiricism. Even worse was the roll-out of a scaling framework where people turned into puppets.
Many of these issues boil down to two misconceptions:
The transformation is a straightforward journey
People will easily understand and happily accept the changes in their way of working
However, organizations aren’t straightforward. Agile transformations impact the company culture; its shared values, goals, attitudes and practices. Many of these are unwritten. They are ingrained in the company. You don’t simply bring changes to the company culture.
The impacted people will need to deal with many uncertainties. Many will understand and be excited, but others may not grasp what will change in their new role. They may even have anxiety about their future in the company.
These are some of the factors that should be taken into consideration with an Agile transformation. They require attention which translates into serious effort. I will now address the topics that dominated the discussions in my experiences.
Changes in objectives and measures of success
When teams transition from a traditional way of product creation to an Agile way of working, they will have to define their objectives differently. Many teams used to trust that the delivery of product features would lead to a predefined value.
Agile approaches are different. They assert that you do not know upfront what will bring you to your desired results. This means you need to move the focus from output to the desired outcome. Your objective will not be to make as many cups of coffee as possible. You will rather focus on making your clients happy by serving them a cup of coffee.
When you wish to transform your organization to embrace Agility, you need to help people embrace setting objectives that are outcome-oriented and defining ways to measure your progress towards the desired outcomes.
My experience is that transforming from output thinking to outcome thinking is not easy. Firstly, you have to get everyone on board. Secondly, you may have many processes that rely on output-centered KPIs.
On top of the shift towards outcome-oriented goals, you may also look into moving away from individual objectives to team objectives. Agile is about working in teams and reaching your objectives together. It therefore makes sense to step away from individual appraisals. I know this is easier said than done. But it is important if you seriously wish to change.
Learning Culture
Agile also embraces a learning culture. The premise is that you wish to take small steps, learn and then assess what is the best course of action next. You may conclude that the things you built in the past months don’t bring the expected value. That is OK. At least you now know you can focus on other things.
The culture of learning has often proven to be a major obstacle in the transformations I have witnessed and facilitated. The sunk cost fallacy is a real thing. Often, this reluctance to abandon the work you invested time and money in is related to a misconception that the answer to complexity is to do thorough analysis and meticulous planning.
The traditional project management approach doesn’t work when you need to grapple with unknowns. It works when you need to design and build a bridge. It even works when you need to build a spaceship. But it doesn’t work when your product is in a volatile market.
When you wish to have a successful Agile transformation, you need to invest in helping people embrace a learning culture.
Company-wide: it involves everyone
Many Agile transformations only target the product and delivery teams. This will not suffice. Teams that work in an Agile bubble in an otherwise traditional company are bound to fail. Sooner or later, they will be restricted by people and teams outside of the bubble that impede them in one or more ways to flourish.
Human Resources / People Management
For me, the name Human Resources says a lot. It hints at considering the people in your company to be (exchangeable) resources. As if they are part of a factory. This is why I favour other names, like People Management.
Regardless, People Management has an enormous role to play. After all, the Agile transformation is in large part a culture shift. This culture shift should be of interest to People Management. They should consider topics like:
Helping your people understand and embrace Agility
Talent Acquisition focuses on finding the people who fit into the Agile culture
Supporting leadership with the role in an Agile organization
Ensure benefits and compensation match the Agile culture
Ensure performance appraisals match with the Agile culture
Whenever people management is not engaged in the transformation, you may have a constant mismatch between People Management and the Agile organization. Consequently, your people may not get the proper training, you may attract people who don’t fit your culture and your people may receive compensation and reward incentives that obstruct working in Agile teams.
Finance, Risk, Security, Sales, Marketing, etc, etc
If you don’t include the people from finance, risk, security, sales, and marketing (add what you think is important in your situation), they are likely not to understand the Agile way of creating value and their roles in this.
Finance and risk may want you to create long-term detailed output-oriented plans with extensive risk registers because they believe this is the way to ensure you stay on the right track. Security may want to see an extensive Change Approval process. Marketing and Sales may promise their customers things putting the teams under pressure.
I believe you can hardly fault these people when are excluded from the Agile transformation. They will continue to do their work as they have done before.
This is why it is vital that people from these areas need to be part of the transformation process. They need to learn how Agile value creation works and what this means for them. They need to know how they are in a position to inspect the work of the teams and collaborate on what to do next. They need to work with the teams to find more effective ways of managing budget, risk management, and security. They can collaborate with teams to have a better story to tell to the customers.
(Higher) Management
Often the direct managers of the teams are part of the Agile transformation. Many of the transformations I have witnessed were driven by them. That said, I have also observed two recurring anti-patterns:
The managers focused on transforming the teams but did not include understanding how it impacted them. Managing/leading Agile teams differs from traditional management. This should not be ignored.
Managers on higher levels in the organization were excluded from the transformation. This has the same undesirable effects on the Agile teams as I described in the paragraph above. There will be a mismatch between the Agile teams and what higher management does.
The role of management changes when the company transforms into an Agile way of working. They should be less interested in how teams do their work, but instead establish the vision and set outcome-oriented goals. They should also foster the environment and help teams to be self-managing. And they should help remove organizational impediments so that teams can be more effective in their way of working. Managers should stop telling and start serving the teams.
The changes are just as impactful for management as for anyone else in the company. It is therefore vital they are also included in the journey.
End Note
Whenever Agile transformation limits their focus to tools or techniques only, they are in trouble from the start. Because Agile is not about using different tools or techniques. It is about embracing the notion that you can’t predict the future and therefore need to build, measure and learn.
This realization is not only relevant for the people who are directly involved in creating the value (typically product and delivery). Ultimately, it impacts everyone in the organization. Because everyone works towards achieving the organization’s objectives. And in a world with many uncertainties, this calls for close collaboration and a learning culture.
Very nice collection of possible errors a company could face during the transformation.
I like so much the point about People Management... I would say it should become the first "gate" toward agile tranformation, if the company is not ready to change the name of Human Resource in People Management, this means the company is not really interested to become Agile.
My doubt instead is about this sentence: "you do not know upfront what will bring you to your desired results" I think this is a really critical point when it comes to the people involved in the trasformation. We are saing them to be ready to embrace uncertainties... something human is not happy to join... this is to me the real and more complex part of the cultural change needed for a tranformaiton... someting we should care much more!
Transformations that aim at the culture of a company are especially doomed. The culture is like a shadow on the wall created by your shape and your actions. Trying to change the shadow without looking at what creates it in the first place is a recipe for failure.