Agile Deserves The Hype, But It Can Also Fail: How To Avoid The Pitfalls

Source :- forbes.com

‘Agile’ has earned its place in the business lexicon: it’s no buzzword or passing craze. For almost two decades, it’s been helping companies of all sizes free themselves from the inflexibility of traditional ‘top down’ hierarchies and rigid long-term planning.

You’ll hear talk of ‘squads’, ‘chapters’ and ‘tribes’ and, while there are different flavors of agile, there are also tropes: agile organizations work in short sprints–meaning they can be fluid and responsive to customer demands–and teams are empowered to make decisions. You can imagine the effect on (young) workers clamoring for autonomy.

In many businesses, agile is now just the way things get done, but it’s also likely to be a huge part of the future workplace too. Justin Rodenbostel, vice president of digital transformation agency SPR, believes there is no ‘after agile’. He thinks the trends we’re seeing now–like DevOps, Continuous Delivery and Lean–are all extensions of it. He adds: “We’ll continue to use the concepts we learned from the original agile manifesto to continuously improve and evolve in order to work more effectively and respond to the needs of customers.”

But while it’s effective, agile is also needy: it calls for intense commitment and relies heavily on culture for success. General resistance to change, inadequate management support and culture at odds with agile values are the top three challenges according to the annual State of Agile survey. Here, experts share the pitfalls of becoming agile.

Pitfall 1: A long-term goal can motivate people

Agile’s big draw is that annual planning is replaced by shorter-term milestones, while success is measured by how responsive teams can be to customer demands or business needs then and there.

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But this can make a company seem, inwardly, as though it lacks vision, says Ian McClarty, CEO of global IT service provider PhoenixNAP. He explains: “When the teams are so heavily focused on the current sprint, communication about long-term vision may be put aside or ignored, leaving the team with a feeling that there is no grand plan they are supporting.”

One obvious remedy is better internal communication of bigger business goals, whether that’s to double staff headcount within two years, or hit a revenue milestone by year end. But, McClarty says agile may change those plans anyway because it helps the business to fail faster and learn from mistakes.

He says: “We still struggle with the monolithic nature of our product ideas. The ability to carve a project into many smaller pieces helps us create a sense of continued progress and motivation within the teams, and also helps us create cleaner stop points; dropping features out of iterations to allow for faster time to market to see if the product will be successful before investing too much.”

General resistance to change, inadequate management support and culture at odds with agile values are the top three challenges for agile
General resistance to change, inadequate management support and culture at odds with agile values are the top three challenges for agile FERENC HORVATH ON UNSPLASH
Pitfall 2: The agile mindset needs constant reinforcement

Christopher McFarlane, agile project manager for Walmart Canada, says instilling an agile mindset internally is one of the hardest things about the transition, as is educating customers and suppliers on how to engage with agile teams.

He explains: “Encouraging team members and partners to understand the benefits to this new way of working–fast failure, constant communication, transparency–is the first hurdle in implementation. The second is a technical understanding of the components of an agile methodology and educating stakeholders on how to engage with the agile team, which is different from other areas of the business.”

At one company, Predictive Index, that mindset was achieved by coaching individuals in the soft skills they would need to work in an agile way i.e. flexibility, collaboration, discipline and a focus on results. Its senior vice president of product, Dr Matt Poepsel, says that any business transformation demands a simultaneous talent transformation. He adds: “We coached each individual by examining where their natural behaviors and approach were well-suited to some of these activities and where they needed to stretch to succeed.”

Chris Steel, America’s head of transformation at PA Consulting, says early wins that showcase the benefits of agile transformation should be used to champion its cause. He explains: “Where we have seen organizations struggle is where they approach it in a half-hearted way without the right sponsorship. The change to culture and ways of working required to achieve the best results are too significant without full engagement. Try telling a project manager they won’t have any projects to manage any more!”

Agile’s success is measured by how responsive teams can be to customer demands or business needs
Agile’s success is measured by how responsive teams can be to customer demands or business needs DAVID TRAVIS ON UNSPLASH
Pitfall 3: It’s easy to slip back to traditional management styles

Becoming agile is a process that requires constant attention to make sure teams don’t slip back into top-down structures.

David Fort, managing director at Haines Watts Manchester, says: “Being an agile business isn’t a start-stop scenario, it’s a constant shift in culture and balance that has to be regularly revisited. If you stop running as an agile business, you’re likely to seize up. The real challenge is ensuring the agility is fresh and the team members are focused on being agile.”

He advises recruiting based on the ability to work in an agile and ever-changing work environment, over intelligence and academic ability.

Pitfall 4: Agile doesn’t work for every project and every team

Rodenbostel says the most common pitfall is to believe success achieved by a small team can be replicated on a bigger scale, because what works for small groups often doesn’t work for larger or different groups. He explains: “Customers, business stakeholders, software assets, government and/or industry regulation can all have an impact on what works and does not work for a team. We see a tendency when scaling to standardize in a way that is often too prescribed.”

He says the move away from big upfront annual planning and sticking to a particular plan can be difficult in publicly traded companies that have a tendency to respond to pressure from investors. The key, he says, is to determine the appropriate balance.