I doubt that the 17 engineers who met for a weekend in Snowbird, Utah in 2001 and who eventually produced the Agile Manifesto would have expected that 20+ years later an entire marketplace around the name “Agile” would have sprung up. Frustrated with corporate double speak, and how ostensibly “innovative” enterprises remain mired in process, documentation, and bureaucracy, they were simply trying to find better ways to be more successful at their work.
The purpose of the weekend and the resulting manifesto was: “uncovering better ways of developing software”, as stated in the preamble. And yet, as so often is the case with well-crafted concepts, we now know that there is more to this “agile thing” than the stated purpose.
Read in isolation without the context of software engineering, the four values that they laid out are more of a cultural statement than a prescription about building technology:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
I think this is why the idea of Agile has been so powerful and widely appealing.
The Agile Manifesto, despite being created for software development, encapsulates values and principles designed to improve the outcomes of people engaged in “thought work”, i.e., there’s no (or rarely is a) material, physical outcome of the team collaboration. However, the underlying philosophy of Agile—emphasizing adaptability, customer-centricity, and iterative progress—transcends its IT origins and can be applied to transformation teams in large corporations.
Here's how and why the Agile Paradigm values is an excellent approach for such transformation teams:
1. Adaptability and Responsiveness: At the core of Agile is the value of responding to change over following a rigid plan. Transformation teams in large corporations are often navigating uncertain and rapidly changing environments. Applying Agile values encourages these teams to remain flexible and responsive to change, which is critical for the success of transformation efforts.
2. Customer and Stakeholder Focus: Agile prioritizes customer collaboration over contract negotiation. For transformation teams, this translates into working closely with various stakeholders within the organization to ensure that the transformation delivers real business value and addresses the actual needs of the company.
3. Iterative Development: Agile promotes working in small increments and regularly reassessing and adjusting the work. For transformation teams, this means breaking down large-scale changes into manageable pieces and validating each step of the transformation, reducing risk and increasing the likelihood of success.
4. Team Dynamics and Communication: Agile emphasizes individuals and interactions over processes and tools. This principle encourages transformation teams to focus on effective communication, collaboration, and team dynamics, which are often neglected in traditional corporate settings but are essential for driving change.
5. Sustainable Pace: Agile recognizes the importance of maintaining a constant, sustainable pace. For transformation teams, this principle helps avoid burnout and ensures that the team can continue to perform effectively over the long term, which is essential in multi-year transformation programs.
6. Continuous Improvement: The Agile principle of reflecting on how to become more effective and adjusting behaviour accordingly is vital for transformation teams. It instills a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring that the team becomes more efficient and effective over time.
In terms of "approach," it may not fully capture the essence of what Agile embodies. Agile is more of a mindset or a cultural paradigm that informs an approach. It's about adopting a set of values and principles that guide the behaviour, decision-making, and operational style of a team.
For transformation teams, adopting an Agile mindset means not only implementing new processes but also fostering an environment where these Agile values and principles can thrive. This often requires creating a subculture within the larger, possibly non-Agile, corporate culture—a subculture that operates on Agile tenets while still aligning with the broader organizational goals and values.
By infusing Agile values and principles into their operational fabric, transformation teams can significantly enhance their effectiveness, leading to more successful outcomes in the challenging environment of large, legacy organizations.
It’s important, I think, to point out that, in 2023, when I’m writing this, it’s plain to see widespread misuse and misunderstanding of Agile in the marketplace. A cargo cult of methodologies, processes and procedures have sprung up offering recipes for achieving “Agile”, because everyone from Accountancy practices, automobile manufacturers, universities and banks want to be seen as being Agile. This demand has driven an industry of certification and standardisation bodies which have spring up to meet the corporate need for validation.
The misapplication and dogmatisation of what were essentially statements about the culture of software development and delivery is leading to a very real backlash to the idea of Agile:
Here’s Andy Hunt, one of the “Snowbird 17” who created the manifesto on why Agile, as it’s applied today, is widely a failure,
And here’s a summary of points, academic and practical about the failure of agile. ,
The theme of both articles is less that the 4 values and 12 principals were wrong, rather, as Andy Hunt aptly puts it:
“The word “agile” has become sloganized, meaningless at best, jingoist at worst. We have large swaths of people doing “flaccid agile,” [note: I love that phrase] a half-hearted attempt at following a few select software development practices, poorly. We have scads of vocal agile zealots…And worst of all, agile methods themselves have not been agile.”
Having seen this first hand I can only agree with Andy.
The greatest pitfall in seeking to apply the Agile Paradigm to a transformation team within a large corporate context is the gravitational pull towards this “flaccid agile” approach.
For transformation teams, adopting an Agile mindset means not only implementing new processes but also fostering an environment where these Agile values and principles can thrive. This often requires creating a subculture within the larger, possibly non-Agile, corporate culture—a subculture that operates on Agile tenets while still aligning with the broader organisational goals and values.