Getting Dressed for AGILE

In current day customers are spoilt with so many products and options available. This makes “Innovation and Time to Market” as the only sacred mantras which can help business in attracting and retaining customers. Every organization is looking for methods and ways to reach achieve shorter delivery timelines. In this endeavour AGILE delivery methodology is being looked as the elixir for this. Look around and you will notice that every organization is talking about LEAN and AGILE delivery and recruitment sites are filled with organizations looking for troops of product managers and scrum masters. Every IT professional is expected to know how to play POKER (not the card game but planning poker). If you are setting up a new organization it is very easy to set up an army of AGILE practitioners. However for an organization having a strong infantry force following WATERFALL, it can be very challenging to upgrade into a force of AGILE iron man.

I am not an AGILE evangelist, but with limited experience and knowledge that I have gained I am very confident and positive that AGILE can help in improving the way we delivery IT. In this paper I don’t intend to explain what does AGILE prescribes (internet is abundant with articles to provide information on AGILE methodology). What I want to cover here are pointers that companies should consider while implementing AGILE and what they need to consider when they start AGILE journey. 

Before we move on, it is important to understand that AGILE is not a rocket science. In very simple terms it advocates delivery through CAP (Collaboration, Adaption and Participation).

·         Collaboration between teams working on delivery. Instead of a top down approach for delivery, it promotes people who need to deliver to get together and work out a best way to deliver.

·         Adaption to changing environment. Unlike waterfall where introducing change to a project needs a complex process, AGILE endorses change. It does not mean that AGILE encourages making changes but is not averse to introducing changes.

·         Participation through constant engagement and involvement of business/customers. This I feel is one of the most positive ideas behind AGILE. Keeping customers engaged in delivery process ensures that they are always on-board throughout the journey of product development. This allows them to provide constant feedback which can improve the product and also gives them early view of what is being developed.

Now coming to the crux i.e. how to get dressed for AGILE? To transform from traditional waterfall to AGILE following areas need to be considered. I have categorized them into essential and catalysts. Essentials are the must haves and should be main focus of AGILE transformation process and catalysts are desirables which help in expediting and strengthening of implementation.

Remember without essentials catalysts cannot deliver any miracle. But what I have gathered from discussions with others most of the organizations put more emphasis on catalysts and leave some of the essentials. Believe me we can build an AGILE organization without catalysts, but missing one essential can lead to a disruption of delivery engine. Let me start with catalysts first and then move to essentials.

·         Co-Location – nothing scientific about this, having everyone at same location working together and discussing face to face avoids any type of communication gap and also helps in quick resolution of queries and issues. In current world it is almost impossible to achieve this in global organizations. This does not mean that AGILE teams cannot work if they are not co-located. With so much advancement in communication technologies it is very easy to communicate with colleagues working from different locations. What is important is that teams collaborate and participate regularly.

·         DevOps – another buzz word in software industry is DevOps – Continuous Delivery, Continuous Deployment and Continuous Integration. These are methods which help in delivery process but are not essentials for AGILE. Trying to implement AGILE and DevOps together at same time might create more confusion and resistance in people. Organizations need to ensure that their army of professionals do not start taking AGILE and DevOps as synonyms and there is always a clear distinction between these two initiatives. This does not means that DevOps should have less focus but these initiatives should be clearly demarcated

·         Tools - like with every other initiatives tools complement the process they are meant for. Tools themselves cannot do anything. Tools facilitate or make some processes simpler but they should not be sole of AGILE implementation, focus should be in ensuring that a particular process is followed and not usage of tool e.g. excel can be used in place of Jira etc.

Moving on to Essentials without which AGILE journey will be doomed. As stressed earlier all these are important and there is no order or sequence in which they should be followed, every item under essentials is MUST-HAVE.   

·         Senior Leadership Support – You might find it amusing but fact is that implementation of AGILE needs to follow WATERFALL. What that means is that it needs to follow top down approach. Without support and reinforcement from senior leadership you won’t get required muscle power to change the delivery engine. If senior leadership have apprehensions about how AGILE can change your fortunes than we should be rest assured that you are starting your voyage on a boat which has a hole. It is not just lip service that is required, senior leadership needs to be involved and reassure the teams whenever there are doubts on direction they are navigating. Also it should be kept in mind that this journey is not FOC (Free of Cost), leadership should be ready to put in resources to fuel the movement and on top of it willing to risk few deliveries on the way. Remember such a big transformation requires a constant push and encouragements from leaders.

·         Training – one of the obvious must-have is training. Training the team on methodology itself is important. Training needs to be focussed on introducing the new methodology but also focus on highlighting differences with what they are doing now and how the change in process will bring benefits to organization. Organizations should not just invest on classroom trainings but also provide hand holding through coaches and experts.

·         Organization Structure – One of the key to success is that organizations need to be structured towards AGILE delivery. This is one hurdle which is most challenging to overcome.

People tend to believe that implementing AGILE will result in making them redundant. This can not only result in delay in AGILE implementation but also create a force working against the initiative itself. AGILE is just a different way of working it does not make any role redundant. We should remember that chocolate cake cannot be made without chocolate; it does not matter if it is baked in an over or in microwave. So first thing every organization should do is to develop a good screenplay. Talk to various teams and explain them what role they will plan in the new ensemble. Don’t leave them to figure out what they should be doing.

Second item to execute is breaking the walls. To better understand this point let us look at how most of the organizations are currently structured.

Obviously above picture is a very simplistic view of delivery engine but idea is that organizations are structured to create specialized teams which works with other teams by means of handovers created at different stages in form of requirement document, design document, technical specification, code etc. People tend to become oversensitive about their work and try to defend their boundaries in organization. Organizations cannot become AGILE without breaking these walls.

One of the foremost principal of AGILE is collaboration and participation and that requires open mind set and also team structured to work without boundaries. Teams need to have willingness to share responsibilities of others and also happy for others to assist in their work.

Though the name is AGILE, but transformation to AGILE delivery can become dead slow if any of the essentials are not taken care off.

Get the essentials right and add some or all the catalysts and see how AGILE can be AGILE transformation.