Why you are failing at Agile

Why you are failing at Agile

I originally posted a blog about this at my other company, Chunk Munk Technologies, back in 2014. Since then I’ve used that blog at many different organizations struggling to realize why they are failing at Agile. I simply forwarded the URL to them and asked one simple question, “I wrote this article years ago and I’d like to ask, objectively, is this you?”. 

I’ve had people go dark for a couple days in reflection, but they always come back yes, or at least a “sort of”. 

I want to dive into this a little more, why do we fail at Agile? It’s not because of Agile at all. To be fair you can be successful with many different methodologies. The failure is not the methodology, it’s you. 

That can be hard to hear, but I’ll explain. We instinctively build out tools through our experience. Some are taught to us, some are learned, but all are embedded in who we are. How many times have you thought, “I’ve seen this before”, or “I know exactly what’s going to happen” or “I’m not going to do that again”? That’s why experience is so valuable. You’ve made the mistakes, you’ve had the wins, you know what works and what doesn’t.

Now the problem is learning something new. Everyone has all the best intentions when learning Agile. They take a course, they buy a book, they do the research. Companies might train up their people, or better yet train internal trainers. 

So then why does it fail? It’s not good enough to just learn about Agile. It’s worse to invest into internal trainers with no real agile experience. To be successful with any transformation, you need to change mindsets. You need to change the behaviour of your organization, you need to change the culture. 

So, when Agile throws something in your face, and it will, short and often feedback loops will make sure of that,  what tools do you have to take care of them? You’re not meeting your agile goals, you don’t have visibility into your team’s work, you aren’t delivering, you can’t balance support and project work, and so on. When those things come up, what do you do? Well, you do the only thing you know how, you reach into those tools, those ones you’ve built over your career. You’ve seen this problem before, you need a milestone here, you need more status updates, meetings to go over progress, work breakdown structures, and better estimates. 

So why are you failing at agile? The issue isn’t Agile, it’s the way we respond to change and transformation. Do we trust the change, do we limp in, or do you take steps to move back to your normal. The question I like to ask people doing this is, why are you choosing to adapt a new methodology? Why did you phone me? Obviously there’s problems with the “old way”. So instead of reverting back slowly, how can we proceed properly.

Tackling issues is a must, but don’t just pull a tool out of the old tool bag. Is that a hammer when a saw is required? In order to change others in your organization, first ensure you’re looking at yourself. 

To check out the original post, click here.