· Agile · 2 min read
"Transformed". Yet still the same. An All Too Familiar Agile Story
They formed agile teams. They track stories in JIRA. They do three questions daily. They've "transformed." And yet nothing meaningful has changed. The all-too-familiar gap between agile theater and real product orientation.
Picture BuzzCorp (Many of you won’t have to use too much imagination). They’ve invested significant efforts in developing software and products in an agile manner.
They formed agile teams (but a deeper look shows those are the existing component/functional teams using agile methods)
They manage Features/Stories in JIRA/ADO (but those are the functional slices that these teams can accomplish, rather than useful product slices)
They’ve transformed.
There’s some flow of “stories”, maybe even “features”. 3 questions are asked every day. velocity is counted.
They are doing agile. At the team level.
But.
Products still require collaboration across many teams, and typically, many months pass before something potentially valuable is integrated and available for customer feedback, not to say release.
BuzzCorp Product Managers don’t understand why they’re expected to become “Product Owners” of these teams.
So, the engineering/IT organization assigned “Product Owners” (who create stories, manage the backlog, and manage team interactions but don’t own a product or even product-level outcomes).
BuzzCorp adopts an agile scaling framework to help them manage this crazy web of dependencies. (But once again, they ignore the intent and principles and take the easy way out)
BuzzCorp Product leaders think Agile is a sham. They start looking at an alternative.
PS What will happen when they install a product operating model (you can probably guess …)?
About Yuval Yeret
Yuval is a rare practitioner who has shaped the agility path of dozens of organizations and influenced the frameworks used across the industry. He helps product and technology leaders move from agile theater to evidence-informed, outcome-oriented delivery that creates better value sooner, safer, and happier.