"We are already Lean/Agile" - Really?

A couple of years ago when you talked to people about agile a common response “why should we”, “it won’t work here”, or “so this is the new fad? What will come next?”

Times have changed. And a sign of the fact that agile is becoming more mainstream is that it being diluted and a common response these days is “but we are already agile!”. I want to share a couple of questions to see if you are indeed agile.

At a very high level what does it mean to be agile ? At a first level agile is an approach to development that embraces the complexity and uncertainty in both demand, specification and implementation implications by working in short cycles on small batches of work, constantly seeking fast feedback, and empowering people to work together focused on clear business goals, at a sustainable pace.

A second level of lean/agile is about embracing the complexity of the systems/processes used to take software from idea to realized value and using an inspect and adapt approach to let better approaches emerge. This is a much more pervasive aspect of lean/agile. Organizations fail to realize the real power and improvements are as a result of multiple iterations thru process experiments, always aiming to achieve goals of better delivery capabilities.

When you hear someone talking about being agile ask them:

• Do your users/business stakeholders consider your delivery cycle fast enough?
• Are you developing the Right things? Do you use your agility to drive small features to production to validate the value of a certain direction and then continue to deliver a pipeline of more small features while constantly evaluating feedback?
• Are you doing things the right way? How much rework is there in your work? How much of the demand is generated by not doing things right the first time?

And then ask some more questions that will dive deeper into the improvement aspects of lean/agile:

• How often do you stop to reflect on our performance/capabilities?
• Do you have a capabilities goal/condition you are striving for? How many people are aware of it?
• How do u know your current state compared to that goal?
• Do you run process experiments aimed at improvement towards a target condition we are focusing on?
• How many of these process experiments do you try in a month?
• What is the cycle time from deciding to work on a process improvement to finishing an iteration of the experiment on it?
• What are the current main obstacles to improving towards your goal? How long have you known about them?

You might find that you have an “agile” organization that is not so agile when considering the service provided to the business. In many of those cases when you dive deeper you will find a weak, unfocused or even nonexistent improvement engine/culture and a static process/system.

Doing scrum sprints, user stories, or kanban boards is just the starting point of the agile journey.

The main event is improving. Practices such us limiting work in process or focusing on a single sprint help with that. There is a whole set of approaches beyond that - A3, five whys, retrospectives, operation reviews, statistical process control, the Toyota improvement kata, solutions focus, theory of constraints and many more - all used to improve.

Are you ready for the real world of lean/agile?

You might find this recent prezi useful to look at these multiple layers of improvement and the various approaches used.

Moving from agile theater to real business agility takes more than a framework. Explore Business Agility advisory or let’s talk.