Importance of Agile Readiness for a Transformation

To be a successful farmer, one must first know the nature of the soil.  —Xenophon, Oeconomicus 

Have you ever been in a daily stand-up where everyone was reporting status to the one person they thought was the leader or where most didn’t know why they were doing a stand-up every day or ever? This highlights a lack of readying the mind for what a daily stand-up is and why we are doing it.  A lack of readiness can stall or halt an Agile transformation because people aren’t in the right frame of mind for transitioning to Agile.

Readiness starts the moment when the question, “Is Agile right for me?” is asked. Readiness activities can help you better determine if Agile is right for you. Agile readiness is akin to conditioning and fertilizing the soil before growing the seeds. It is good to take a realistic look at the conditions of the fields, equipment, and people. Conditioning the mind with an understanding of Agile principles improves the ability to adopt Agile in a way that leads to truly being Agile. Strengthening the soil helps improve the physical qualities of the soil, especially in its ability to provide nutrition for plants. They can make poor soil more usable and rebuild soil that has been damaged by improper management.

This is exactly what readiness activities can do. Examine the condition of the environment where Agile is being considered. Understand and educate people on the Agile values and principles and the business benefits that can be gained. Gauge the buy-in from leaders and the willingness and capability of teams. Determine if openness or command-and-control behaviors are being exhibited (explicitly or implicitly). Understanding this context provides valuable insight into ways to adapt and move forward.  What we learn, can help shape the agile implementation according to the condition and context of an organization.

You do not need to complete all readiness activities to begin implementing, but I have learned that if you begin implementing Agile, you quickly realize that you will need to address these areas, so it is better to be proactive. With this in mind, an iterative approach may be used. Here are high-level readiness activities that you may consider. As always, feel free to adapt this list of activities if it benefits you.

• Establish a common understanding of Agile.
• Construct and share the drivers for an Agile organizational change.
• Provide Agile mindset education based on Agile values and principles. Then determine subsequent educational needs.
• Add “Customers and Employees Matter” to the company vision and share this with employees.
• Gauge levels of executive and stakeholder buy-in.
• Establish an overall strategy and backlog for the agile transformation.
• Determine team willingness and capability.
• Identify allies, champions, and subject matter experts (SMEs) and resources.
• Identify and establish agile roles and organization.
• Establish agile frameworks and practices that may be used. (A flexible framework, as each team is different.)
• Craft measures of success to include value, flow, and quality metrics.
• Establish done criteria, user story framework, and sizing techniques.

A benefit of readiness activities is that you can adapt the transformation approach based on what you learn. Another advantage is that if you find that there are challenges in an area, you can address and improve the situation. For example, you may find that there is not a clear driver for moving to Agile. This can initiate discussions on the business benefits of Agile, motivational factors behind the move, and what it takes to be Agile.

Consider Agile readiness activities as the first increment in your transformation. The outcome of Agile readiness and what you’ve learned can help you better plan the next iteration. Finally, I recommend that once you embark on these activities, you initiate periodic check-ins to gauge progress, mitigate roadblocks (such as risks and issues), and adapt along the way.

Hiring for the Culture of your Future

As an Agile Consultant, I occasionally help companies hire for talent as I’m transforming companies (e.g., an Agile transformation, business transformation, digital transformation or similar). When I’m helping with interviewing or hiring talent process, the interviewers circle back together to discuss the candidate. I often hear things like “They don’t seem to fit our culture”. Sometimes, there is a question built into the interview questionnaire asking, “Are they a cultural fit?”. 

When a company is satisfied with their culture, I can understand that you would align with the concept of hiring for cultural fit.  However, when you are working through an agile, business, or digital transformation, this implies that you are also transforming to a different culture with new ways of working. When you say “hire for a cultural fit” it needs to be to the new culture that you want.

For example, if the culture is more command and control where work is prescribed upfront, then the work culture tends to be very individual driven (I have been assigned my task and I will work on it) with little feedback is asked for (do the work and get it done by the deadline). If you are transforming to Agile ways of working, you need a much more collaborative and team-oriented culture where people are pairing up on tasks, helping each other, and where feedback is expected. Hiring for the former (command and control type culture) will not help you get to an agile culture of collaboration.  

If you are going through any type of transformation as a company, include a theme or work on re-evaluating the hiring process. Take a look at your standard interview questions and adapt them for the culture that you want. Also, describe the type of people that will fit your future culture (e.g., collaborative, team-oriented, etc.) and share this with the interviewers.  This will help embed your current culture with the people that will support the culture you desire for the future.    

The importance of Meeting them Where they Are

As I work with teams, leaders, or executives when applying Agile, often times what they ask for is not the first thing they need.  This is why bringing a “meet them where they are” mindset is important.  When you meet them where they are, you can bring the kind of coaching, education, and feedback that better fits their role and experience.

In most cases “meeting them where they are” means to understand where mentally (both intellectually and emotionally) they are in relation to the topic, in this case Agile.  This may mean attempting to understand their level of Agile knowledge, experience with Agile, and motivation or willingness for Agile. Sometimes meeting them where they are is physical meaning you join them in their workplace, their daily stand-up, or any space you may observe their interactions to better understand where they are.

This approach can help you understand the common ground. This helps the Agile coach know where they are and where they can go from there. It helps a coach determine how to engage in a way that is sensible and motivating to those they are coaching.  Example of meeting them where they are include:

- If a team has only just begun to form, it may be better to educate them on what it means to be a team, the Tuckman model, and on what it means to form before you expect them to perform well. 

- If a new team wants to give and receive honest feedback to each other, it may be better to first initiate icebreakers and connecting activities so that team members can get to know one another and build psychological safety and trust first.

- If a team or company wants to embark on an Agile journey, before you educate the team on how to do Scrum it may be better to first start with a discovery activity to gauge the current knowledge of Agile, Agile experience, and willingness to apply Agile.  This can help you better adapt the level of Scrum education they need.

- If you learn that the team is fairly Agile savvy and have applied Scrum already, but are having challenges with decomposing work, then you can meet them where they are but experimenting with story mapping.

Meeting them where they are has multiple advantages but the primary one is that you can determine what they need first.  When you meet them where they are, you can bring the kind of coaching, education, and feedback that better fits their knowledge, experience, and willingness.

Agile Games to Accelerate your Agile Transformation

Games are essential to humans to learn and grow. In many cultures, children use games to simulate and gain the skills that they will need as adults.  As an adult, a game can be a quick way to understand a new concept or practice. In the Agile world, Agile games can be used to grasp Agile related concepts. 

As Agile is typically implemented within organizations as they embark on an Agile transformation, games can be key to help them adapt toward an Agile mindset and accelerate the learning.  They can be used to grasp many of the Agile values and principles and the concepts of customer value, flow, and feedback. 

What is an Agile Game

An Agile game is an activity focused on teaching, demonstrating, and applying the Agile mindset through using game theory. An Agile game has a learning objective in mind.  The objective is to teach the player an Agile concept, practice, or technique that supports the Agile values and principles.  Games without objectives are meaningful to learning. 

For example, in order to learn about customer value, a game may be introduced that asks team members to differentiate between different types of currency.  You may learn that it isn’t always easy yet feedback may be used to better understand the value of the currency.  This simulates what it takes to understand customer value in the real world. 

Why use Agile Games

Games can jump-start the learning of concepts that can lead to an accelerated transformation. This can be useful in an Agile transformation. Games can also be used to model complex concepts or give you insight into processes.  They can give the participants the ability to assess why they work or don't work.

Games insert energy and excitement into learning. Games are often hands-on and get you out of your seats.  They get the blood going in your body and more importantly into your brains. 

Typically Agile games teach basic and mid-level concepts.  More complex and deep concepts should be accompanied by deeper studying, experimenting, and applying of the concepts and practices in real-world environments.   

Getting started with Agile Games

The first step in getting started with Agile games is to identify your specific learning objective.  An objective is often focused on exercising a specific Agile concepts, practice or technique.  Once you have identified your learning objective, you may search the internet for games that may support your objective.  A good place to find a variety of Agile games is at TastyCupcakes.org.  

Worth Reading: The Agile Enterprise: Building and Running your Agile Enterprise - for better business results

Imagine an enterprise where everyone focuses on the highest customer value.  Where strategy to tasks are visible so everyone knows if their work is aligned with the highest value work. Imagine an enterprise where a discovery mindset wins over certainty thinking. Where experimentation with increments and feedback help define the way toward customer value.

Imagine a company where employees use 100% of their brain power to self organize around the work and be trusted to think of better ways to work. Where leaders encourage employees to put customer value first.  Imagine an enterprise where customers embrace the products and services being built because they are engaged in the building of the work all along the way.

If you can imagine it, it can be yours!  In this unique and cutting edge Agile book, veteran Enterprise Agile Coach Mario Moreira, will guide you to build and run an Agile enterprise at every level and at every point from idea to delivery. Learn how Agile-mature organizations adapt nimbly to micro changes in market conditions and customer needs and continuously deliver optimal value to customers.  Learn cutting-edge practices and concepts as you extend your implementation of Agile pervasively and harmoniously through the whole enterprise for greater customer value and business success.

Readers of The Agile Enterprise will learn how to:

• Establish a Customer Value Driven engine with an enterprise idea pipeline to process an enterprise’s portfolio of ideas more quickly and productively toward customer value and through all levels of the enterprise
• Incorporate the Discovery Mindset; experimental, incremental, design, and divergent thinking; and fast feedback loops to increase the odds that what you build aligns more closely to what customer wants.
• Leverage Lean Canvas, Personas, Story Mapping, Cost of Delay, Discovery Mindset, Servant leadership, Self-organization, and more to deliver optimum value to customers
• Use continuous Agile Budgeting and enterprise idea pipeline at the senior levels of the enterprise to enable you to adapt to the speed of the market.
• Reinvent Human Resources, Portfolio Management, Finance, and many areas of leadership toward new roles in the enablement of customer value. 
• Establish a holistic view of the state of your Agile Galaxy from top-to-bottom and end-to-end allowing you to understand where you are today and where you’d like to go in your Agile future.
• Be truly Agile throughout the enterprise, focusing on customer value and employees over all else.

This book is geared for: Sponsors of Agile Transformations; Executives and Senior Management; Agile Coaches, Consultants, and Champions; Portfolio Management; Project Management Offices (PMOs); Business and Finance; Human Resources (HR); Investors and Entrepreneurs; Scrum Masters, Agile Project Managers, and Product Owners. 

This book concludes with an adventuring through an Agile Enterprise story that shows you how an enterprise may transform to Agile in an incremental manner with materials in this book.  Let the material in The Agile Enterprise help you achieve your successful customer value driven enterprise.

Thank you to the contributors JP Beaudry (on Story Mapping) and David Grabel (on Cost of Delay)!  A special Thank you to the Apress editing team!

Patterns of Resistance in your Agile Journey

Resistance is a common reaction to a change initiative. As organizations attempt to grow or improve, it must change. Change can occur for many reasons. When moving to an organization that is embracing Agile, there is often a need for a significant culture change since Agile is effectively a culture change.

Agile brings about a change in mindset and mechanics, which affects both employees and customers. Whereas change can create new opportunities, it will also be met with resistance.  Agile change really isn’t any different than any other culture change, ergo the resistance will have similar patterns.  There are many reasons for resistance. Here are some of the patterns:  

Here we go again! It is comforting when things remain the same. Employees have seen change efforts come and go without any true commitment and may attempt to wait the new ones out.

• What can you do?  The commitment to change must be clearly stated.  The change initiate must be treated as a program, with clear motivations and rewards for change.

Fear of the unknown.  Change is often defined by a journey into the unknown and it natural to resist what we don’t understand.  For most, it is unclear what the change will entail.  

• What can you do?  Leaders should provide a vision of what the new world will look like 

Lack of communication. Employees need to know what is occurring to them. As information trickles down from the top, the message can be lost.

• What can you do? Plan for continuous communications at all levels is important.  Include various communication channels and messages from as many champions as possible. 

Change in roles. Some employees like to retain the status quo and do not want to see their roles changed. When roles are vague, some don't know where they fit in the new culture, making them feel excluded. When they have no say in their new roles, they can feel alienated.

• What can you do? Discuss the role changes with employees.  Give them time to adapt to the roles or give them time to try new roles.   

Competing initiatives. Introducing an agile initiative when there are already multiple initiatives occurring can lead to employees feeling overwhelmed, causing them to resist. Hardly an auspicious start!

• What can you do?  It is important for management to prioritize initiatives and focus on the higher priority ones.

Change for people, not leaders. When asked “Who wants change?”, everyone raises their hands. But when asked, “Who wants to change?”, no one’s hand goes up.  This can be particularly true with leaders.  Leaders want change to occur within their teams but are not particularly interested in changing themselves and this may be been prevalent in past change initiatives.  

• What can you do? Acknowledge the change that the leaders must make and convey the leaders’ commitment to change. 

New management's need to change something. New leaders often feel they must show they are action-oriented. They may reason that the change that worked in their previous company should work here. Some know their term is short, so they are not interested in long-term change. Some are unaware of what it takes to affect culture. Employees who are used to this scenario may resist. 

• What can you do?  Avoid what may appear to be random changes.  Ensure the Agile change is aligned with better business outcomes and not just to do Agile. 

It will not always be possible to identify and manage all types of resistance.  However, it must be treated as a real and tangible activity.  It is better to start addressing resistance to change in a pro-active manner. The more you review and enact the "What can you do?" tips, the more likely you will increase your changes of a successful Agile change (or any culture change).   

Agile Success Measures to answer the question "How do I know when I'm Agile"?

I often get asked, “How do I know when my company is Agile? ” While I have various answers, it led me to construct an Agile measurement framework that helps you guide your Agile transformation toward success.  

    

I start by asking, “What outcomes an organization would like to see when they go Agile?”  Agile asks that you consider your outcome instead of output as a measure of success.  I would suggest that being Agile should only occur if your outcome is some type of better business results.  In other words, Agile shouldn't be the outcome of being Agile.  The good news is that organizations are looking for better business results.  This could be in the form of shorter lead times, reduced whip, or an increase in revenue.  Sometimes it can be all three. It is important to understand that outcomes are lagging metrics.   Now that we have highlighted the importance of outcomes, let’s add two ingredients to give us perspective and help us build the framework.

For the first ingredient, I will take a page from the book Being Agile in Chapter 2 “Crossing the Agile Chasm”.  When we discuss Agile adoption, we are talking about a change to the organizational culture.  This is because adopting Agile is more than learning skills or understanding a procedure.  It is about adopting a set of values and principles that require change in people’s behavior and the culture of an organization.  This mindset and culture change involves the most time for an organization to adjust.  According to Paul S. Adler and Aaron Shenhar, “Adapting your Technological Base: The Organizational Challenge”, a culture change is measured in years.   

For the second ingredient, I will take a page out of the article Agile Lagging to Leading Metric Path.  This article highlights that an Agile lagging to leading metric path recommends that for every outcome (aka, lagging indicator), you supplement it with corresponding leading indicators that provide you with visibility during an Agile transformation.  Capturing the leading indicators helps you steer toward a successful Agile transformation.  The leading indicators are effectively feedback loops that help you understand if you are leading toward your outcome.

Now that we have the two key ingredients, the goal is constructing an Agile lagging to leading metric path that recognizes that change takes time and provides us with feedback to adapt toward a more successful Agile transformation.   Lets start with the outcome.  For my Agile transformation, the key outcome is that we are seeing better business results for our products, translated into increased revenue for our business.  From this, I need to consider what leading indicators help guide me toward better business results.   From my Agile transformation experience, I will suggest that the two broad leading indicators are adopting Agile mechanics and embracing the Agile mindset.   This is illustrated within this lagging to leading framework.

This illustrates several conventions.  The first is that from an Agile perspective, in order to get to better business results, we must educate folks on the Agile mechanics and Agile mindset.  As we do this, we gain feedback so that we can adapt the Agile journey to ensure more success in our Agile transformation and achieve the better business results we are looking for.  The second is that applying Agile mechanics tends to be easier and takes less time since it involves learning skills and understanding procedures.  Adopting an Agile mindset takes more time since it requires changes in people’s behavior and the adaption of the organizational culture.  The end result (outcome or lagging metric) is that we hope to see better business results by first implementing Agile mechanics and adapting to an Agile mindset. 

The last task at hand is to create measures within each indicator to gauge progress.  For the Agile mechanics, capturing a training metric is helpful.  In order for people to mechanically adopt Agile, they need some form of education in their role (e.g., Scrum Master, Product Owner, etc.) and education in the process (e.g., Scrum, Kanban, etc.).  Then you can assess if the mechanics are being applied.  If education doesn’t occur or the mechanics aren’t being followed, this can impact your success.

For the Agile mindset indicator, you need to gauge if there is a shift in ways of working. You can assess if the Scrum Master is exemplifying servant leadership, you can gauge if management are allowing for self-organization, you can assess if the team believes in the Agile values and principles, and you can determine if the product owner and organization are adapting to customer needs based on actual feedback and to delivering early and often.  You should also gauge if the team is incrementally improving the mechanics, meaning are they applying the retrospective for the team to improve their ways of working. If the behaviors behind the Agile mindset are not occurring, how do you expect to be Agile?   This is why they are all leading indicators to getting better business results. 

I hope this article may provide you with a framework to help you more effectively gauge “How do we know when we are Agile?”.  It highlights that if you are looking for the business benefits that Agile can bring, then establishing an Agile measurement framework based on lagging to leading indicators can help guide you achieve a more successful Agile transformation. It is then up to you to identify what is your outcome, then your leading indicators to know if you are heading in the right direction.  Many end their journey with adopting Agile mechanics without adapting their culture toward an Agile mindset.  Stopping at the mechanics is why many organizations fail at Agile.  Hopefully this framework can help you see the bigger picture toward Agile success and the business benefits it can bring.  

How a Self-organizing Education Vision can help your Agile Transformation

Does your company education begin and end with training? Will this suffice for a transformation to Agile? Agile requires alignment behind the Agile values and principles that signifies a change toward an Agile culture. It means an investment in educating your people who need to pick up the helm for success.  Because of this, you cannot think that taking a training class will suffice and provide enough knowledge to cause a shift in thinking to be Agile.  Instead education needs to be an intrinsic part of your Agile transformation.  One approach is to consider a team-oriented self-organized education vision aimed toward being Agile.

An Agile Education Vision is an education roadmap that a team iteratively plans and applies.   It is meant to be self-organized by the team focused on their education needs toward being Agile.  Since people are critical to the success of agility, it is only fair to allow the “power of the people” to self organize around their own educational needs.  As a team approaches Agile, they periodically consider various education elements that can be used to help them build their Agile knowledge, skills, and capabilities toward achieving a mindset.  As education gets applied, the team periodically visits the education vision and updates it based on their current level of Agile need. 

A good way to think of this is that the Agile Education Vision is a prioritized product backlog of education elements based on team needs.  Each sprint or timeframe, the team visits the vision, determines what education is needed, and then applies those educational elements throughout that period.  Another approach that engages the power of the people is an Education Led Transformation.  Established by Emergn, this is a work-based approach where learning occurs through action.  Experience is gained over time by the team and they become better equipped to gain the full benefits of agility.   

As an added tip, any time an education item is time consuming (1-day training, reading a book, etc.), consider including it as a story with a story point value.  As the owner works on this item, the story card can get moved across the board to indicate progress of the education. This highlights that education is considered valuable and illustrates the progress made in completing the education work item.

An important consideration is that when I say education, it is more than just training. It takes a repertoire of educational elements. These education elements can help a team develop skills, understand their roles, and navigate a process or practice, and most importantly achieve an Agile mindset.  Training is just one of those educational elements. What are some of the others?  Here is a sampling:

• Simple brochure, flyer, or short presentations.
• In-person training such as Instructor-led and seminars
• Web-based training such as pre-recorded and webinars
• Work-based learning with activities and on-the-job training
• Reading in the form of books, articles, and more being done individually or in a book club 
• Hosting such as agile practices website and wiki
• Coaching providing in-session education to a team or an individual based on domain knowledge and experience.
• Community contributing includes giving back via forums, blog articles, or seminars.

It takes a repertoire of educational elements to achieve an Agile culture. Training is just one educational element that is needed. 

How will your teams be educated? An accumulation of education elements at different points in time will provide the comprehensive focus to help you, your team, and your organization. Consider applying an self-organized education vision or an education-led approach that best serves your goal toward being Agile. Ultimately you want to create a self-organizing educational culture where employees are willing and eager to learn, act, and give back to their community.  How are your teams currently being educated in agility?

PS - to read more about establishing an Agile Education Vision and how education elements can help you be Agile, consider reading Chapter 16 of the new Agile book entitled Being Agile.