Pokémon Go to Agile Go

Pokémon Go is an augmented-reality game that recently launched in Australia, New Zealand, United States, Germany and a number of other countries. In a nutshell, you search for Pokemon in the Poké world in your actual, geographical location, which you can explore by physically walking around.

Allow me to introduce you to my newly invented game called Agile Go.  Like Pokémon Go, Agile Go is a reality based game in which you search for people within your “Agile World” (aka, your company) that are exhibiting Agile behaviors aligned with the Agile values and principles.  Take a picture of them and tag it with “Agile Go”.  In Pokémon Go, you capture pokemon.  In Agile Go, you capture the moment where people are exhibiting Agile behavior.  What Agile behaviors should you look for?  Here are some real time scenarios to look for:

• Business and development collaborating together
• Product Owner or Team welcoming change to requirements
• Teams self-organizing around the work
• Team or Product Owner demonstrating an iteration of work
• Product Owner getting feedback from actual customers
• Team member applying a secondary skills to help others 
• Anyone applying face-to-face communication 
• Team identifying work not needed during grooming 
• Anyone completing an action for improvement 
• Manager or anyone removing an impediment to progress

If you see someone exhibiting any of these Agile behaviors or others you deem as aligning with the Agile values and principles, take a picture of them, write the Agile behavior they are exhibiting, and tag it with the “Agile Go” logo (see below).  Then share the photograph with them, letting them know that you appreciate them exhibiting positive Agile behaviors! Even consider tweeting their picture with the #agilego hashtag.  Go Agile!

© Agile Go All rights reserved. Anyone may use the Agile Go logo for non profit and non revenue basis

Have you Crossed the Agile Chasm?

In 1991, Geoffrey Moore refined the classic technology adoption model with an additional element he called the “chasm.”[1] He advanced a proposition specific to disruptive innovation that there is a significant shift in mentality to be crossed between the early adopter and the early majority groups. Disruptive innovation is the development of new values that forces a significant change of behavior to the culture adopting it. In this case, Agile is that disruptive force that insists on applying a set of values and principles within a specific culture of “being Agile” to be successful and for the organization to realize the full business benefits of Agile.

At first glance, it would appear that many companies have adopted Agile. I believe, however, that this perception is specious, in view of the further observation that the majority of companies that are “doing” Agile have not actually adopted the new values and principles and not made the cultural shift to actually “being” Agile. Such companies look at Agile as a set of skills, tools, and procedural changes and not the integrated behavioral and cultural change it truly is. In other words, they think they have crossed the chasm, but they have not made the significant change of behavior required to make the leap.

My experience in the field leads me to posit a refinement on Moore's chasm concept as applied to Agile. First, there is the real Agile chasm between those on the left side who have made the organic behavioral changes consistent with the values of being Agile―and those on the right side who are just doing” Agile mechanically. Second, there is a fake chasm, which many organizations pride themselves on having crossed by virtue of adopting some mechanical features of Agile, whereas they have not been willing or able to make the behavioral changes and adopt the values required to cross the real chasm. Although many companies say that they are doing Agile in some form, a large proportion of these are actually doing Fragile ("fake Agile") or some other hybrid variant that cannot deliver the business benefits of Agile.

I cannot overstate this point: many companies and their teams are mechanically doing some form of Agile without having actually crossed the Agile chasm, not discarding the behavioral baggage that is keeping them from behaviorally and culturally being Agile. Until a team attains the state of being Agile, the business benefits that Agile can provide will be elusive. I contend that the industry has barely entered the early majority of true Agile cultural transformation, and many companies continue to struggle to leap the Agile chasm.  What have you noticed across the Agile landscape?  Have companies crossed the Agile chasm?

Note: If you are looking for more insight in crossing the Agile chasm, consider reading the book Being Agile. This book lays the foundation for those who want to cross the Agile cultural chasm, understand the behaviors that need to change, and gauge progress along the way. It provides an Agile transformation roadmap to the destination of achieving better business results.

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[1] Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm (New York: Harper Business Essentials, 1991).

Agile’s Little Secret – It Makes You Money

Agile tends to be introduced at the team level and it’s the Agile teams who are expected to adopt Agile.   While there is various amounts of buy-in from management, some don’t seem to understand that it takes an organization to embrace Agile in order to gain the business benefits.  In other words, management has a strong role to play including adapting their behavior, embracing the Agile values and principles, and leading a culture change, in order to gain the business benefits of Agile.  It requires significant buy-in to achieve a culture change.  But this doesn’t always seem to happen. 

Some of this is not management’s fault.  Part of the issue is that Agile gets introduced to them is various ways – as a way to improve productivity, as a way to speed up development, as a way to increase quality, but in most of these cases, those introducing Agile to them fail to mention the significant buy-in they need to make.  While each of these ways have different levels of merit, it often doesn’t convey enough of a reason for management to motivate a change in their behavior and their organizational culture.    

   

How about changing the message?  Though there are many benefits for going Agile, it occurred to me that to get serious executive/senior management attention and buy-in to Agile is to give them a reason that is near and dear to their heart.  Explain to your management that Agile can increase revenue—in short, it can help them make money (or more of it).  In my experience, this gets them to actively listen, versus the passive listening they may exhibit when they think Agile is an engineering method or something the engineering team and others must do.

Yes, Agile can lead to an increase in customer sales, ergo an increase in revenue. This is all true if the organization is truly allowed to “be Agile”.  This means that teams continually demonstrate working software to customers and they are allowed to continually adapt their requirements to customer needs.  Then teams can more closely align with what customers find as valuable.  The more value customers see in your products, the more likely they will buy (or buy more).  Maybe, just maybe, if you convey that Agile can make them more money, they will listen and buy-in to what it really takes.