This is a talk I presented at Agile Vancouver's 2016 conference "Much Ado About Agile 2016".
It is about how using agile effectively and having a more successful agile transformation requires truly acknowledging how much of a people problem it is.
There are some suggestions about what you can try to focus on this more that are hopefully practical, although not necessarily easy, solutions.
16. Why do you do what you do?
Me
Why?
Team
Why?
Company
Why?
10 Tricks to
appear smart
in meetings
Trick #1: Draw
a Venn Diagram
thecooperreview.com
Does your team have an
identity and purpose that
you can rally around?
Do you have a personal
motivation that drives
you?
Does your company
provide you with a
compelling vision that
motivates and overlaps
with your personal Why?
Re-inventing organizations: This was an inspiration while thinking about this presentation, but there aren’t many specific things listed in the slides.
Brandi and I collaborate and discuss a lot of ideas and situations about agile, so many of the ideas in here could be partially attributed to her or built off of work she’s done.
Exercises and ideas are numbered like “1)”.
Even though agile can be a very useful mindset, it is often right now treated as a management fad that is spreading everywhere just because of a sort of mob mentality…. No one wants to be the last to “do agile”.
Earth image: http://www.how-to-draw-cartoons-online.com/image-files/xcartoon_earth.gif.pagespeed.ic.FO1TTVtVFs.png
Adoption curve image: https://charliekneen.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/the-classic-adoption-curve.png?w=662
The promise of what you COULD get from agile is quite appealing from monetary and people metrics.
It seems like everything just gets better, but what often isn’t understood is that agile is very hard and requires a lot of discipline to achieve those benefits.
Part of the reason we’re not seeing a lot of those amazing benefits is that we have our people/process balance wrong.
And we need a lot of attention and investment in the people side to make this work because it is about mindset (a very hard thing to change, and it takes a while).
The irony is that the birth of the Agile (capital A) movement started with the Agile manifesto that has this balancing act as the very first thing it says.
The reason this is a people problem is because this is about dedicating enough collective will to a problem – once that is in place, people will find a way to get it done and dedicate the necessary resources in a timely manner. (if that isn’t happening then there isn’t yet enough will built up)
People problems are rarely easy to improve, even if they are practical solutions.
There are 3 aspects to alignment and motivation: personal, team, and company.
The question is how much do these three aspects exist in a clear way and mutually support each other? Not very often in most companies.
Agile transformations often don’t have a clear why given to everyone.
People are much more complex in their decisions
We need alignment to help us even come close to moving in the same direction
-this also means that you shouldn’t treat any problems as “solved” just better or worse than they were before – with each of those still being an option for which way things can go
Is agile really not working? Maybe it just isn’t working as fast as we’d like, but is showing us what we need to know to evolve.