Hands-on Agile #59: “Agile” Does Not Work for You? Tackling Fake Agility w/ Johanna Rothman

“Agile” Not Working forYou?
SeeYour Reality and Incorporate Agility
Johanna Rothman
jr@jrothman.com
www.jrothman.com
https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman

© 2024 Johanna Rothman
Everyone’s gone “Agile,” right?
2

So Many Problems
• Long and extensive backlogs and
roadmaps
• Teams become feature factories with
little product strategy
• Little to no experimentation
• Lots of late changes
• No joy. No ease.The grind of work.
3

Culture is the Root Cause
4
• Resource ef
fi
ciency thinking:
Individual actions or deliverables
• Flow ef
fi
ciency thinking:
Create environment for everyone to
succeed in teams
• Rewards can drive your organizational
structure

When managers reward resource ef
fi
ciency, true
agility cannot survive
However, you have many options
5

Waterfall or agile is not a useful question
(leads to fake agility)
Instead, how can we manage our risks and
incorporate agility?
6

Part 1: Clarify Risks
7

Risks Drive Choices for Feedback Loop Duration
• Three major kinds of risks
• Project risks
• Product risks
• Portfolio/organization risks
• When we manage risks, we can
reduce the duration of feedback loops
and decide faster
8

Project Risks Affect Lifecycle Choice
• The project pyramid explains:
• Drives your project (one aspect)
• Constraints (not more than two)
• Floats (the other three)
9

Product Risks Affect Lifecycle Choice
• Product risks clarify how much
innovation you need and when
• Very few product ideas survive
customer contact
10

Portfolio Risks Affect Lifecycle Choice
• How often does your organization
need to re-decide on the project
portfolio?
• Market in
fl
ux
• Startup
• Insuf
fi
cient stability for long decision
durations
• The more portfolio risks, the shorter
the feedback loops need to be
11

How to Choose a Lifecycle (Not “Agile”)
• Higher organizational or product risks:
incremental, combination, or agile approach
• Project risks:
• Date → incremental or agile approach
• Low defects → incremental or agile approach
• More features → iterative or agile approach
• General guidelines
• Know what to do and short timeframe? →
serial or incremental
• Longer timeframe? Anything other than serial
12

Agile Approach Is Not a Lifecycle
• A culture change
• Not a mindset or speci
fi
c practices
• Agile approaches require:
• A collaborative cross-functional team
• Limits its ranked WIP
• Releases often for feedback
• Learns from what they did
• Consider “Agility” instead of “Agile”
13

Agile Teams Work Through the Architecture to
Deliver
14

More risks? Reduce feedback loop
duration
15

Poll forYour Collaboration to Enable Agility
• In the chat, please use a number for your answer:
16

Part 2: Clarify Lifecycles
17

Serial Lifecycles
• Waterfall
• Stage-Gate
• Phases
• Characteristics:
• Plan a lot up front
• SMOE (Simple Matter of Execution)
18

Reality for Too Many “Agile” Teams
19
Requirements Hell
Freezes are Slush
Reality:
Unplanned Feedback Loops

Iterative Lifecycles
• Re
fi
ne prototypes:
• Boehm’s Spiral Model
• Evolutionary
Prototyping
• Even SAFe, unless the
teams release from the
fi
rst timebox
20

Internal vs External Feedback
• Iterative approaches can work under
these conditions:
• Obtain feedback from outside the
team
• Obtain feedback from a customer
• The longer it takes for customer-
based feedback, the more likely the
project “Kiss of Death”
21

Incremental Lifecycles
• Design to Schedule
focuses on release
candidates
• Staged Delivery
assumes the team will
release
22

Late Feedback in Incremental Lifecycles
• Design to schedule has risks because
everything is a release candidate
• In Staged Delivery, release what you
have
23

Consider Combining Approaches
24
Date-driven:
Iterative
fi
rst, then Incremental
Feature-driven:
Iterative
fi
rst,
then choose when to release

Component Teams Challenge Agility
25

Agile Approaches
26
Iterations are timeboxes.
That’s how the team limits its WIP.
The shorter the iteration,
the faster everyone learns.
A Kanban system does not need timeboxes.
The team limits its WIP by design.
I like to right-size the work
so the team delivers on a cadence.

Poll forYour WIP Limits to Enable Agility
• In the chat, please use a number for your answer:
27

Part 3: How to Increase Agility
28

Team Tips to Increase Agility
• Focus on the
fl
ow of work, not what
individual people do (
fl
ow ef
fi
ciency
thinking)
• Reduce or timebox up-front work to
reduce later unplanned feedback loops
• Start with and maintain a cross-
functional team that collaborates for
the entire project
29

Flow Metrics Support More Agility
• Cycle time to see how long things
take
• Aging to see where work gets stuck
and for how long
• WIP: How much work is in progress
• Throughput: How often does the team
release something?
• Why your collaboration and ability to
limit WIP matter
30
Little’s Law:

Culture/Project Tips to Increase Agility
• Use your project and product risks to
understand how often you need
feedback, internally and externally
• Plan for shorter projects to reduce
unplanned feedback loops
• Deliver & Demo something at least
once a month
31

Less Planning + More Delivering =
Real Agility
32

FindYour Way to Ful
fi
llYour Customers’ Needs
• “Agile” is not the point
• Satisfy the customer
• Manage risks to release
• To obtain revenue
• Use risks to choose your “best”
approach
• Incorporate agility to bring joy and
ease to your work
33

Let’s Stay in Touch
• Pragmatic Manager:
• www.jrothman.com/
pragmaticmanager
• Please link with me on LinkedIn
• Project Lifecycles: https://
www.jrothman.com/lifecyclebook
34

Hands-on Agile #59: “Agile” Does Not Work for You? Tackling Fake Agility w/ Johanna Rothman

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Hands-on Agile #59: “Agile” Does Not Work for You? Tackling Fake Agility w/ Johanna Rothman