The document discusses how to clean up Agile and ensure it remains clean. It begins by examining why Agile has become a "dirty word" in some places due to failures when not properly implemented. Some signs that Agile is "dirty" include standardized tools that don't work for all cases, developers unable to get work done, and a cycle of declining trust. The document then provides techniques for cleaning up Agile, such as focusing on outcomes over processes, empowering teams, and eliminating waste. It suggests metrics for knowing if changes have worked, like autonomous cross-functional teams and a learning culture. Finally, it recommends staying ahead by continually learning and improving, measuring the right things, and understanding that Agile is about

1. With thanks to our sponsors

2. JAMES BIRNIE

3. Agile is a Dirty Word
We’ve been talking for a few years about Agile. Some of us have
been “doing” Agile for a few years. Why does it STILL not convince
some people? How can we convince those people that it isn’t a dirty
word?

4. Was lead consultant @ ThoughtWorks
Worked at a startup for 9 years
Worked in software since 1996
I suffer from Prosopagnosia (face blindness)
James Birnie, Codurance
ABOUT ME
jamesbirnie.com
james.birnie@codurance.com
RunningChairJB

5. The Problem:
Why is Agile a Dirty Word and what does Dirty look like?
The Journey:
How to Clean up Agile
The Destination:
What Does Clean Look like? How do I Keep it Clean?
WHAT’S ON
THE MENU?

6. The Problem:
Why is Agile a Dirty Word?
How did Agile become a dirty word in some places?
Why are some people obsessed with “Agile doesn’t work”?
Photo by Ferenc Horvath on Unsplash

7. We’ve been doing
Agile for 2 years,
we’re not seeing
good results yet

9. State Full name
Algeria People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria
DR Congo Democratic Republic of the Congo
East Timor Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste
Ethiopia Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Laos Lao People's Democratic Republic
North Korea Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Nepal Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal
Sri Lanka Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
Democracy rank and status
126 / 167 Authoritarian
165 / 167 Authoritarian
42 / 167 Flawed Democracy
128 / 167 Authoritarian
151 / 167 Authoritarian
167 / 167 Authoritarian
97 / 167 Hybrid Regime
71 / 167 Flawed Democracy
Norway Kingdom of Norway 1 / 167 Full Democracy
UK United Kingdom of Great Britain and NI 14 / 167 Full Democracy
Belgium Kingdom of Belgium 31 / 167 Flawed Democracy
SOURCE: Democracy Index 2018 - Economist Intelligence Unit

10. Our people are Scrum
certified but things
still aren’t working.
Agile is clearly rubbish

11. SAFE (AND OTHER PRESCRIPTIVE FRAMEWORKS) ARE NOT AGILE
Facilitating Command &
Control within the guise
of Agile

12. A BRIEF HISTORY OF FAILING
DELIVERY
1990: All of our (Waterfall) software deliveries fail, we need to
find a better way of doing this.
1996: I’ve heard XP is good, let’s give that a go.
1998: All of our (XP) software deliveries fail, XP is crap, let’s find a
better way of doing this.
2001 - 2015: Agile is cool. Let’s retrain our project managers as
Scrum masters, we’re doing Agile!
2019: All of our (Fake Agile) software deliveries fail. Agile doesn’t
work. Agile is a dirty word.
Photo by Ahmed Carter on Unsplash

13. A BRIEF HISTORY OF FAILING
DELIVERY
1990: All of our (Waterfall) software deliveries fail, we need to
find a better way of doing this.
1996: I’ve heard XP is good, let’s give that a go.
1998: All of our (XP) software deliveries fail, XP is crap, let’s find a
better way of doing this.
2001 - 2015: Agile is cool. Let’s retrain our project managers as
Scrum masters, we’re doing Agile!
2019: All of our (Fake Agile) software deliveries fail. Agile doesn’t
work. Agile is a dirty word.

14. A BRIEF HISTORY OF FAILING DELIVERY
1990: All of our (Waterfall) software deliveries fail, we need to
find a better way of doing this.
1996: I’ve heard XP is good, let’s give that a go.
1998: All of our (XP) software deliveries fail, XP is crap, let’s find a
better way of doing this.
2001 - 2015: Agile is cool. Let’s retrain our project managers as
Scrum masters, we’re doing Agile!
2019: All of our (Fake Agile) software deliveries fail. Agile doesn’t
work. Agile is a dirty word.

15. AND THE COMMON FACTOR IS...
Our software
deliveries fail!
So maybe WE are the
problem?

16. The Problem:
What Does Dirty Look Like?
How do I know if Agile is a Dirty Word?
What are the tell-tale signs?
How can I explain this to people?
Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

17. STANDARDISE TOOLS
TOOLS DON’T
WORK WELL FOR
ALL CASES
DEVELOPERS
CAN’T GET STUFF
DONE
A CYCLE OF REGULATION AND
DECLINING TRUST

18. A DEATH SPIRAL INTO LACK OF TRUST
Our Business has lost confidence in us because we cannot
release new features and fixes in a timely fashion
○ ...because we do not have confidence that our
release will be successful
○ ...because we cannot do the right kind of
automated testing and quality assurance
○ ...because we don’t have the right tooling or
disciplines to implement CI / CD effectively
○ ...and because our QA function and developers
are too far away from the customer
○ ...which is all causing the feedback loops on any
changes to be FAR TOO LARGE
○ ...which is giving us less confidence in our system
○ ...which is causing a vicious cycle of declining trust
Photo by Ian Keefe on Unsplash

19. MORE
TESTING
LONGER
CYCLES
MORE
THINGS
RELEASED
THE BIG BANG
CYCLE OF FEAR

20. Risk Management Theatre
• The organisation is process driven, not
outcome driven
• Processes have become detached from their
original intent
• Obsession with Box Ticking
• Teams that add no value
https://www.jamesbirnie.com/RiskManagmentTheatre

22. • Dysfunctional, waterfall, funding models
• Blame Culture
• Organisational Silos
• Technology as a Cost Centre
• Dishonest, “Watermelon” Reporting
• Lack of trust and empowerment
• Process, not Outcome, Driven
COMMON ANTI-AGILE
ORGANISATIONAL SMELLS
22

23. The Journey:
How to Clean up Agile
How do I go about cleaning up Agile?
Given me some simple techniques.
How do I avoid change fatigue?
Photo by Vlad Bagacian on Unsplash

24. • Agile ≠ Scrum
• Agile ≠ Kanban
• Agile ≠ Any kind of prescriptive process
• Agile DEFINITELY ISN’T something you can “buy off a shelf”
• Agile is a manifesto consisting of 4 value statements and 12 principles
SO WHAT IS
AGILE ANYWAY?

25. THE AGILE PYRAMID
25

26. THE AGILE PYRAMID
26

27. JAMES BIRNIE’S AGILE
PYRAMID
Agile Manifesto - Values and Principles
Empowerment, Trust and
Outcomes over Processes
Engineering
Excellence

28. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
And 12 Agile principles
The 4 Agile Values:
SO WHAT IS AGILE
REALLY ABOUT?

29. Customer Focus
Collaborative working
Delivering value early and often
Empower your people
TALK ABOUT THE
IMPORTANT STUFF
Distill the manifesto and the principles down:
Trust your teams
Constant improvement
Communication is key
(whichever seem most relevant
to your circumstances)

30. An MVP won’t work
for us, we need a
finished product, no
half measures

31. Foo is a genuine hacker! only hackers
get the green glow. I know this from watching stuff like
“24” and other “realistic” TV and films.
THIS IS A WHAT WE ACTUALLY DID!!
(A LOW-TECH MVP)

32. WASTE IS NOT A DIRTY WORD IN A DYSFUNCTIONAL
ENVIRONMENT

33. • Eliminating waste is a message that is easy to land
• That message moves easily on to a discussion about how
opportunities are being missed or delayed
• Trust teams to focus and deliver on the
agreed outcomes
• Waste goes away as teams start to question processes
WASTE IS ELIMINATED AS PEOPLE
FOCUS ON VALUABLE OUTCOMES

34. “Innovation is impossible without risk-taking,
and if you haven’t managed to upset at least
some people in management, you’re
probably not trying hard enough.”
GENE KIM - FROM THE THE
DEVOPS HANDBOOK

35. EVERYBODY LOVES A
GOOD METAPHOR...

36. ONE TEAM’S JOURNEY -
TEAM GOALS AND VALUES

37. ONE TEAM’S JOURNEY -
THE NEXT SIX WEEKS

38. 1. Understand Agile
2. Use Analogies and Metaphors to Help
People Understand
3. Be pragmatic - Speak their Language to get what you need
4. Change one thing at a time
5. Empower and Involve Everybody
6. You will upset people - Deal with it
STEPS ON THE JOURNEY

39. The Destination:
What Does Good Look Like?
How do I know that my changes have worked?
How do I know that I’m doing better than before?
How do I know when I’ve finished?
Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

40. ● An organisation will build systems that will mirror the communication structures of the
organisation itself
● If you have four groups working on a compiler, you’ll get a four stage compiler
● When he removed the cover of the DEC minicomputer he saw “Digital’s Organisation
chart in the design of the product”
● So make it work in your favour - align your organisational units around entire
outcomes
CONWAY’S LAW CAN BE MADE TO WORK FOR
US, NOT AGAINST US

41. ● Silos are recognised and removed
● Architects, if they exist, are outcome, not technology, focused
● Teams contain all the competences required to deliver on clear
customer outcomes
● Technologies and teams are decoupled
as much as possible
AUTONOMOUS CROSS FUNCTIONAL
TEAMS

42. ● Mistakes and failures lead to positive learnings
● The freedom and empowerment to learn through failure brings
innovation
● People want to experiment and learn - “failure” has been
replaced by “learning” in the company lexicon
● Blame free retros and incident wash ups
LEARNING CULTURE REPLACES BLAME
CULTURE

43. ENCOURAGE LEARNING - BOOK CLUB, ANYBODY?

44. ENCOURAGE LEARNING - BROWN BAGS

45. The Destination:
How Do I Keep it Clean?
Now that Agile is no longer a dirty a word, how do I make sure that I keep it
clean?
How do I stay ahead?
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

46. “The only sustainable competitive
advantage is an organization’s ability
to learn faster than the competition”
PETER SENGE - AUTHOR OF
“THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE”

47. Regardless of what we discover, we
understand and truly believe that everyone
did the best job they could, given what
they knew at the time, their skills and
abilities, the resources available, and the
situation at hand.
Norm Kerth
RETROS ARE FOR LEARNING,
NOT FOR BLAMING

48. BE CAREFUL WHAT
YOU MEASURE
“Tell me how you measure me and
I will tell you how I will behave.
If you measure me in an illogical way…
do not complain about illogical behavior…”
Eli Goldratt (author of the Goal)

49. TECH@CORE
3rdIndustrialRevolution
(Informationasaresource)
4thIndustrialRevolution
(Technologyattheheartofvalue)
BUSINESS
SUPPORTING ROLE COLLABORATION TECH-LED
DIFFERENTIATION
Formal walls and
moats
Tech creates
digital assets
Tech / business
boundaries blur
Collaborative execution
Tech pervades a digital
business
TECH
My Big Client is here
MBC
YOU SHOULD FIND YOUR ORGANISATION MIGRATING TO THE
RIGHT

50. Ways of Working
Process Driven Outcome Driven
Cost Centre Value Creator
Transactional Empathetic
Reactive
- Long Cycles
Proactive
- Quick Feedback
MBC
MBC
MBC
MBC
YOU CAN FIND SUITABLE SLIDERS TO USE
Funding Technology
Internal Handovers
DevOps Culture
SUPPORTING ROLE COLLABORATION
TECH-LED
DIFFERENTIATION
TECH@CORE

51. UNDERSTAND YOUR ARCHITECTURAL
CHANGES
● Define fitness functions for “all the -ilities”
● Constantly monitor them
● Look for trends in the values
● Architecture can stop being a judgemental tradeoff as
empirical data supports each change
● Perhaps set alerts on some fitness functions

52. ● Try to find things that measure the whole system
● Unit tests and other automated tests are fitness
functions for an application
● Be creative - we started measuring total meeting
hours for tech leads to get a sense of coupling
● Use your tools such as Jenkins and Jira to
extract some useful metrics
DEFINING FITNESS
FUNCTIONS

53. FOUR KEY METRICS DIFFERENTIATE ORGANISATIONAL
PERFORMANCE
● The four key metrics differentiate high
performing and low performing organisations
● Subjectively improving architecture will improve
on the four key metrics
● The metrics are:
○ Lead time
○ Deployment frequency
○ Mean time to restore
○ Change fail percentage
Photo by Abbie Parks on Unsplash

54. 24 KEY CAPABILITIES DRIVE IMPROVEMENT IN FOUR KEY
METRICS
● 24 key capabilities drive improvement in
performance
● Split into 5 categories:
○ Continuous Delivery
○ Architecture
○ Product and Process
○ Lean Management and Monitoring
○ Cultural
● Identify weakest areas in each team
and fix them one by one

55. A FRAMEWORK FOR CONTINUAL
IMPROVEMENT - THE FIVE SIMPLE STEPS
1. List out the 24 key capabilities
2. Remove the organisational level ones if you
are working with a team
3. Decide which ONE you are weakest at
4. Create a simple action with an owner to
improve that capability
5. Reconvene and repeat the exercise after a
suitable interval

56. ● Understand Agile principles and values
● Outcome over Process every time
● Make small easy to understand changes
● Measure only the stuff that REALLY matters
● Relentlessly learn and improve
● Then maybe, just maybe, you’ll find that
AGILE IS NOT A DIRTY WORD!
EXEC SUMMARY

57. SOME USEFUL BOOKS