Based on insights from years of agile coaching and leading large agile transformations, Perspectives on agility provides a point of view on some of the crucial aspects that leaders, coaches, and agile practitioners need to focus on in their journey for business agility.

1. Book
Summary
Perspectives on Agility – Practical
Insights from the trenches
Based on insights from years of agile coaching and
leading large agile transformations, Perspectives on
agility provides a point of view on some of the crucial
aspects that leaders, coaches, and agile practitioners
need to focus on in their journey for business agility.

2. Who should read this book?
The book is primarily helpful for executives, leaders, and agile coaches who
are driving agile transformations. It will also resonate with agile practitioners
interested in getting a perspective on aspects of agility not commonly
discussed.
While the book covers a wide range of topics, it is definitely not an agile
primer. I hope to trigger the readers’ curiosity in learning more about the
topics covered. The topics were written in a specific context and are often
based on interactions with stakeholders, customers, colleagues, and friends
during my coaching engagements. The perspectives may not match an ideal or
textbook scenario and are closer to the real world. You may or may not agree
with the perspective in certain cases. The objective is to trigger your thinking
- generate questions on those topics that are more relevant in your situation.
Push you on a journey to find the answer that makes sense to your context
and you.

3. How is the book structured?
The book is divided into five parts. While each chapter is entirely independent and
can be read directly or in any order, the five parts try to bring related topics
together.
Part 1 is about being agile and discusses why we are transforming to agile in the
first place, our aspirations to be agile, and the journey towards business agility.
Part 2 presents facets around introducing agile and dives deeper into change
management and agile coaching.
Agile culture is vital in any agile journey, and this is what part 3 dives into.
Part 4 attempts to discuss insights relevant to leading the transformation and
especially useful for transformation leaders.
In the 5th and concluding part, we discuss perspectives on the implementation of
agile practices.

4. I. Being Agile

5. Agile. Why? What’s wrong with
waterfall?
Faced with challenges, companies look to Agile as their savior, which in
principle at least suggests a logical path forward. It changes the paradigm by
welcoming scope changes even late in the game, built-in regular feedback
mechanisms, and close customer collaboration at all stages, to name a few.
But it is not a silver bullet. It cannot solve systemic problems on its own.
However, it will do an excellent job of surfacing them.
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6. Our needs and aspirations drive
our level of agility
Where there is no need and no aspiration, well, nothing happens. Things stay
where they are or more often deteriorate. Where there are both, that’s where
we hear the exciting stories. In reality, it’s never so black or white. Life is not
binary. Our needs and aspirations depend a lot on the context, the situation,
and several other factors, and they keep changing. Maybe when they start,
some people want only an “agile label,” and as they go further, probably more
than that. Or they may stick with that agile label forever. This is true for
leaders driving agile implementations or individuals upgrading their skills.
Their context is going to decide that
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7. The Journey to True Business Agility
What constitutes true business agility depends on the enterprise, the industry,
the domain, and several more factors in the ecosystem. The rules that apply
for an internet start-up will not apply for a large-scale enterprise spread
across several continents. In fact, for enterprises, they could differ even from
unit to unit. It is crucial for organizations embarking on the agile journey to
define what true agility means for their enterprises. When you know the goal,
there could be multiple ways of reaching there. The path does not matter. We
are doing agile to achieve true business agility, not because we love
these practices. The practices and techniques are a means to an end. The goal
post - true business agility is what we are after, and that should be very clear
to everyone.
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8. Business agility is a wicked problem
A holistic approach that understands and appreciates business agility from a
complex adaptive system perspective is crucial. Instead of looking for linear
solutions and frameworks modeled like engineering systems, we need to look
more towards natural and ecological systems for answers. That has more
potential than force-fitting a framework in the hopes of achieving business
agility.
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9. II. Introducing Agile

10. Influence of Coach & Leaders’ bias on
agile transformation outcomes
Agile transformations happen in a particular context, with two very critical
parameters. One is the orientation of the coach who is guiding the
transformation. The second is the leaders – who are key stakeholders and
decision-makers in the organization transforming. Programs often observe
differing results based on these parameters. The model described here
attempts to capture the same and looks at the influence of those parameters
and possible outcomes. It relies on personal observations and discussions with
many coaches who are involved in large-scale agile transformations. Like
all models, it’s a thinking tool. It can aid in understanding our biases and the
context better - leading towards timely corrective actions and interventions.
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11. Change Management: Why Coaching
Matters
Effective and efficient coaching provides clear direction, regular feedback, and
positive engagement to 80%, who are beyond the early adopters – the early
and late majority. It’s about being in the trenches with these folks. The
innovators and early adopters are, anyways, going to do it. Both the early and
late majority need a clear strategy and approach; they form the bulk of the
target population, and a fundamental change in that audience ensures that
the change will stick around. The change will become the next status quo.
Coaching matters and is critical to the success of any change management
process. As in the story of Buddha discussed in this chapter, a few words will
give a push. The role of the coach is to enable that push.
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12. Evolving into Agility: The Butterfly
Story
Framework adoptions are not always resulting in greater adaptability. As
Malcolm Gladwell famously said, “A lot of what is most beautiful about the
world arises from struggle.” The struggle is part of the learning. It is part of
the natural cycle of evolution – of building that capacity. You cannot install
this capacity. It evolves. It is as true for organizations as it is valid for
natural systems. The frameworks and the practices are valuable. They do
have some merits in being points of reference. Yet the fact does remain –
organizations like butterflies need to evolve into agility. Something to ponder
on as the framework battles heat up!
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13. What Enterprises want when they
bring an Agile Coach onboard?
The coach and the leadership are equal partners in taking the organization
forward in this journey. That requires active collaboration between them.
Coaches who are the catalysts for change carry additional responsibility. They
need to trigger the right actions and reactions from the leadership for the
transformation to succeed. That is no trivial task.
Organizational transformations are never easy.
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14. Are they really listening and can
they digest?
The best formula for successful coaching, in my opinion, are personalized
conversations with learners who have questions; that you, as a coach, can address. It
goes together with their willingness to listen and give it a serious chance to digest.
Make sure they are really listening and bring only the message that they can digest.
Everything else is noise.
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15. Agile Coaching Lessons from the
Upanishads
Shared here are a few droplets from the vast ocean of knowledge that Upanishads are.
Coaching is successful when there is a pull from the student. It simply won’t work
where there is apathy or indifference. As is the Upanishadic style, first there must be
a question, then there will be answers. I hope this puts your mind into thinking mode
and generates some questions.
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16. III. Agile Culture

17. Agile is not the new normal, not
yet…
Still, there is a long journey ahead before agile becomes the new normal. And maybe it
never will, or rather should never become the new normal. The agile approach was
never process oriented. It was always about discovering better ways of doing things.
That is a quest that continues forever.
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18. Bridge Knowing-Doing Gap: Nudge
to an Agile mindset
A walk the talk approach from leadership and leveraging gamification are a few of the
many ways we can use nudges. Those gentle pushes or nudges help teams and leaders
make better choices and influence intended behavior without limiting what they can
do. Eventually, this might help them to cross the formidable ‘Knowing-Doing” chasm.
Slowly yet firmly, they nudge their way into an agile mindset. Happy Nudging!
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19. Build better agile teams – Apply Non-
Violent Communication (NVC) principles
Collaborative cultures are a critical aspect of high-performing teams. Approaches like
non violent communication are excellent to foster that culture. People are essentially
human at heart. Over time, they forget the details; what people remember is how you
made them feel. Non violent communication helps a lot in that direction.
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20. Lean not flat organizational structures
are the way to self-organization
Self-organization does not need flatter structures. It requires a cohesive team that
works together towards a focused goal. Self-organization needs rules that will prevent
the self-organization from transforming into chaos. What we need is a directed and
concerted effort to undertake any serious endeavor. We don’t need to throw away
management and governance. We need the right level of management and
governance. We need to be lean, not flat.
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21. Agile Frameworks are not our
problem. Linear thinking is
Systems thinking and model-based approaches help us be more creative in exploring
solutions to our problems. They can help us find those elusive patterns connecting our
dots and getting better transformation outcomes. Maybe even with the same
frameworks !!
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22. Culture Not Practices is the Key to
successful Agile Transformation
There are no cookbooks or best practices to build culture. It will be a lot of sweat and
blood, and in most cases, people transfer this culture one to one, heart to heart. At
some point, there will be enough momentum that agile thinking will be natural
to many people. When this happens, even the late majority and the laggards will see
the light. But until then, you need to focus on building and especially protecting the
new culture consciously. Building culture is more important than practices. Once the
culture sinks in, the correct practices will follow and voilà – You are Agile !!
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23. IV. Leading Agile

24. Leading People through an Agile
Transformation – Concrete steps you can
take as a Leader
Organizational change has always been a challenging task. The process of starting
something new often leads to uncertainty and insecurity. More so, when the end state
after the change is not fully comprehended. Such situations are often the case in large-
scale enterprise agile transformations. Leading people through such times is a
daunting task for any executive. Agile transformations are and should be disruptive
unless you want a label for your marketing efforts. True agility would involve moving
to new working methods along with organizational restructuring that brings new roles
and responsibilities. Before we can realize the promised gains, there is a dip in
productivity that we must successfully manage. Transforming an organization is a lot
about transforming our people. Engaged and active leadership playing the catalyst
remains a crucial success factor for organizational transformations.
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25. Becoming an Agile Leader: Jedi
wisdom
George Lucas’s science fiction saga “Star Wars” has profoundly influenced generations.
The Jedi knights’ wisdom especially remains relevant and insightful to this day for
many in their personal lives. However, those pearls of wisdom, the seven postulates
described in this chapter, are very much helpful for leading agile transformations too
and provide fantastic insights. The leader is the ultimate role model whose actions
create the right environment for the teams to succeed on their agile journey. These
seven postulates of Jedi wisdom serve as an excellent guide to model the correct
behavior. Remember. The Force will be with you. Always !!
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26. Agile Leadership: Timeless wisdom
from Lincoln
The United States was fortunate to have a fantastic leader like Abraham Lincoln
during one of its most tumultuous periods. It astounds me that Lincoln’s operating
style was so close to what we would expect of an agile leader. Indeed I am slowly
and surely more inclined to say; what we tend to describe as “agile leadership” is
essentially “good leadership.” Some of the most outstanding leaders have always
exhibited those traits. As Lincoln said "You cannot escape the responsibility of
tomorrow by evading it today.", Leadership is indeed a responsibility. Don’t just be
good agile leaders! Be Great !!
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27. Don’t just Lead Change. Accelerate!
Leading Change by Dr. John Kotter is seminal work in the field of change
management. It put forth a step-by-step guide of what to do if we want lasting
change. However, is step by step good? Step by step approach is fundamentally linear
thinking in a deterministic world. However, our world is no longer deterministic. The
business world is complex, and organizational systems more often display attributes
of complex adaptive systems than linear systems. More so in a knowledge economy.
These requires using different models of thought to drive change. The role of
leadership goes beyond providing just support for the change. Leaders need to
accelerate it with tools based on a better understanding of the newer world.
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28. V. Agile Practices

29. Probe and Sense before you Respond
The empirical approach - the fundamental way we probe and make sense of the world
around us before we respond- is at the heart of agile thinking and the right way to
bring agility. Your approach for an agile transformation cannot be static. It cannot be
predetermined. It needs to constantly evolve - deeply rooted in the empirical
philosophy of transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Probe. Sense. Respond - is the
way to go.
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30. Business agility needs Technical
agility
Too often, we hear teams complain – agile does not work for them. They are getting
the same results as a waterfall approach, or they are worse off than before. When you
talk to them to understand better, it would often turn out they are focusing primarily
on planning or process improvements – refining their Scrum, Kanban, or whatever
form of agile process framework they practice. They are missing the most crucial facet
of agility – technical agility. Achieving technical agility is a crucial milestone on
your journey to business agility. Business agility needs technical agility. It is not
optional, and there are no shortcuts.
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31. Metrics - What’s measured improves,
Choose Wisely
“What’s measured improves.” is a quote often referred to in any discussion around
metrics. Often attributed to Drucker, in fact, he never said it. However, the fact
remains. Metrics are a crucial part of any project or program and what is measured
has an impact on the objectives either positively or detrimentally. The discussion about
metrics is not a discussion about what we want to measure. It’s a discussion of what
we want to improve. The importance of particular metrics may change as the program
evolves, and that’s fine. However, we need to focus on a few parameters at any given
point of time – the things where attention is needed “now.” Metrics decide the direction
and success of the program. Choose wisely.
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32. (Ruthless) Retrospectives for true
business agility
The goal of any transformation effort cannot be to go “agile” or the new buzz word
“DevOps” but to benefit business by transforming the system into a leaner, faster, and
better machine. This system is continuously learning and adapting. To do this,
retrospectives that find and fix real problems are the key. Ruthless retrospectives at all
levels - team, program, and portfolio are essential to true business agility. You can adapt
in the right direction only if your inspection is honest and ruthless
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33. Is Daily Scrum Meeting Optional?
The chapters discusses the story of Rita, a scrum master who is puzzled on where the
daily scrum is indeed needed in her scenario. The team does a one sprint experiment and
eventually decide not to do a formal daily scrum at the start of the day. Rita’s team was
very aligned, and team members often went to lunches and coffee breaks together that
allowed them to discuss items too. It does not mean they never had a huddle. Whenever
they had an issue that demanded all hands on deck, someone just blew a whistle. The
team would gather within minutes for their huddle. The key lesson here is that agile
practices like the daily scrum and many others are not immutable. They can be adapted.
However, use your discretion wisely.
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34. Working software is the primary
measure of progress.
Effective project governance is a crucial aspect of successful delivery. Out of the many
tools that traditional managers love, the Requirement traceability matrix is a popular
one. However, we can rely on practices like acceptance tests and system demos to get us
better insights even if we are in a not-so-ideal world, doing water-scrum-fall kind of
approaches. Instead of documentation-heavy methods like requirement traceability
matrix, we should base our governance practices on strategies that align with the
fundamental principle of agile - working software is the primary measure of progress
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35. Cost of Delay – An Economic Model for
Decision Making
We prioritize in a world where time is precious and resources are scarce. Interestingly
economics is all about scarcity, and we can learn from it to help us quickly discover,
nurture and speed up the delivery of value. Cost of delay provides a structured
economic model-based approach to decision making. It makes the trade-offs visible to all
stakeholders. It is not perfect, and the execution will still throw those wild surprises.
It’s a tool to help us choose with more awareness of the underlying facts, whatever we
know until that point. And it does help to change the focus purely from efficiency and
cost to speed and value.
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36. Make Kanban Work – Limit WIP Don’t
get stuck on Visualization
Most Kanban implementations often pause or stagnate after the board setup, when in
fact that is when the journey has just begun. Setting up and using WIP limits to drive
flow is the next step which many don't take. It requires engagement to understand your
system and setting decent thresholds for WIP at the start. It also requires a
commitment to shift to this working mode and not do WIP exceptions in all cases. We
can do this gradually. You need to experiment with WIP Limits. Just introduce enough
constraints to cause some pain yet not impact the deliveries severely. Without any pain,
there is no impetus to improve. Yet we don’t want so much pain that it kills the
initiative. Visualization using Kanban boards is mapping your system. Limiting WIP is
what will get you to improve your system. Make Kanban work for you. Limit WIP. Don’t
get stuck at visualization. Move On.
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37. Get it on Amazon
• Free on Kindle Unlimited
• Buy on Kindle
• Physical Copy Global India

38. About the author
Hrishikesh Karekar
With 22 years in the software industry, Hrishikesh
has been a product developer, a project manager, an
agile coach and led end to end large scale agile
transformations as an enterprise coach. He is
passionate about building high performing teams and
taking individuals and teams on a journey of
excellence and satisfaction. Agile to him is not just
about implementing effective, efficient and lean
processes that are “fit for purpose”, but transforming
people’s mindsets – to deliver better outcomes and
achieving true business agility, and hopefully a more
sane world!
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