Doug Bromley, Technical Product Owner at 6B Digital, attended our Agile Fundamentals course in November. He chose to do his Lessons Learned Log, the final work for the course, as a mind map. And what a mind map it is! We loved it so much, we asked him if we could share it with all of you. Thanks Doug!
Our Agile Fundamentals course, accredited by ICAgile, helps you experience the Agile mindset and principles that underpin all of the frameworks. You’ll learn how to use and combine Scrum, Kanban, Agile Project Management, Continuous Integration, and Lean Startup. Fix problems with late releases, lacklustre development teams, and plans that are destined for failure.
The results of the latest State of Agile survey are in. The annual report, released on 7th May, is the 13th from the software vendor VersionOne. Over 1,300 people were surveyed, most working as Scrum Masters and internal coaches (34%), development managers (15%), and project or programme managers (11%).
Takeaway 1: We need the right culture to be successful with agile
The report says ‘organization culture issues remain the leading impediments to adopting and scaling agile’ along with ‘inadequate management support and sponsorship’ as barriers to getting the value from using agile methods. ‘Executive sponsorship’ was given as a critical ingredient for success.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is the well-known saying that means all of the best business planning and execution will fail without the right culture to support you.
But wait a minute… we’ve known, for almost 20 years, the culture needed to get benefits from agile methods such as Scrum, XP, and DSDM. It’s described in the values and principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. So what’s the problem?
Most coaching in organisations has focused on delivery teams, however my own research has shown that organisations realised the most benefits from agile methods when the delivery team had business representatives committed to achieving the product or service delivery goals. Strong relationships must be in place across functional areas. It is leadership’s role to ensure this happens.
Takeaway 2: Organisations are still over-reliant on Scrum alone
On the chart showing the agile methods used by the organisations of the 1,300-plus respondents, the agile project management method DSDM is nowhere to be seen. And yet, most people I meet who use agile methods are delivering projects. Pure Scrum (not combined with other methods) is used exclusively, said 54% of respondents.
One wonders what mindset and tools were adopted in place of traditional project management. Anecdotally, agile teams still are, generally, working at odds with PMO and other project governance functions.
The State of Agile survey results seem to corroborate what I’ve experienced in my work with organisations: the project controls that organisations put in place to de-risk their hefty investments in IT systems delivery are not adapting to uncertainty. They are being ignored, though the need to control and de-risk projects is still as high as ever.
I’d like to see agile evangelists working together with project governance to build a common mindset – they could use the principles and techniques of DSDM, for example, and adapt them to their own environment.
Many of you have heard already that my dissertation has been accepted by Henley Business School for the MSc in Coaching and Behavioural Change. I appreciate the support so many of you gave me while I was interviewing, gathering background literature, and generally talking about this project non-stop. Now that the work has been accepted and I’ve finished the programme, I can report my approach and findings from the project. This is the first in a 3-part series on my research findings for what makes organisations’ adoption of agile methods successful. An executive summary of the report findings is available on request.
I can guess at what you’re thinking now: why do we need another report on the success and failure of our initiatives to be ‘agile’? Many of our initiatives are aimed at changing role descriptions, applying a new process, or licensing new tools. If these initiatives were successful, we wouldn’t be spending thousands on change programmes only to find that we didn’t really capture the hearts and minds of people to make them a success. After years of work as a coach and trainer supporting your initiatives, I wanted to know what happened after my clients went back into their organisations with their new mindsets and skills. In other words, what else should I offer as a team coach to support your success?
McKinsey 7S
First defined by McKinsey consultants Robert Waterman and Tom Peters in 1980, the McKinsey 7S framework defines seven aspects of an organisation that should be attended to, when attempting to change culture. The problem, they identified, was that many business leaders believed that a strong strategy, and the processess to implement it, would create the change they wanted. A balanced view of organisational change, they argued, needs to address also the people, systems, and capabilities. Moreover, understanding the organisation’s values is foundational to all of these.
In ‘Making Sense of Change Management’, Esther Cameron and Mike Green describe 7S as an approach for examining an organisation’s culture to prioritise areas for change. They provide definitions for each of the aspects:
Strategy – organisational goals and plan, use of resources
Staff – important categories of people within the organization; the mix, diversity, retention, development and maximizing of their potential
Structure – the organization chart, and how roles, responsibilities and accountabilities are distributed in furtherance of the strategy
Skills – distinctive capabilities, knowledge and experience of key people
Systems – processes, IT systems, HR systems, knowledge management systems
Style – management style and culture
Shared Values – guiding principles that make the organization what it is
Having analysed the topics discussed by my research participants, I identified the most commonly discussed themes into categories defined by the McKinsey 7S framework. This gave me a view of their organisation’s culture based on where they focused their discussions with me. The focus of participants overall showed a high focus on Systems and Style.
Categorisation of Research Participant topics in the McKinsey 7S framework
Categorisation of Agile Manifesto topics in the McKinsey 7S framework
When compared to the map of 7S aspects for the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, the recommendation is that teams should increase their focus on Strategy and Shared Values, and reduce their focus on Systems and Style, to be more effective with agile methods.
In Part 2 of this series, I will discuss the specific success factors of teams that had more balanced implementations of agile methods as compared to the average across the study.
The worlds of Agile development and professional coaching come together for the first time to show how organisations become Agile in more than name only. For all leaders, coaches, and change agents.
