Did you know that nearly 50% of agile transformations fail and of those that fail nearly 70% are terminal. That is a lot of failure.
And it seems that this may be a conservative figure as well, the source for this is Jeff Sutherland from ScrumInc.
So knowing the causes of failure is worth understanding to avoid ending up in the failure bucket.
Now there are quite a few but the six most common ones that I've seen are;
Leadership, yes okay no great surprise there, they often lack true buy-in. Now Professor Kotter in his book Accelerate said he'd never seen a successful agile transformation that was led by waterfall leadership, now that's food for thought.
Organisational structure. So, the organisational structure remains the same. Command and control rules with the usual hierarchy.
Copy and paste, so copying what's been done before somewhere else like the mythical Spotify Model, this never works, every organisation's context is different.
Servant leadership, or more precisely a lack of servant leadership making it harder to embed the mindset and culture. Company’s continue with a do as I say not as I do philosophy.
Decision latency, people are not properly empowered to make their own decisions so self-management is not truly embraced. Check out my blog post on decision latency to find out more.
where being agile is the goal, ah yes, this reminds me of a cartoon by businessillustrator.com the receptionist shouts out to the manager ‘the gentleman is here to install agile’, ‘ah finally’ shouts out the manager. Look when agile is the goal you're doomed to fail, agile is not the goal business and strategic agility is.
So what can you do to help an agile transformation be successful as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach?
Build those relationships with leadership, get involved, create a safe space so that open honest and transparent conversations can happen.
Help them understand what good looks like, what kind of supporting structures will be needed in order for this to work. Be an advocate of flattening the hierarchy, in self-management, reducing decision latency.
Help build your own internal network of talented people, third-party consultancies will often be involved but you need skin in the game for this to work long term.
Be a good servant leader, spread the word.
Leadership is a choice you make rather than a place you sit, it's about your influence not your position - Stephen Covey / John Maxwell
So use your skills to great effect and convert the masses but with empathy. Be mindful though that not everyone can or wants to make this journey to explain the benefits to them personally and that this is a change that isn't necessarily a threat but actually could be an opportunity but don't push people.
And remember you're not going agile for agile's sake you're doing it for business and strategic agility, it's about the bottom line, survival, prosperity. So don't get all preachy and mystic, instead focus on getting great positive outcomes and value for your customers.
If at all possible do this without using 'agile' buzzwords and don't talk about the 'agile mindset'. Use business language that makes sense.
Look in the end really that's the only thing that matters and it will determine if the transformation is successful or not.....and potentially if you still have a job at the end of it.
Worth thinking about.
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