I see many teams and team members who say, “Agile stinks. It's a way to force me to work too fast and not finish anything.”
When I ask people what's happening, they say:
- We're doing an agile death march because someone else already told us what we have to do and the date it's due.
- We have a standup which is more like a serial status report at least once a day for an hour. I can't get anything done.
- We have too many delays because we don't have enough of the right kind of people.
That's not all. When I work with these teams or their managers, I realize they're not demoing or retrospecting on a regular basis. (And don't get me started on how coaches tend to do life coaching instead of support for agility.)
That creates distrust and an anti-agile culture.
Worse, these people and teams don't feel any satisfaction with their products. The managers worry that the teams can't finish “anything on time.”
This is waterfall dressed up as “agile.”
There are many better ways. And all those ways require we change the culture from that of resource-efficiency thinking to flow-efficiency thinking. That's a cultural change.
Flow Efficiency Cultural Changes
When teams collaborate, they work in flow efficiency and often see better teamwork and throughput. (Since they collaborate, they can often manage their WIP, too.) But, collaboration requires a change in all aspects of culture.
Here's what I mean about culture:
- What we can discuss,
- How we treat each other,
- What the system rewards.
The more we reward individual work, the less the team collaborates. Often, the longer the cycle time and the lower the throughput. (See the Measure Cycle Time, Not Velocity for more images and explanations.)
When teams can't discuss their work, either for planning or retrospecting, the team has no autonomy, very little mastery, and the purpose is often unclear.
And think about how you might feel if someone hands you work and says, “Go execute. And deliver it by such-and-such a day.” That's not treating people as if they are part of an effective team, regardless of their agility.
That's why I say agility requires cultural changes. This is also why most agile transformations fail. If no one in management is able or willing to change the culture, an agile transformation cannot succeed.
However, you have choices. If your organization is not willing to create an agile culture, you can change how you work.
Since I'm frantically finishing other writing, I'll make this a series.