Agile works!
Many agile coaches are discouraged by the state of agile today. There is a lot of dark scrum, fake agile, water-scrum-fall and authoritarian SAFe out there. But we need to remember that there is still tremendous value in real agile.
When I’ve been empowered and supported, I have transformed multiple teams and business units into high performing agile teams that did great work, and people loved working in. The research supports this. Standish Group research shows that projects using agile approaches are 3X more likely to be successful and 1/3 as likely to fail, as shown below.
Successful Agile transformations start with leaders who embrace an agile mindset. As Sam McAfee so elegantly puts it, “Agile originated from a way of thinking about software development that is fundamentally anti-hierarchical, collaborative, flexible — and fast. It’s everything the traditional corporate machine, based on large scale standardization and long term predictability, is designed to remove from the system. So, naturally, large organizations exert a kind of organ rejection spasm against any attempts to introduce flexibility, creativity, and, especially, autonomy, into the process.” from The problem is not your team; it's you.
Agile leaders embrace uncertainty and change. They know they don't and can't have all the answers. They delegate decision making down to the lowest level possible and give teams the responsibility, information and support to go with it.
As Jack Welch from GE said, “Set objectives, put the right people in place, and get the hell out of the way.”
What's your experience? Have you seen any really good agile transformations?
