Why so many teams get agile wrong—and how to avoid this
A simple guide to agile values, principles & practices
Within the business world, there’s a word that causes many people to have an almost visceral reaction. Mention the word “agile”, and people are instantly horrified. They’ll rush to tell you about their terrible experiences and how they never want to hear that word again.
As a transformation coach and consultant, I hear these horror stories all the time. And I’ve come to realise that although they come from people in a broad range of roles and industries, they all have one thing in common: Their organisations were fixated on adopting agile practices instead of living the underlying values and principles.
Agile itself is not a dirty word. But when organisations try to “do Agile” rather than be agile, they’re forcing their people to do things without understanding why. And without context and clarity on agile values and principles, teams that adopt agile practices are essentially set up to fail. If you don’t understand why you do certain things, you can’t make good decisions on when to choose which tool and what to improve to get to the desired outcome.
What does “agile” really mean?
Part of the problem is that the word “agile” has been conflated with a set of specific activities or rituals, like working in sprints or having a scrum master. But these are only the practices associated with agile. And without the foundation of agile values and principles, they lose their meaning.
The original Manifesto for Agile Software Development was created in 2001. It’s written as a simple set of principles, such as “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” and “Responding to change over following a plan.” Just reading the principles affirms that it’s not about tools, processes, and plans. Yet somehow, that message has gotten lost over time.
By the way, if you’re looking for additional (light) reading on the topic, I like the Scrum Alliance’s distillation of the agile values and principles and find the extreme programming (XP) values (Simplicity, Communication, Feedback, Respect, and Courage) particularly accessible for developing an agile mindset as a leader.
I know this may still feel a bit theoretical, so let’s look at the concepts of values, principles, and practices in more detail.
Values: Enduring things we believe to be true, which rarely change
Principles: Guided by values, things (generally) that help us achieve our values
Practices: Built on top of principles to solve specific problems
For example, one of the XP values is courage. As a value, this means to speak up and offer feedback openly and constructively without fear of negative consequences. To foster courage in a team, it’s critical to promote psychological safety. There are no dumb questions, and feedback is always welcome. Take this approach, and your team and product will continually improve.
The value of courage translates into the following principles:
Continuous improvement: We welcome feedback. No questions are bad questions. The sooner we spot and fix mistakes, the better.
Challenging the status quo: We continually strive to improve.
Permission to say/ask anything: We also value respect. Note that this isn’t an invitation to be nasty.
Shared ownership: We are collectively responsible for the success of this product/ these outcomes.
These principles can be brought to life through practices like a retrospective: a regular, reflective team practice to review what works well and what could be improved in how the team works. It’s designed to be inclusive and non-judgmental so everyone has a voice. The focus is on continuous improvement.
Consider for a moment the difference between creating a strong foundation of values and principles as opposed to adding a retrospective to your calendar every month or quarter. If you haven’t created an environment where people feel encouraged to give feedback and share accountability, it may just feel like yet another meeting on their calendars that’s preventing them from doing their actual work. Or, worse, the team operates in a culture that punishes this openness.
Adopting agile: What not to do
According to Harvard Business Review, 70 to 95% of digital transformations fail. So how do you avoid that outcome for your own agile transformation? Here are a few guiding principles of what not to do.
Don’t move forward without an understanding of the underlying principles. If you do this, you’ll often continue with contradictory practices that undermine your chances of success.
Don’t cargo cult. You can’t simply imitate a process or practice without understanding and adopting the why behind it and hope to achieve the same result.
Don’t look for a silver bullet or a to-do list. I always get questions about fixed practices and tools. Leaders just want a list. But this mindset is what causes all those negative experiences with agile.
Don’t skip important things because they are hard, uncomfortable, or don’t fit your current culture. Transformation is about change, which is often difficult. But it’s still worth doing!
Adopting agile: What to do instead
So now that we know what not to do, here are a few guiding principles that will set you up for success on your agile journey.
Do: Embrace the underlying mindset shift that aligns with agile values and focus on the values and principles.
Do: Understand the context and possible limitations of the origin of the Agile Manifesto. Because the Agile Manifesto was made for engineers by engineers in 2001 (at a time when you still had to install things physically on a server instead of today’s continuous delivery), you can use these values in the spirit they were intended rather than following them rigidly to the letter. Understand the difference between adapting to your current context and cutting corners.
Do: Adapt agile principles to cross-functional teams. Embracing lean and user-centred principles is a good starting point (instead of arguing that this is not “pure agile” as handed down in the scripture). Work with your cross-functional teams to align the philosophy with their needs. Every function can review its ways of working through the lens of lean and agile values and experiment towards a shared transformation goal. This is not an excuse to skip increasing agility, “because we’ve always done it like this”.
Do: Get comfortable embracing change. I see most organisations cling to traditional practices because of the comfort of predictability and top-down decision-making. Even if it’s proven that this is impossible in reality and leads to slow products that fail to make the expected impact in the hands of customers. This is incompatible with reaping the benefit of adopting agile.
Do: Prepare to learn and make mistakes along the way. This is part of the process!
Remember what you’re leaving behind. “Waterfall amounts to a pledge by all parties not to learn anything while doing the actual work.” Clay Shirky
Taking the next steps on your agile journey
Now that you know that agile is not a dirty word and you have some ideas about how to approach (and avoid) your organisation’s agile transformation, you may be wondering what’s next.
One of your biggest goals is to embrace learning and apply what you learn. I recommend being firm on your values and reasonably flexible on your practices.
While I don’t like to assign specific to-do items (see my “What not to do” list!), I do realise that many leaders are looking for a simple step they can take to embrace agile principles. If that’s you, I recommend holding regular retros with the intent of continually reflecting and improving along with your team.
But remember: You do actually have to take action based on what you uncover during retros. And you do need to create a safe space for everyone to be able to speak up without negative repercussions. Otherwise, you’re simply going through the motions, but there’s very little likelihood you’re actually learning from the process and reaping the benefit.
Looking for a little more support on your agile (or any transformation) journey? Get in touch to discuss how we might work together!
