Has Agile Lost its Lustre Through Poor Change Management?

Listen to a podcast about this article here: https://youtu.be/CvnxAwvpxX0

Recently, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with a client I worked with back in 2007. They initially sought my help with their Scrum implementation and expanding the reach of Agile within their organization. Fast forward 18 years, and they've built a large, successful Agile delivery capability.

During our conversation, I was asked a thought-provoking question: “How does Agile in our company compare with agility in other companies?”

This made me pause. Why would someone be interested in such a comparison? It likely stems from a desire to know: “Have we implemented Agile in the best possible way, or is there still room for improvement?”

When it comes to comparing cross-implementation, tools like Comparative Agility exist. However, I believe true comparison should focus on results, not just methods. Whether you're mastering Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or LeSS is irrelevant if the initial challenges that prompted adopting these methods haven't been overcome or significantly reduced.

Before Agile, organizations faced challenges like:

• Poor employee engagement

• Involved product ownership

• Inconsistent and unpredictable product delivery

• Lack of solution fitness for the market

• Time to market

• High levels of rework

Therefore, instead of comparing Agile methods across companies, it's more valuable to reflect internally. Where have we made progress? Where have we fallen short?

To do this effectively, we need to compare our results against our initial goals. Often, organizations I've encountered over the past 20 years had outcomes mandated from above, such as:

• “75% of projects will be Agile by next year.”

• “Improve the quality of delivered products.”

• “We must get our products to market faster.”

The problem? These definitions often lack measurable components. In the first case, the measurement doesn't even suggest a valuable outcome.

This highlights a broader issue: “We haven't done our homework well enough.” Understanding the pain points and quantifying them is crucial for defining meaningful, measurable, non-binary outcomes. In my opinion, this is the cornerstone of change management. Don't initiate changes at any scale unless you're crystal clear about how things should look different in the future, and how you'll measure progress. Many companies, I've found, relied on “gut-feel” when adopting techniques that “seemed” to work for others.

In today's uncertain times, critical thinking is paramount. This is why I love the Flight Levels® approach to improving organizations. Rather than providing a recipe for success, and leaving the sourcing of ingredients up to you, Flight Levels® takes the approach of providing ingredients, and guiding you through a process of critical thinking about assessing and defining clear outcomes, discovering how your organization ticks today, and where you might want to use ingredients to leverage the improvement needed to achieve those outcomes. This is combined with regular feedback loops to track progress and adapt plans and outcomes accordingly. This approach is much more suitable for complex organizational change. You can preserve what works while evolving what doesn't, all towards tangible results.

Ultimately, an organization isn't just about “Agile”; it's about attracting and retaining clients through its products and services. The method of producing those products is unique to each organization. Competitive advantage isn't gained by blindly following the same “best practices.” It's gained by iterating and evolving with a deeper understanding of how “we” build products and serve customers.

Here's some advice to improve change management:

1. Define meaningful, measurable outcomes rooted in the challenges you're trying to overcome.

2. Plan actions towards those outcomes collaboratively with the people impacted.

3. Make the work and way of work visible.

4. Create focus to ensure work gets done.

5. Establish clear feedback loops to measure progress and adapt plans and outcomes collaboratively.

6. Iterate on these steps.

I’m convinced that if organizations take the care to address change in this way, that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If we don’t, then the only way we’ll realize meaningful improvement is through luck and hope.

If you want to know more about how to better define outcomes, how to create clear connection between the outcomes and the work, how to visualise the work and the way of work, and how to coordinate efforts across the organization to achieve results, then head over to https://www.levelup.guide, or drop me a line.

Please share your opinions and insights in the comments below! Let’s discuss this! The conversation is more important than whether I’m right or wrong.