Cut it out, you are Agile by name only… You are the ‘Opal Towers’

Has the industry of so called ‘experts’ coaching organisations and teams, leading organisations to become the Australian ‘Opal Towers’. We are wearing ‘Agile badges’ but are we really? We look Agile, we talk Agile, we do the Agile practices but seriously crumbling on the inside. It just a big ‘sh#t’ sandwich.

For context: Any non-Australian readers the ‘Opal towers’ https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/it-s-a-lemon-opal-tower-owners-and-residents-rage-at-building-debacle-20190102-p50p6c.html

Are you Agile in Name?

  • Agile = happy customers, shippable products, releasable on demand or at the end of the iteration to help achieve an outcome
  • FrAgile = late, over budget, unhappy customers, delivering things that don’t lead to an real outcome or meeting expectations
  • Fail = total disaster, nothing delivered

Why you might be struggling….

Agile vision - Vagile

When you don’t have a solid ‘Vision‘ how do you know where you are going? How do you know if everyone is shooting in the right direction? Are we shooting from the hips (being reactive)?

By extension of this you won’t be able to have work distilled down to your teams. This will mean you will have difficulties with prioritisation and the latest expensive agile tools and software will only make you feel better as you fail.

If you can’t deliver anything valuable, these tools will just keep you busy as you continue to fail. No scaling framework will prevent you from failing. This is the reality.

The reality…

Doing stuff that doesn’t lead to any real value ‘Junk stories’, stories that are being delivered late and are missed opportunities. Stories that are not small enough to be emergent to make sure were are on the right track. There might be something in there where the PO or PM needing more guidance and training?

Ask yourself the stories your teams are delivering do they align back to the ‘Vision‘, can you see how the ‘Features‘ and ‘Epics‘ align to the overarching ‘Vision‘? Do your teams understand ‘Why‘ they are doing this?

There are definitely lots of things to consider but start with a compelling ‘Vision‘.

Vagile

Share