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Myths, Legends and Monsters of Enterprise Agility
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Transcript of Myths, Legends and Monsters of Enterprise Agility
Myths, Legends & Monsters
The Quest for the Grail of Enterprise Agility
François Bachmann, SPRiNT iT
Who’s talking
François Bachmann • « The Urban Traffic Parable »
• « The Art of the Retrospective » (Agile-Alchemist.com)
• Organisational Development Coach since 2004
• Interests: Systemic Thinking, Complex Adaptive Systems (like a Jam Session @AgileEE )
What You Should Get
Your initial situation
• Pilot project « success »
• Request/need to scale this success
• Existing company
]Out of Scope[ • Introduction to Agile, Lean, Scrum, XP, …
• Growing an agile company
Warnings(1) Scaling is always complex
Warnings (2)
Agile is a mindset, an attitude plan lots of time for full-fledged adoption
Starter: A customer myth
« Normal Change » at a Swiss bank
Source: http://itsm.certification.info/normalchg.html
Myth
A traditional or legendary story that can contain a moral lesson
Built on Archetypes Gods, animals, angels, demons, other worlds
Used to justify a social institution and its way of viewing the world
Told at ceremonies (start, transformation, end)
Principal purpose: federate
Source: dictionary.reference.com
Myths: project choice / dimension
« Let’s do Agile within a fixed-price contract »
« We apply Agile but only to Development »
« We do ALL our projects with Agile»
Myths: Roles
ScrumMaster: Thor / Superman /
James Bond / Chuck Norris
« Three Roles is enough for any company » Scrumdamentalism (H.Kniberg)
« In our company, we’re all like a big family»
Myths: transition
« Just use Scrum of Scrums and everything will be fine»
« Trust me, in this company we know what change management is! »
« To really become Agile, you have to destroy & rebuild from scratch»
Summary: Myths
• Main purpose: federate
• Used for justification of status quo
• Usually involve superhumans
• Reveal values of the company
Legend (lat. legenda = to be read)
• Official shape of the rumour spread during coffee breaks
• « I know someone who… »
• Urban Legend
• Can end both ways
• Finishes with a lesson to learn
Principal purpose: education
Legend: Company Culture
« My cousin tried to introduce Agile in his company: it didn’t work at all!
Now I agree that they have a very special company culture….»
« Actually, our company culture has always been agile; let’s just change the terminology and we’ll be fine»
Customer Legends: Company Culture
• Mediterranean: mix of nationalities
• Web company: resource allocation > flow
Legends: Organisation
« It seems that this won’t work in an outsourcing context… »
« Another team in our division used it during a few months, their productivity dropped…
and they switched back afterwards»
« What about my career plan? »
Legends: Transition
« A well-planned transition is the cornerstone of success: plan the work, work the plan»
« Let’s just establish a matrix between the old and the new roles»
Legend: Tool
« Company X bought tool Y when they moved to Agile and the whole enterprise is now using it. But how can I convince my management? »
Summary: Legends
Purpose: Institutionalized Learning « What hasn’t worked in the past and what were the consequences »
Advice: are a very efficient communication tool: « Worst Practices » or NotHow-Transfer©
Monster (lat. monstrum:
wild beast)
• Impersonates resistance
• Gatekeeper
• Requires the hero to go beyond the normal plan
Monsters: Middle Management « I’ll be the Scrum Master for all teams » « I can replace the Product Owner, if needed » « Well, someone has to assign the developers to
projects, no?! »
Strengths: network, relationships Weaknesses: conflicting priorities, overestimates his potential influence Fights for: his position and his « power » Approach: give him a catalyst role, actively include in information exchange
Monster: Project/Process Office
Distinguishing marks: once they understand Agile is not going away, they will try to govern it and create rules
Strength: power to standardize Weakness: mechanistic world view Fights for: being the process master
and force their rules on developers
Approach: 1) produce their artefacts and 2) when the right time comes: question the value of these artefacts (not of the Project Office!)
Monster: Saboteur
Definition: Person who is involved but has a hidden agenda (subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction)
Strength: internal knowledge Weakness: bottleneck Fights for: « unofficial » priorities Approach: make responsibilities explicit,
confront one-on-one if necessary
Monster: AgileGuru Pretends to sell the One And Only Agile Distinguishing marks:
elitist, likes to fight (he/she usually wins)
Strength: *very* convinced by his Agile flavor Weakness: exclusive, tends to work alone Fights for: his Truth (destroying others) Approach: recall Agile values, let him show
how his flavor brings them forward
Summary: Monsters
• Strongholds, Gatekeepers
• Have power & reputation
• Often easier to « turn around » than to overpower
• Advice: don’t play on their territory!
Summary Properties How it’s helpful Suggested approach
Myth Historical, heroes, « Best Practices »
federates and illustrates common values (world view)
passive-implicit communication, strategy and long term follow-up
Legend « Worst Practice »
Lessons learnt, NotHow-Transfer©
active-explicit communication, use & recall in major retrospectives
Monster Personalized objection , Gatekeeper
Strong, potential ally, when aligned with your cause
negotiate, convince, align on values
Enjoy the Quest, brave knights!