What "agile" means or doesn't mean and what we should consider to become more successful and agile "Agile, that's this Scrum thing," as one participant recently said - I can only say: dangerous half-knowledge, if we can even call it that... Agility is of course much more than just Scrum. Almost everyone wants to be agile nowadays or sees it as important or even essential, but only a few succeed: according to the management consultancy Hays, about
- 80% of those responsible confirm a lack of method knowledge
- almost two-thirds cite an unsuitable corporate culture, and
- less than 1 in 10 achieve complete implementation of agile methods
So what is agility then? The Gabler Business Dictionary describes agility as proactive (not reactive) agility and flexibility (of the individual employee and also of an entire organization). Doesn't really help much, does it?! And how does agility differentiate itself from digital, when digital and agile transformation are often (incorrectly) used synonymously? While digitization mainly describes the (new) digital products, platforms, processes, and tools, agility aims at the individual as well as organizational ability to be able to act more systematically, faster, and more successfully in the dynamic and complex VUCA world, focusing on customers and employees. Agility includes more than just agile methods such as e.g.
- Design Thinking for customer-centered idea generation and testing,
- Business Model Canvas for a systematic review of the profitability of new or existing solutions,
- Lean Startup, Kanban, and Scrum for faster, iterative, and lower-risk implementation, and
- OKR (Objectives & Key Results) as an agile, employee-involved goal philosophy and system.
Without the right purpose, vision/mission, strategy, and mindset, all these methods are nothing: 77% of respondents in the Capgemini Change Management Study (2019) cite culture as a success factor for agility, and almost two-thirds see leadership and people as drivers for agile transformation - ranks 1 and 2. And this is about much more than just sneakers and using "you" with each other. Studies have shown significant benefits of agile approaches in extremely high rates of improvement in teamwork, customer satisfaction, innovation speed, and result quality compared to traditional approaches (University of Koblenz with the German Project Management Association GPM). Often, with a lack of detailed knowledge of methods, the wrong mindset and culture, and sometimes (un)intentional "abuse," these benefits cannot be realized - this creates more frustration than joy. Unfairly, blame is then placed on the agile methods: "I knew this newfangled stuff wouldn't work anyway!" - ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy? And definitely don't blame yourself... Here are my private collection of worst practices from my experience: #1 "We don't really need Kanban, but it's just 'in fashion' right now" #2 "Let's just do Design Thinking (simply), it's not rocket science" #3 "We all agreed to use OKR" (while the narcissistic boss decided alone) #4 "I don't need a retrospective (at the end of each cycle)" #5 "Daily stand-ups are in the Scrum rulebook, so we must do them daily" #6 "Although we developed a great prototype for the new system in the team in 5 days, the boss wants it done differently now - to his taste!" #7 "It's totally agile to carry over 50% of the Sprint Planning to the next cycle" Aaaarrgghhh, not only the co-founders of the Scrum methodology Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland would turn in their graves for that (fortunately, they are still alive). And besides these (obvious) screw-ups, we haven't even talked about professional transformation/change management... which is more than just calling it a 'shift' and then everything is fine. Let's do it better! Because it has been proven to work better...!!! What are your good and bad experiences? Let's exchange ideas... Yours Arndt
