I spend a lot of my time visiting companies who have implemented agile transformation programmes but complain agile is not delivering the expected results quickly or cheaply enough. The good news is that because they’re using agile, any mismatch in expectation is highlighted early on and work can begin to close the gap.
Let’s start by dispelling a few myths:
But… you have a much higher chance of delivering early, realising benefits more quickly, building a solution your users actually want and flexing scope to meet the changing priorities of your organisation.
If you read those points and were thinking “I know all that” then the issue is not expectation vs. reality which is good, many organisations adopt agile believing it will be the solution to all of their problems but unfortunately ‘being agile’ is not enough.
When the expectation of what agile will and will not do for your organisation is realistic then it’s time to look at how agile is being executed. In order to improve the effectiveness of agile I recommend assessment across the following areas (in priority order):
If you make a concerted effort to measure and continuously improve these areas, I guarantee you will see better results.
If you are a CTO, CIO or CDO and responsible for the parallel implementation of multiple large scale transformation programmes then it’s not unreasonable for you …
This one might be a little controversial, especially with those who make their living coaching agile teams. …