"Agile" Not Working for You? See Your Reality & Incorporate Agility

Your team is supposed to use an agile approach, such as Scrum. But you have a years-long backlog, your standups are individual status reports, and you’re still multitasking. You and your team members wish you had the chance to do great work, but this feels a lot like an “agile” death march.

There’s a reason you feel that way. You’re using fake agility—a waterfall lifecycle masquerading as an agile approach. Worse, fake agility is the norm in our industry.

No one has to work that way.

Instead, you can assess your culture, project, and product risks to select a different approach. That will allow you to choose how to collaborate so you can iterate over features and when to deliver value. When you do, you are more likely to discover actual agility and an easier way to work.

Transcript

1. “Agile” Not Working for You? See Your Reality and Incorporate Agility Johanna Rothman jr@jrothman.com www.jrothman.com https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman
2. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Everyone’s gone “Agile,” right? 2
3. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman So Many Problems • Long and extensive backlogs and roadmaps • Teams become feature factories with little product strategy • Little to no experimentation • Lots of late changes • No joy. No ease. The grind of work. 3
4. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Culture is the Root Cause 4 • Resource ef fi ciency thinking: Individual actions or deliverables • Flow ef fi ciency thinking: Create environment for everyone to succeed in teams • Rewards can drive your organizational structure
5. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman When managers reward resource ef fi ciency, true agility cannot survive However, you have many options 5
6. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Waterfall or agile is not a useful question (leads to fake agility) Instead, how can we manage our risks and incorporate agility? 6
7. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Part 1: Clarify Risks 7
8. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Risks Drive Choices for Feedback Loop Duration • Three major kinds of risks • Project risks • Product risks • Portfolio/organization risks • When we manage risks, we can reduce the duration of feedback loops and decide faster 8
9. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Project Risks Affect Lifecycle Choice • The project pyramid explains: • Drives your project (one aspect) • Constraints (not more than two) • Floats (the other three) 9
10. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Product Risks Affect Lifecycle Choice • Product risks clarify how much innovation you need and when • Very few product ideas survive customer contact 10
11. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Portfolio Risks Affect Lifecycle Choice • How often does your organization need to re-decide on the project portfolio? • Market in fl ux • Startup • Insuf fi cient stability for long decision durations • The more portfolio risks, the shorter the feedback loops need to be 11
12. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman How to Choose a Lifecycle (Not “Agile”) • Higher organizational or product risks: incremental, combination, or agile approach • Project risks: • Date → incremental or agile approach • Low defects → incremental or agile approach • More features → iterative or agile approach • General guidelines • Know what to do and short timeframe? → serial or incremental • Longer timeframe? Anything other than serial 12
13. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Agile Approach Is Not a Lifecycle • A culture change • Not a mindset or speci fi c practices • Agile approaches require: • A collaborative cross-functional team • Limits its ranked WIP • Releases often for feedback • Learns from what they did • Consider “Agility” instead of “Agile” 13
14. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Agile Teams Work Through the Architecture to Deliver 14
15. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman More risks? Reduce feedback loop duration 15
16. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Poll for Your Collaboration to Enable Agility • In the chat, please use a number for your answer: 16
17. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Part 2: Clarify Lifecycles 17
18. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Serial Lifecycles • Waterfall • Stage-Gate • Phases • Characteristics: • Plan a lot up front • SMOE (Simple Matter of Execution) 18
19. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Reality for Too Many “Agile” Teams 19 Requirements Hell Freezes are Slush Reality: Unplanned Feedback Loops
20. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Iterative Lifecycles • Re fi ne prototypes: • Boehm’s Spiral Model • Evolutionary Prototyping • Even SAFe, unless the teams release from the fi rst timebox 20
21. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Internal vs External Feedback • Iterative approaches can work under these conditions: • Obtain feedback from outside the team • Obtain feedback from a customer • The longer it takes for customer- based feedback, the more likely the project “Kiss of Death” 21
22. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Incremental Lifecycles • Design to Schedule focuses on release candidates • Staged Delivery assumes the team will release 22
23. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Late Feedback in Incremental Lifecycles • Design to schedule has risks because everything is a release candidate • In Staged Delivery, release what you have 23
24. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Consider Combining Approaches 24 Date-driven: Iterative fi rst, then Incremental Feature-driven: Iterative fi rst, then choose when to release
25. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Component Teams Challenge Agility 25
26. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Agile Approaches 26 Iterations are timeboxes. That’s how the team limits its WIP. The shorter the iteration, the faster everyone learns. A Kanban system does not need timeboxes. The team limits its WIP by design. I like to right-size the work so the team delivers on a cadence.
27. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Poll for Your WIP Limits to Enable Agility • In the chat, please use a number for your answer: 27
28. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Part 3: How to Increase Agility 28
29. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Team Tips to Increase Agility • Focus on the fl ow of work, not what individual people do ( fl ow ef fi ciency thinking) • Reduce or timebox up-front work to reduce later unplanned feedback loops • Start with and maintain a cross- functional team that collaborates for the entire project 29
30. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Flow Metrics Support More Agility • Cycle time to see how long things take • Aging to see where work gets stuck and for how long • WIP: How much work is in progress • Throughput: How often does the team release something? • Why your collaboration and ability to limit WIP matter 30 Little’s Law:
31. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Culture/Project Tips to Increase Agility • Use your project and product risks to understand how often you need feedback, internally and externally • Plan for shorter projects to reduce unplanned feedback loops • Deliver & Demo something at least once a month 31
32. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Less Planning + More Delivering = Real Agility 32
33. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Find Your Way to Ful fi ll Your Customers’ Needs • “Agile” is not the point • Satisfy the customer • Manage risks to release • To obtain revenue • Use risks to choose your “best” approach • Incorporate agility to bring joy and ease to your work 33
34. © 2024 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Let’s Stay in Touch • Pragmatic Manager: • www.jrothman.com/ pragmaticmanager • Please link with me on LinkedIn • Project Lifecycles: https:// www.jrothman.com/lifecyclebook 34