Fake “Agile” is the Norm: How to Instill Agility, not Agile Practices

Is your team or project supposed to “be agile?” You might not feel that way if you have a years-long backlog, standups are individual status reports, and everyone is still multitasking. The people on the project want to do great work. But how you work 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.

Your management does not care about “agile”—but they care a lot about agility. Instead of fake agile, you can assess your culture, project, and product risks to select a different approach. You can 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. Fake “Agile” is the Norm: How to Instill Agility, not Agile Practices Johanna Rothman jr@jrothman.com www.jrothman.com https://linktr.ee/johannarothman
2. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Everyone’s gone “Agile,” right? 2
3. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Commitments Instead of Learning • 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. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Too few teams can deliver “fast” enough. Managers want more done now. 4
5. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Culture is the Root Cause 5 • 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
6. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman When managers reward resource ef fi ciency, true agility cannot survive However, you have many options 6
7. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Assess various risks to incorporate agility into everything at all levels 7
8. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Part 1: Clarify Risks 8
9. © 2025 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 9
10. © 2025 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) 10
11. © 2025 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 11
12. © 2025 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? • More change -> More frequent decisions • Insuf fi cient stability for long decision durations • The more portfolio risks, the shorter the feedback loops need to be 12
13. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman More risks? Reduce feedback loop duration 13
14. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Poll for Your Collaboration to Enable Agility • In the chat, please use a number for your answer: 14
15. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Part 2: Clarify Lifecycles 15
16. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Serial Lifecycles • Waterfall • Stage-Gate • Phases • Characteristics: • Plan a lot up front • SMOE (Simple Matter of Execution) 16
17. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Reality for Too Many “Agile” Teams 17 Requirements Hell (When your roadmap has no experiments & extends past 30 days) Freezes are Slush (Agile approaches do not need freezes) Reality: Unplanned Feedback Loops
18. © 2025 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 18
19. © 2025 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” 19
20. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Incremental Lifecycles • Design to Schedule focuses on release candidates • Staged Delivery assumes the team will release 20
21. © 2025 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 21
22. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Consider Combining Approaches 22 Date-driven: Iterative fi rst, then Incremental Feature-driven: Iterative fi rst, then choose when to release
23. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Clarify Agility 23
24. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Agile Approaches Require: • A collaborative cross-functional team • Limits and Ranks WIP (1, 2, 3, not high, medium, low) • Releases often for feedback • Learns from what they did • Consider “Agility” instead of “Agile” 24
25. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Agile Approaches are Not Lifecycles • A culture change • Not a mindset or speci fi c practices • De fi nitely not a speci fi c framework or method • Can change as the team or organization needs different outcomes • Lifecycles are speci fi c approaches • They tend not to change as the team proceeds 25
26. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Agile Teams Work Through the Architecture to Deliver 26
27. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Component Teams Challenge Agility 27
28. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Agile Approaches 28 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.
29. © 2025 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 2-3 weeks? → serial or incremental because you don’t need to learn much • Longer timeframe? Anything other than serial 29
30. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Longer Timeframe Requires Adaptability in Everything: Backlog, Roadmap, Strategy 30
31. © 2025 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: 31
32. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Part 3: How to Increase Agility 32
33. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Team Tips to Increase Agility • Collaborate on fewer things: • One team, not multitasked individuals • Watch the work, not the people • Consider value stream mapping to see your collaboration vs cooperation • Hudson Bay Start instead of up-front planning 33
34. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Flow Metrics Support More Agility • Velocity is meaningless: measure cycle time • 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? • Flow metrics are your reality and explain collaboration and WIP 34 Little’s Law:
35. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Culture/Project Tips to Increase Agility • Focus on all the ways you can learn faster: • Internal feedback (demos) • Customer feedback • Retrospectives on the work and product • Plan for shorter projects to reduce unplanned feedback loops • Deliver & Demo something at least once a month. Then, once a week. Then once a day. Then, multiple times per day. 35
36. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Less Planning + More Delivering = Real Agility 36
37. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman How Can You Instill Real Agility? • “Agile” is not the point—often leads to fake agility • Instead, how fast can you: • Satisfy the customer with working product to obtain revenue • Requires collaboration and risk evaluation • Incorporate agility to bring joy and ease to your work 37
38. © 2025 Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/@johannarothman Let’s Stay in Touch • Pragmatic Manager: • www.jrothman.com/pragmaticmanager • Please link with me on LinkedIn: https:// www.linkedin.com/in/johannarothman/ • Project Lifecycles: https://www.jrothman.com/ lifecyclebook • Cooperation vs collaboration series: https:// www.jrothman.com/mpd/2022/02/see-and-resolve- team-dependencies-part-1-inside-the-team/ • Flow metrics newsletter: https://www.jrothman.com/ newsletter/2024/01/ fl ow-metrics-and-why-they- matter-to-teams-and-managers/ • https://linktr.ee/johannarothman 38