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

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Fake “Agile” is the Norm: How to Instill Agility, not Agile Practices Johanna Rothman [email protected] www.jrothman.com https://linktr.ee/johannarothman

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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.

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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:

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© 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

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© 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

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© 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