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

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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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Agile Approaches 28 Iterations are timeboxes. That’s how the team limits its WIP. The shorter the iteration, the faster everyone learns. By de fi nition, the work is done at the end of the timebox. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 • See the value stream maps in Measure Cycle Time, Not Velocity: https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/2019/09/measure- cycle-time-not-velocity/ • Hudson Bay Start: https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/2025/01/ how-to-conduct-an-agile-hudson-bay-start-to-test-how- your-team-works/ • 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 39