cultural change, not by the book
This week I attended a feedback session for a tool to use in cultural transformations. The creator talked about how they had come to it. They realised that part of why an organisation can have so many failed attempts at adopting agile could be because the existing culture isn’t aligned with whichever framework the organisation has chosen. This got me thinking about the cultural side of agile transformations.
When we bring in agile techniques, we're trying to impose a culture that we've seen or heard work elsewhere. We say this clearly with the Spotify model, and now I think we should be saying it with all agile frameworks. If we believe the people with the problem are the people with the solution, we shouldn’t impose a solution upon them. If we do, how is that meeting the system where it is? I don’t think implementing one little thing at a time is either.
Would we expect to copy a manufacturing system from one product to another and be able to build something completely different? Of course not, yet we still expect this to be possible in software development. Cars and toys may both be built by robots, and we wouldn’t expect one process to be able to build both. Yet we propose that because two things are created with computer code, they can both be built by <insert framework of choice here>.
Instead, let's discuss finding a way to work together more effectively. What are the biggest problems that the people in the system are facing now? Let’s fix those. Over time the issues we uncover will likely be many of the problems we were trying to address in the first place by implementing a given framework. At that point, we could suggest using the tools and techniques we know well or allowing space for greater creativity and letting those involved devise their solutions for themselves.
"Instead, let's discuss finding a way to work together more effectively. What are the biggest problems that the people in the system are facing now? Let’s fix those." This really resonated with me. I've spent the last several years where Scaled Agile was forced down people's throats. It was born out of necessity in a perhaps final, last gasp effort, at trying to address those BIG problems. The challenge was that it was one group trying to impose Scaled on all groups none of which had buy in. There was also a total lack of interest from "leadership/executive level" management. They did not care to even ask the question/s "What are the biggest problems?"