In a recent State of Agility Survey Report, the majority of respondents cited Accelerate Software Delivery as the most important driver for agile transformation. Many organizations attempt agile transformations by adopting practices like Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe. They hire consultants to train and coach their teams. After a year or two into a transformation, you may hear many leaders express frustration that they are not seeing the kinds of improvements that were promised, namely, getting new software capabilities to market faster with higher quality, happier more engaged employees, and significantly improved customer satisfaction scores. In their view, the needle has not shifted in a meaningful way for any of these measures.
Transformation failure rates are high.
Agility is not a set of methods or practices or frameworks. Adopting Scrum or SAFe does not guarantee you will deliver products to market any faster. Many organizations are “doing agile” but not realizing the sought after business outcomes.
Agile transformations are expected to deliver more than just incremental improvements to performance. A transformation must take an organization to a fundamentally different place and deliver a significant leap forward in business performance – speed of delivery, customer excitement, employee engagement, revenue growth and margins. Otherwise, why take the risk?
When we look at some of the underlying causes for lack of progress we typically see:
- Lack of focus on customer value delivery.
- No framework in place for continuous improvement.
- Disengaged employees.
Agile Transformation should result in measurable improvements to things like:
- Operational performance: The ability to deliver products to customers more rapidly and reliably. Being able to quickly respond to value-creating opportunities and threats in the market. Business Agility.
- Customer satisfaction: The ability to attract and retain customers by providing higher value products and services with superior user experiences.
- Employee engagement: By providing employees with more autonomy, and opportunities for learning and advancement.
Improved performance in each of these areas contributes to ultimate business outcomes of increased revenues, reduced operating costs and improved margins. Organizations pursuing transformation need to ensure alignment between improvement initiatives, customer value and ultimate business outcomes.
Successful teams understand the performance of their delivery process and are aware of the capabilities needed to meet the expectations of their customers. Data is collected to identify priorities for improvement, and improvement work is part of their backlogs. All improvement work is aligned with the purpose of creating value for the customer. This provides direction. The impact of all improvement actions is measured to validate its value. Agile delivery teams seek to improve basic delivery capabilities like: achieving stable and predictable throughput, cycle time reduction, and high-quality delivery leading ultimately to improved value for the customer.
These goals will not be realized via ad hoc changes – there must be a systematic and continuous effort to improve. The Lean model of continuous incremental improvement through Kaizen is an effective approach that can help teams achieve their goals. A Kaizen approach can be incorporated into the retrospective process in the pursuit of long-term goals.
The Lean model of continuous incremental improvement through Kaizen is an effective strategy for improvement. A Kaizen approach can be incorporated into the retrospective process in the pursuit of long-term goals.
Lack of commitment and full engagement from teams involved in the transformation is a further impediment to success. Without full engagement nothing substantial is likely to be accomplished. Healthy teams are a prerequisite for change. When there is trust and psychological safety, issues get solved, not avoided and information flows freely. Collecting feedback from teams on a regular basis is essential to identify issues needing prompt action and support. Progress is accelerated when teams are healthy.
We have just touched on some of the most common challenges that impede teams from transforming their performance into something that looks like true agile delivery. In the chapters that follow we will take a closer look at these topics and propose solutions that teams can leverage to get themselves onto a path of sustainable improvement.
This book is the result of my own firsthand experiences in helping organizations develop high-performing software delivery teams. My aim is to save you time and effort by providing a clear and proven guide to continuous improvement based on Lean-Agile principles and methods.
