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.
When we look at some of the underlying causes for lack of progress we typically see:
- No committed performance goals for delivery teams.
- No framework in place for continuous improvement.
- Disengaged employees.
Successful teams have clear, measurable targets for their delivery performance, and everyone on the team is committed to achieving them. Lack of goals means lack of direction, and no way to measure progress. Agile delivery teams should have goals for things 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.