These are the three pillars that I believe are the foundation to creating a successful Agile organization. So much so that I’ve created an approach called TAP2 Change.
Each pillar supports the other and without developing all three pillars your ability to become an Agile organization will have only marginal success.
But what do we mean by ‘becoming Agile?
The Agile Manifesto was expressly about improving how we developed software, and though it highlights the need for high levels of business and technology engagement, it has a gaping hole in it that has left it hobbled and unable to realize the full benefit of being Agile, which is that the entire organization must change to support the Manifesto.
Being Agile is a state when your organization no longer thinks or acts in the previous way that you work, rather Agile is your new state of operations. Unfortunately, Agile has been sold as a silver bullet, a product that will solve ALL of your organizations' problems and all you have to do is bring in a cadre of coaches and viola! your organization is Agile.
In any organization, we are always looking for better ways of working, Agile is just a new ‘better’ way of potentially working. Just like your waterfall days, you will always be attempting to make Agile better.
But what is interesting is that virtually all organizations that grew up with Waterfall have their entire organization optimized to run in Waterfall. Yet Agile has stayed almost entirely within the domain of Technology.
You are asking for your organization to deliver more quickly, yet you don’t optimize your organization to support that. As you start your Agile journey, you must consider the organization holistically, which is what TAP2 Change does.
This is why Agility requires you to build three pillars - Transparency, Accountability, and Predictability.
These pillars have nothing to do with the frameworks that have grown up to ‘operationalize’ Agile, they can support the pillars if that is your choice, but they are not the entirety of what Agile must be if you are to have long-lasting transformative success.
TAP2 Change is designed to provide you with guidance, not directives, on how you can approach becoming Agile. At every organization I’ve been at, we talk about how we are different from other organizations, and you are entirely correct and to think there is a single framework that will work as-is is not being realistic.
As a coach, I have had much success in helping organizations become more Agile, yet each one had its unique aspects that required that I tailor what we did to accomplish Agility. And what worked at one organization may not work in another, being flexible in how you define Agility is the key to success.
Again it’s not about the frameworks, at best they provide you a veneer or window dressing of ‘doing agile (note the small a) if Agile is a mindset then right now our mindsets are centered around Scrum, SAFe, LeSS, DAD, the list goes on.
Though I will be writing in more depth on what each Pillar is all about at a high level here are the three pillars you need to develop as part of becoming Agile:
Transparency –
This starts at the top, with leadership providing a clear understanding to people why becoming an Agile organization is important, what are the threats to us if we don’t become Agile, what are some of the expected changes that need to happen to support Agile (both organizationally and personally).
Conveying how can everyone in the organization both participate and also succeed in this new operational paradigm is another transparent layer of successful Agility.
Creating a clear Agility Mission and Vision and making it transparent will create the north start for everyone as they begin to ask the important question, how can I contribute to our collective success.
Accountability –
Here is where we start to see the real aspects of the operational side of Agile. And again it starts at the top. Leadership can’t what I call a ‘fund it and forget it’ approach to this adoption, they too must change how they lead, manage and think about their organization.
As a leader you are accountable for the success of Agility, you can’t outsource change to outside consultants (we can help but we aren’t the real change agents despite what everyone may think).
Planning and delivery comprise a large part of Accountability, which touches every part of the organization and top to bottom. You can’t be Agile if the only thing that changes is that you deliver your waterfall projects in 2-3 week sprints. Your organization must change everything from Ideation, Intake, Planning, Funding, Operations, and Staffing to support organizational Agility. Absolutely nothing is untouched by Agility if you are doing this right.
Empowering people at the lowest levels of the organization leads to high levels of accountability, building trust is the single most important part of the accountability pillar.
Predictability –
This is the most controversial pillar of the three because Agilists see predictability as a means to continue to have projects that are fixed scope and time. Yes, this happens in many Agile organizations, this is not what I mean by being predictable.
It is important that we not ignore every organization's need to deliver predictable results, whether they are a public or private entity. Leaders are the public face of our organization and when they provide feedback or guidance on how or where the organization is going, investors and customers alike, are listening.
Predictability is the final pillar of TAP2 Change and the real focus of this is to optimize our Product Development teams to deliver consistently, What this means operationally is that in an Agile organization there are no fixed scope/date projects. Rather there is a Product Roadmap that provides visibility into small incremental improvements to that which we are working on, be it a brand new product or an existing one.
Leadership with a high level of engagement can see progress (transparency) and know that their teams are being accountable (accountability) for delivering incremental value consistently (predictability).
One of the most important aspects of Agile is that it changes your entire organization, whether you want it to or not, eventually, the pain of living in the multiverse of Waterfall and Agile, will become too painful. You will more than likely in this scenario go back to Waterfall, as the path of least resistance.
Because Agile is an organizational change, you must build trust with everyone involved. And you must provide transparency to everyone in your organization regarding what, why, and how Agile will change their work. Without this, you will not be able to convince people to change and Belief Perseverance (which we often mislabel as resistance) will be what keeps you from achieving your goal of moving you to Agile.