“You can’t put being in love on a scale. Either you are or you aren’t.”
― Jenny Han, We’ll Always Have Summer
Respectfully adapted…
“You can’t put being agile on a scale. Either you are or you aren’t.”
The world exists as a set of patterns. These patterns tend to repeat themselves in various contexts. A phenomenal example of this is concept is a fractal. Fractals can be seen throughout nature in all different contexts, and is thus a patterns that repeats itself and “scales” wonderfully.
A fractal is a natural phenomenon or a mathematical set that exhibits a repeating pattern that displays at every scale.
The underlying premise is a set of patterns exist out in the real world. These patterns can and should be applied when and where they make sense. Anything beyond understanding patterns and seeing that a hammer works best for a nail and a screwdriver works best for a screw simply adds unnecessary complexity to an already complex world. This law of the instrument can get us into serious trouble…
“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
― Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science
To that end, I was deeply saddened to read an article recently on Comparing Agile Scaling Frameworks, put together by Richard Dolman (LinkedIn, Twitter, Scrum Alliance, The Pragmatic Agilist) and Steve Spearman (LinkedIn, Twitter, Scrum Alliance, Swift Ascent). My sadness was not in the authors or the article itself, but in the fact that it has come to this. Instead of simply identifying, collecting and having the patterns available to use as needed, we as the agile community have felt the need to try and mix and match patterns in various ways, label them as frameworks, sell certifications for them and argue about which framework is the best. This has been ongoing and is being perpetrated as the focus is now on “scaling” agile instead of anchoring to the mindset if “being” agile. What this has caused is noise, confusion and many many less than stellar results then practitioners who try to lay these frameworks on top of organizations without first identifying what is needed.
A fellow practitioner, Si Alhir (LinkedIn, Twitter, Blog, Conscious Agility, Cars.com Transformation Journey) among others, has contributed some amazing work in this space. In a recent blog, Dynamics over Mechanics, he shares some interesting examples that have come up in the real world showing the law of the instrument in relation to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).
For example, given the recent popularity of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), we continuously find more and more of the notion of a “descaled agile framework” (DAFe or dSAFe) or “SAFe for a Team” where rather than embrace scale and then de-scale (that is, going from “big” to “small” based on need), one can embrace an essentialism or minimalism then scale (that is, going from “smallest” to “bigger” based on need) […]
As organizations grow, many tend to focus on processes and tools (mechanics) and less on the people (relationships, behavior and communication – the dynamics, the culture). This often means that the dynamics break down as more processes or more tools are put in place.
When organizations realize that they are no longer delivering the results or satisfying their customers, they often seek out a solution. Again focusing on processes or tools, they bring in a “silver bullet” of a new tool or a “silver bullet” of a new process, but more often than not they fail to understand and address the dynamics. These are often labeled as “change initiatives”, and when they often fail to address the dysfunction or achieve the result, they cause not only the people to suffer more, but often times lead to worse organizational issues.
Some Open Thoughts From Here:
- Patterns are essential. Patterns underline the frameworks. The frameworks are a collection of patterns that work in certain situations.
- We (as practitioners) should not be going into an organization with the intention of implementing a framework or tool. We should instead first seek to understand the dynamics and dysfunctions that may exist, then seek to create less dysfunction as we seek increased efficiency and effectiveness. Once we understand, then we can pull in the correct patterns to support and assist the organization and its teams, guided by the people in the organization that see the dysfunction every day. Essentially, because no two organizations are the same, no two organizations will have the same framework. Instead what they will have is their own framework, grounded in the correct underlying principles based on need.
I’d really like to hear thoughts from other practitioners. Have you seen these issues (or others) as a result of focus on frameworks instead of principles? What approaches have you used with success when working with organizations?
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I’ve recently had the pleasure of working with 2 of the 3 authors (Si & Mark) and must say it has been a truly amazing experience.
Agile (in the broad sense) has been a growing collection of knowledge, especially since 2001 when the Agile Manifesto was created. Prior to, and especially since then, a lot of great knowledge and experience has been contributed. At the same time, there has also been a lot of confusion within and outside of the community. Various frameworks have been created and supported by consultants and practitioners with mixed success (including SAFe). Often times the success/failure is not with a specific framework itself, but instead a direct result of the implementation. There are cases of organizational adoption of SAFe with great success, and others where it has been a failure and disregarded. If the framework is the same in both cases, then what is the difference? Implementation.
As mentioned above in the book description, “However, the SAFe readily acknowledges that ‘SAFe does not implement itself and indeed makes no attempt to describe the significant organizational change management, cultural impacts, implementation strategies, and training and services provisioning that are typically required for successful implementation’ and only offers brief ‘recommendations for implementation’.” This is the heart of this book.
Often times when an agile adoption fails, it does so because an organization is trying to simply transition from their current set of processes and tools to a new set, without addressing the underlying dysfunctions. Time and time again I’ve seen organizations that try to adopt Scrum, for example, and initially see success with a pilot team, but long term it fails and they regress. Why does this happen? A few of the reasons are because the organization doesn’t see the challenges that they face, they don’t address the organizational culture and they often don’t co-create the solution that will work for them. To address these items, we must go much deeper than attending few day training class or simply implementing a framework, we must understanding the underlying elements of dysfunction, address them and work together with an organization to co-create a solution. This approach is rooted in collaboration, facilitation and guidance, addressing dysfunction and bringing in the appropriate elements that are available within and outside of the agile community.
If you simply want to learn SAFe and lay it on top of an organization without addressing the “hard” items such as culture and long term sustainability, this book is not for you. It will not tell you how to run a PSI Planning session, for example. For that, read some of Dean’s books, check out the publicly available SAFe framework and attend the SPC certification class. But if you have an understanding of SAFe and want to go deeper to learn a pragmatic approach for implementing and adopting SAFe in an organization, then I recommend you spend a few dollars and a few hours to read (and re-read) this book.
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For the second year in a row I was invited to present at IBM Innovate, which is a conference hosted by IBM and focused on concepts such as Continuous Engineering, DevOps and Agile.
My topic was titled “SDLC Transformation: How Paychex Began Adopting Rational CLM (+Agile) and Adapted Along the Way”. In this session, we focused on a few key topics:
- Going “behind the scenes” to see what an SDLC Transformation really looks like
- Condensing 3 years of success/failure into 60 minutes
- From waterfall to agile
- From miscellaneous tools to the Rational suite (RTC,RRC,RQM)
- Hear 5 important lessons that we learned as an organization
Below are the slides. We had a great crowd and some fantastic questions/discussions about agile transformations at organizations and how to manage some of the challenges.
]]>- What is a Mentor?
- How Do I Find a Mentor?
- What Qualities Should a Mentor Have?
- Should You Pay For a Mentor?
This is probably one of my favorite articles as of late, so be sure to check it out!
If you’re in need of an REI mentor, this guide offers great advice on what you should be looking for and even addresses the question of payment.
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We think of a wallet in terms of only containing money, but we spend something else from our wallets every day. Learn more and help your business grow.
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This post looks at the one document every real estate investor should have… but most don’t! Click here to find out what it is … and print a copy for yourself!
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