Skip to main content

Why Scaling Agile Doesn't Work for large companies

Many large companies make the fundamental mistake of scaling agile without understanding the whole idea behind agile principles. Being large shouldn't prevent you from looking at the fundamentals. I have heard many highly paid "agile" consultants say that the agile principles and process is all theory and the "big" companies should do things in a different way. After many years of "transformation" and pocketing lots of consulting dollars they will still complain about organizational inertia and lack of support. The moment they leave the company the entire "agile journey"  will go in reverse direction. 

The objective of transformations shouldn't be to support any tool or any framework or tied to custom "enterprise" agile SDLC.   The transformation should focus on individuals, teams and products. Equip them with modern tools , train them on Agile and DevOps principles and encourage them to learn from their mistakes. Guide them and provide them the freedom to make the necessary changes.This will take lot of effort and time. There is no gain without pain.  The people/coaches/consultants who say otherwise have no clue about Agile or DevOps transformation.

Many scaling framework sales people are selling the kool-aid. According to them all the organizational problem will go away if the company start using their framework. The irony is that to use that framework the company will have to hire these consultants. Many company executives who drunk their kool-aids didn't see the promised land.

Unless you make the foundations strong you cannot scale. I have not heard of sky-crappers build on flimsy foundations. They wont last long if someone tried to do so. Don't drink the kool-aid , start investing in your teams.

I found a pretty interesting video. Check this 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

PDCA & SCRUM (or Agile); Why is it important?

The PDCA (Plan DO Check Act) cycle was made popular by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. This is a scientific cyclic process which can be used to improve the process (or product). This is cyclic in nature and usually time boxed. Plan  This is the first stage of the process. During this step the team discusses the objectives, the process and the clear conditions of exit (conditions of acceptance). This stage sets the measurable and achievable goals for the team. DO Team works together to achieve the objective set in the planning phase. Team works with the set of agreed process. Check Once the implantation is done team regroups and verifies the output and compares it to the agreed conditions of acceptance decided during the planning phase. The deviation, if any, is noted down. ACT If any deviation in planned tasks is observed during the Check stage, a root cause analysis is conducted. Team brainstorms and identifies the changes required to prevent such deviations in future. Team also

Product Backlog: Should you write everything in user story format?

I like user stories a lot. They help everyone talk the same language and results in a better product. User story alone does not constitute product requirement. User story is supposed to be a place holder for discussion which should happen between the team, Product Owner and the customer. This discussion result in a common understanding which along with the user story content is the product requirement. This format captures the essence of requirement without confusing the readers User Story is only one of the many different ways in which requirements can be represented. This is not mandatory in any Agile “process”. But many have made this mandatory. I have seen many spending countless hours trying to write the requirements in user story format when they could have easily written that in simple one-line sentence in few minutes.   I have seen team members refusing to even discuss the requirement until product owner rewrote the requirement in user story format. Once I

Why is potentially shippable product quality important

Agile teams work in iterations. During this period, they are supposed to work on product increments which can be “delivered” at the end of iteration. But how you know that the correct product was delivered? Many teams have different kinds of acceptance criteria and Definition of Done (DoD). But in many cases, this “done” is not the real “done” there might be some testing pending, some integration or review pending or anything else which prevents the actual use of the product increment. Many of these teams will need additional iterations to finish hardening their products. Many teams will implement different types of “gates” or approval steps to move to next stage. The free flow of product will be interrupted. They might end up doing mini waterfall within their agile process. Many don’t even realize this. This results in poor quality and requires additional effort to “harden” the product. Potentially Shippable Product increment The acceptance criteria and DoD should be modified