Rethinking Agile: Why Agile Teams Have Nothing To Do With Business Agility

by Klaus Leopold

I actually find this extremely funny: “We are going to implement a waterfall project to become agile.”

This is even more critical these days because what gets talked about often counts more than what gets achieved.

Although the Retrospective is the core of improvement, it is often neglected because of poor execution

The agile methods themselves are not the driving factors for success, rather the mindset behind them determines their effectiveness.

"Quicker Time-to-Market" was the goal of the agile transformation.

Implementing agile methods is a means – not the purpose – for achieving business agility.

If the desired state is agility, the way there should already be agile.

"Every organization is set up perfectly for the results they deliver."

Organizational change should start with the organizational processes because fulfilling customer wishes, as well as the Time-to-Market, is a question of the processes used, collaboration and dependencies.

The idea of eliminating all dependencies in an organization is not realistic. An organization is not a container for completely independent teams—at least not in knowledge work.

Russell L. Ackoff said, that therefore, the performance of the whole is never the sum of the parts taken separately, but it´s the product of their interactions.

An organization's agility is not created by stringing together a bunch of agile teams. Agility is created when the interactions between teams are agile.

Business agility is created through lean processes that rapidly implement ideas, thus allowing teams to be able to deliver something quickly.

If the motto is “Be faster!”, the consequence should be that there is less inactive work in the system, i.e. the Work in Process must be reduced.

According to "Little's Law", the average cycle time of a system in which new work is always entering is the average number of tasks in the system divided by the average throughput.

You must limit the work where you want the effect, the value and the benefits of WIP limits to be realized.

Working costs money, delivering makes money.

The Flight Levels are a tool to help you think and communicate and should simply make you aware at which level (and not in a hierarchical sense) leverage is available for solving a problem. Each Flight Level has a different focus: At Flight Level 3, the focus is on prioritizing upcoming projects and initiatives according to the strategic direction of the company. At Flight Level 2, the focus is on breaking down the chosen projects and initiatives into actionable pieces and coordinating the work with the participating operational units. At Flight Level 1, the teams involved in the operational work separate the tasks of the project/initiative into smaller packets and are focused on delivering them.

If you want an agile business, you should focus on the result and its effect, i.e. the outcome, rather than on the quantity, i.e. the output.