It won’t be an exaggeration to say that out of the millions of Agile practitioners, the majority is stuck at ‘doing agile’ while being unaware or worse ignoring the bigger picture. Why?
A simple reason – When you start zooming in a lot, it is not easy to zoom out. People are stuck in tit-bit practices that are also helpful but not rolling up to the bigger picture. They are following the ‘rules’ while losing the essence of the philosophy or the wisdom behind those rules.
What is this bigger picture when you pursue agility? Here is our understanding –
Individuals, teams, organizations start their pursuit of Agility with great excitement and enthusiasm, somewhat similar to a person starting his dream job. While we start with good intentions and motivation, we discover that transformation, like a dream job, is not a single player game. We hit roadblocks and re-evaluate our position. Few things might happen –
At the same time, too much zoom out also leads to a problem of ending up with ‘surface-agile’ which is more like a lipstick job. We have all heard of ‘culture’ & ‘Mindset’ so many times at so many forums without proper explanation or lucid definitions of what it means. Any organization embarking on a new transformation journey needs to experience the ‘incremental’ improvements in time-bound intervals.
The correct way to adopt agile is to find an ultimate balance between the Micro and Macro where the agility can sustain. It’s important for the organization to have a pragmatic mix of both to move slowly, yet steadily towards the right direction to leverage ‘Agile’.
Here’s is how we think an organization should plan their transformation journey :
We would love to hear your experience and get feedback, drop us a mail at consult@benzne.com
Anuj M Ojha Alok Dimri
