Agile from a Leader Perspective

I’m an Agilist and have been for almost 20 years and I know that when adopted pragmatically it can improve value delivery.

But for once I’m going to write about agile not from the perspective of being an Agilist, but rather from someone who has been a business leader for even longer. As a business leader, I must have a broad perspective on my organization and the operations that support it. Technology is just one aspect of this. However, with this Agile thing, I seem to be told that the technology people are going to operate differently, and I must deal with that change. I don’t like this, I need to have transparency and predictability in my business operations, and Agile seems to reduce my transparency and predictability almost as if it’s a feature of the process.

From where I sit, Agile seems to want to have complete flexibility to decide what to do and when to do it and have the luxury of not committing to anything until they feel like they have something of value to deliver. Again, I can’t manage a business with this type of approach, I need transparency into plans and commitments and an expectation of predictable delivery of those plans.

Another thing that bothers me is that the very organization that has historically struggled to deliver in our non-agile approach now wants to be empowered to make decisions on how they should work along with control over the content of that work. Telling me that they will deliver something when it’s ready is not something I can tell prospective customers who are clamoring for new features and capabilities from a company they have formed a relationship with and developed a level of trust.

What I see lacking in Agile is three primary things — Transparency, Accountability, and Predictability. As a business owner, I need to provide a transparent roadmap to my customers regarding not just new products or services, but I also need to convey to them how we will manage our relationship with them from the time they first engage with us to the time we are fulfilling their needs with our products or services. Business management is a holistic capability and I struggle to see how Agile speaks to the things I’ve identified.

So, if you ask me why I’m not engaged in this Agile thing, I’d tell you that it’s because I don’t think you are serious about solving the problems that face our business, you give lip-service to them and then play back to me that the reason you aren’t successful is that I and my leadership team aren’t supporting you enough. I’ll be happy to engage when you come to me with solutions to our challenges that don’t come from a canned framework that simply tells me that to be successful, we need to change our entire operating model to look like that framework. Tell me how we will differentiate ourselves in the marketplace if we operate just like everyone else.

Companies don’t operate like that; we are who we are due to the struggles that took place to get us to where we are at today. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it has delivered value and now you are telling me that someone who has never worked in our marketplace and has created a generic framework is going to tell us how to operate. This just doesn’t sound like a recipe for success. Worse it sounds like what made our company us is also going to change and that change frightens me and everyone else in the organization.

I will be writing several articles from different user perspectives so that we can perhaps start having better conversations about how Agile can help an organization grow but without some of the stress and chaos that often comes from poorly implemented change.