Agile Requires a Holistic Vision to be Successful
In my career, I have had multiple successful careers, from VP of Finance and Operations, National Sales Director, Director of Development, and President of a startup.
These extremely varied roles have provided me with a holistic view of the complexities of running a business organization.
One thing is clear to me, every leader has a unique view of what is important to the organization and what is needed to make it all work.
For example, in order to fund teams and not projects, as the VP of Finance I need to make a whole host of changes, from funding, and budgeting to financial reporting. These changes are not insignificant and can have material financial impacts if not done appropriately.
Most Agile coaches don’t have the ability to sit down with Finance and explain how this can all work, so they are left with more questions than answers and a strong desire not to change what’s already working. By not moving to funding teams and not projects, we miss a foundational element of Agility and the flow of work.
As a Director of Sales, my focus is on selling our products, but when I get in front of a potential client who throws out large sales numbers for a new product, I’m reluctant to leave that money on the table. And why should I worry, those tech guys always bail us out in the end (and besides my money is in the bank by the time any shit hits the fan).
However by not developing a strategically aligned Product Roadmap with clear opportunities for sales to hone in on, we are left with Product Development often being driven by sales.
Now as Director of Development I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, and this is from real-world experience. Sales have just sold a new product that doesn’t exist, and they have thankfully ensured that the customer was provided a date for delivery of this wonderful thing don’t even know we can deliver. Making matters worse Finance has said no matter what I can’t add any new headcount for this project (and no overtime either, but feel free to buy some pizza for those late nights).
Let me be clear, Agile doesn’t solve any of these problems, not one.
Overlay this now with an Agile coach, who doesn’t typically have any experience leading any part of an organization, and who tells you things are going to change. What do you think the reaction is?
To make matters worse most ‘Agile’ Transformations are focused almost entirely on changing the way Technology manages and delivers its work.
Instead, we need to look at the organization holistically to comprehend the size of the change management effort ahead of us.
What must happen is that you must design your organization to be Agile, which includes having a clear strategic direction, that can be translated into a Product Roadmap that everyone works off of (From Finance, Sales, and Technology), that is aligned to your value streams and provides a way to identify value and prioritize work via value, not cost.
In the scenario above, we were left trying to deliver the product in 2-week sprints against fixed scope and date, which isn’t Agile in the least and mainly made transparent the risk and trade-offs we were making in the product.
We delivered something, but it was not nearly as good as it could have been, with tons of tech debt built into it from the start. When they wanted to sell it again with some modifications, the product was so rigid we almost had to start from scratch.
Financially this is no way to run a business, but this pretty much represents the reality for many organizations.
For Agile to work you first have to answer this simple question:
What problem are we solving by moving toward Agile?
If you can’t answer this question, then you aren’t setting your organization up for success.
Whether you have already started a transformation or are considering going down this path, start first by establishing what it is you hope to achieve, then design your organization around that outcome.
If you want to learn more about how to do this, please contact me at michael@soundagile.com
