Comments on: Doing Agile “Right” vs. Being Agile

By: Bob Fischer

Bob Fischer — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:55:05 +0000

Hi Alison,

One approach you can try is to set up structure with a specific date when you plan to reevaluate that structure. If it still seems like the right approach for your organization, keep it longer. If you are diligent about questioning all your non-value-add work on a regular basis, you can keep your processes lean.

- Bob

By: Alison

Alison — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:10:24 +0000

Thanks for the thoughtful post. The difficulty comes in striking the right balance between providing structure or framework and the flexibility to allow teams to experiment, particularly in enterprise organizations. That is definitely something that we are struggling with.

-Alison

By: Bob Fischer

Bob Fischer — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:03:58 +0000

Hi Juanita,

Conditioning comes in various forms and the approach depends on what you are up against. You inspired my next post that I’m currently writing. I hope to get it out soon.

Thanks for your comment.

- Bob

By: Juanita

Juanita — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:56:40 +0000

Great Post!!

Most organizations adopt agile, apply rigidity to the process and then resort to tailoring to make the process less rigid. This happens due to the conditioning they have that compels them to standardize – which defeats the purpose of Agile.

What would you do in the first place to remove this conditioning?

By: Bob Fischer

Bob Fischer — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:48:40 +0000

I would have the “training wheels” period be a team choice. As a coach, I’d let them know where I thought they were as a team, and suggest going into a “training wheels” period. I’d set an explicit time when we’d reevaluated this decision. Since people are so used to having freedom taken away, I think you have to remind them that they have freedom.

If the team needs that level of direction, and are unwilling to sign up for it, I can always decline to be a coach.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:08:57 +0000

To your question, “yes.” But in the spirit of your point, I think that those differences shouldn’t be a problem as long as we do things that are right for the project — we have that freedom to change.

And as for training wheels, that makes sense.

By: Bob Fischer

Bob Fischer — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:44:05 +0000

Hi Alex,

Not sure I understand your first point. Do you mean you have a number of people with Agile expertise who offer different opinions on the same question?

When you are training teams, I’m fine with process standardization. I’d call it “Training Wheels” so people understand that they can be discarded when they’ve learned the skill. That’s different from the management team wanting standardization since they’ve had it for waterfall in the past.

- Bob

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:08:55 +0000

Transitioning to Agile is difficult. I see the same problems of management sticking to the same processes yet “allowing” their teams to use agile methodologies on their projects.
Additionally, a big problem we have here is these teams asking for guidance. We only have a handful of people willing/able to provide that guidance. And not all of them agree. Is that ok?
Jeff Sutherland suggests that teams follow rigid processes (say, strict Scrum) until they’ve demonstrated enough knowledge/skill to run the sprints themselves, then they can go ahead and adapt as they see fit. Do you not see value in some level of standardization, at least until teams are comfortable with the freedoms they’ve been afforded?

By: Bob Fischer

Bob Fischer — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:13:51 +0000

You’ve questioned burn-down charts in the past. Can you elaborate?

By: Ron Holliday

Ron Holliday — Sun, 10 May 2009 01:54:35 +0000

Great post!

Most organizations want to apply rigidity to process in order to shut chaos out.

The more rigid we make the process, the further from the edge of chaos and less adaptive we become.

Are “burn-down charts” really agile?