Doing Agile Right

Most organizations attempting to scale agile apply the SAFe framework, which helps create agile teams across the organization – particularly in areas like product development.

However, agile principles and methodologies are often not applied to business support functions like HR, Finance, and IT. In an agile enterprise these traditional business support functions also embrace agile.

When scaling agile, many organizations start with pilot projects supported by the CEO, COO, or another executive. This leader can often pull enough strings or carries enough weight to ensure the pilot project’s success, even if the team has poorly executed the plan.

The danger lies in the team believing they have successfully executed agile, then following that approach across the organization, which is bound to fail because the bulldozer is not applied.

Some companies feel it’s easier or more cost effective to switch everyone to agile all at once. This demonstrates a poor understanding and appreciation for agile – as if the team is saying agile is good… but not for them.

Finance and legal are prime examples of a business function that will almost always retain some bureaucratic structure with slower iteration cycles.

Spotify is the prototypical example of a company that publishes their org chart and approach to agile and then is blindly copied directly by many other companies, without regard to the business context. This all happens despite Spotify’s explicit instruction to not copy them directly.

Scaling agile has the most demonstrated success with regards to increased innovation. On the flip side, if your company does not want to drive innovation you may find agile does not fit.

Scaled agile organizations and agile enterprises still plan, but their planning iterations are typically more frequent because the strategy iterations are more frequent.