Book description
Agile is broken.
Most Agile transformations struggle. According to an Allied Market Research study, "63% of respondents stated the failure of agile implementation in their organizations." The problems with Agile start at the top of most organizations with executive leadership not getting what agile is or even knowing the difference between success and failure in agile.
Agile transformation is a journey, and most of that journey consists of people learning and trying new approaches in their own work. An agile organization can make use of coaches and training to improve their chances of success. But even then, failure remains because many Agile ideas are oversimplifications or interpreted in an extreme way, and many elements essential for success are missing. Coupled with other ideas that have been dogmatically forced on teams, such as "agile team rooms", and "an overall inertia and resistance to change in the Agile community," the Agile movement is ripe for change since its birth twenty years ago.
"Agile 2" represents the work of fifteen experienced Agile experts, distilled into Agile 2: The Next Iteration of Agile by seven members of the team. Agile 2 values these pairs of attributes when properly balanced: thoughtfulness and prescription; outcomes and outputs, individuals and teams; business and technical understanding; individual empowerment and good leadership; adaptability and planning. With a new set of Agile principles to take Agile forward over the next 20 years, Agile 2 is applicable beyond software and hardware to all parts of an agile organization including "Agile HR", "Agile Finance", and so on.
Like the original "Agile", "Agile 2", is just a set of ideas - powerful ideas. To undertake any endeavor, a single set of ideas is not enough. But a single set of ideas can be a powerful guide.
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 How Did We Get Here?
-
2 Specific Problems
- Leadership Is Complex, Nuanced, Multifaceted, and Necessary
- The Scale Problem
- Today's Tech Platform Is As Strategic As the Business Model
- Tech Cannot Be an “Order Taker”
- Transformation Is a Journey, Not a Rollout
- The Individual Matters As Much As the Team
- Culture: Individual vs. the Collective
- People Don't All Work the Same
- Communication Is a Process, Not an Event
- The Importance of Focus
- Data Is Strategic
- Notes
-
3 Leadership: The Core Issue
- Authority Is Sometimes Necessary
- The Path-Goal Leadership Model
- Collective Governance Does Not Solve the Problem
- Dimensions, Modes, Forms, and Directions of Leadership
- Soft Forms of Leadership
- Applicability and Trade-Offs
- Socratic Leadership
- Servant Leadership
- Theory X, Theory Y, and Mission Command
- Knowing When to Intervene
- Notes
- 4 Ingredients That Are Needed
-
5 Kindsof LeadershipNeeded
- Which Leadership Styles Are Appropriate
- Leadership at Each Level
- Common Types of Product Leadership That Are Needed
- High-Risk Products
- Research and Innovation Leadership
- Operational Leadership
- Leadership and Accountability
- Any Leader
- An Outside Person: A Sketch
- An Inside Person: A Sketch
- A Person of Action: A Sketch
- A Thought Leader
- Notes
- 6 What Effective Collaboration Looks Like
- 7 It's All About the Product
- 8 Product Design and Agile 2
-
9 Moving Fast Requires Real-Time Risk Management
- The Need for Real-Time Feedback Loops
- Creating Real-Time Feedback Loops
- Metrics as Feedback
- People Need to Understand the Metrics—Really Understand Them
- Better Information Radiators
- People Need to Read, Write, and Converse
- Validation and Experimentation as Feedback
- Flaws in the Pipeline Model
- Feedback: Learn from Product Usage
- Balance Design and Experimentation
- Responding in Real Time
- Notes
- 10 A Transformation Is a Journey
- 11 DevOps andAgile 2
- 12 Agile 2 at Scale
- 13 System Engineering and Agile 2
- 14 Agile 2 in Service Domains
- 15 Conclusion
- Index
- Copyright
- Dedication
- About the Authors
- Acknowledgments
- End User License Agreement
Product information
- Title: Agile 2
- Author(s):
- Release date: March 2021
- Publisher(s): Wiley
- ISBN: 9781119799276
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