Rewired

Chapter 13From doing agile to being agile

In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.

—Tina Fey

Our goal here is not to repeat the extensive literature that exists on agile. But it's important to understand the core concepts underpinning agile ways of working and focus on what companies need to get right to be successful. Understanding how to effectively run agile teams and capture value from the new way of working is critical before scaling the model, which we discuss in Chapter 14.

Many companies have experimented with agile within or beyond the IT organization. When correctly implemented, even a small number of agile teams can quickly add value (see Exhibit 13.1). But companies run into problems when they focus too much on agile as a set of processes and not enough on agile as a new way to prioritize and focus resources on what matters. In these situations, management implements the rituals of agile, but then becomes disenchanted when the results don't follow, and blames agile. Simply implementing agile rituals without making corresponding changes to how to set objectives, configure teams, and enforce accountability for results will lead to poor outcomes.

EXHIBIT 13.1

Let's start with agile methodologies. There are a number of variations: scrum (named after the original name for the team), kanban, SAFe (Scaled Agile ...