Bad Agile

I think that bad agile is the consequence of two main things:

  1. a non-understanding of what agile is. Organizations and teams have a tendency to try and learn agile through the established methods – I want to do agile so I do Scrum …
  2. a lack of consideration for the organization’s underlying structures, behaviors, values – we do agile to do things faster …

Following the path to agility is, or should be, an organization’s strategic decision and as such driven by the leadership. Instead the concept of an agile organization is “all we need to be agile is a bunch of teams doing Scrum”, followed by the conclusion that these teams are the ones that need to change, while the rest of the organization carries on doing what they always did in the same way …

This lack of engagement is endemic to the higher levels of the organization’s leadership and as such managers don’t seem concerned by agility, they even feel threatened by it. More specifically portfolio managers suffer from a lack of engagement due to the attitude that agile is what developers do. Portfolio managers fail to understand that at their organization level is where all agility starts …

When talking about the organization’s portfolio – i.e. all that is good for the org, what brings value to the org, what makes business sense to the org – ALL of IT need to be included, and not just development. Here is where DevOps comes to the rescue. The understanding of the nature of both IT and Dev pipelines as well as the Business, which are all three highly interdependent, must find awareness at the Portfolio level, and find an understanding and management at the Product level.

There should be a compulsory way of understanding what agility really means, then practicing setting up projects, product value streams, teams and organizations for agility, and only then choosing what the best approach would be to facilitate our agility, hence getting certified, if wished, in order to best excel with these practices …

Today many organizations do just the opposite: chose a methodology, get certified, apply its practices, and try to be agile. The recipe for failure …

Bad agile!

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Author: Mario Aiello

Hi, I’m Mario – a retired agility warrior from a major Swiss bank, beyond agile explorer, lean thinker, former rugby player, and wishful golfer. What frustrates me most? Poor agile adoption, illusionary scaling, and the lack of true business agility. I believe agility should fit purpose, context, and practice – and continuously evolve. Active in the agile space since 2008, my consulting journey began in 2012, helping a digital identity unit adopt Scrum at team level. That work led to the design of an Agile Operating System for the entire organization. Today, as an independent consultant, I help organizations unlock sustainable agility – guided by adaptive intelligence: sensing challenges, learning fast, and adapting with purpose.