I’m Stuart Ward,
the Agile Mechanic.
I fix Agile programs gone awry and build true organizational agility into your organization’s operating model.
What Sets Me Apart?
A Larger Toolkit
Unlike agilists who specialize only in recognized Agile practices, e.g., Scrum, Kanban, Lean, scaled frameworks, I work at a higher level.
I use the leading thinking in organizational design to repair and improve your Agile practices. And I create true organizational agility by building it directly into the systems that surround and support your Agile practices, the systems that make up your organization’s operating model.
Problems with Agile Rooted in the Organizational Operating Model
Click on Problem To Go to Its Root Causes
Staff resent or resist adopting Agile.
Agile has increased developer agility but decreased organizational agility.
Agile has reduced collaboration instead of increasing it.
Agile has increased overhead instead of reducing it.
Despite the adoption of Agile, customers find it difficult to get their requests prioritized.
Estimates for enterprise initiatives are frequently inaccurate.
Despite the adoption of Agile, departments are regularly over budget.
Why Empowerment Is the Key to Organizational Agility
Empowerment is at the heart of Agile, and is absolutely critical to a high-performing organization.
The authors of the Agile Manifesto recognized its importance, when they chose as the first of its four values: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. And yet, with the greatest irony, many Agile transformations disempower people!
Below are some of the serious problems that occur when people are not properly empowered:
People with authority but not accountability are free to micromanage, make unreasonable demands, and interfere in others’ work.
Productivity decreases when people are forced to use Agile methodologies (especially scaled Agile frameworks) regardless whether they add value to the situations at hand.
People resist and/or resent adopting Agile or other new practices.
Morale is lowered.
People stop taking the initiative.
People become scapegoats when things go wrong because they are held accountable, but do not have the freedom to decide what to do.
Why is it that staff are so often not properly empowered? Perhaps it is because people do not understand what exactly empowerment is and what it is not. Fortunately, there is a precise definition which can be used to assess and fix any situation in which lack of empowerment is the problem.
The Problem with Scaled Frameworks
Agile Development but Not Agile Team Formation
Scaled Agile frameworks increase productivity but decrease organizational agility because they inhibit dynamic team formation. The scenario will illustrate why scaled frameworks promote:
Scenario:
You are a development manager for a large organization that has adopted a popular scaled Agile framework. You agreed to fully dedicate your resources to the teams in the framework and not pull them away because the coaches explained Agile teams need to be fully dedicated and long-lived.
A strategic initiative comes in that does not fit into the value streams in the scaled framework. The enterprise-level priority of the strategic initiative is high, as is the political visibility.
You know you should reallocate some of your resources from the teams in the framework to work on the initiative, but you can’t because you agreed to fully dedicate them and not pull them away.
What Went Wrong?