The document discusses common reasons why Agile adoptions often "fail" and provides recommendations for a successful Agile transition. It notes that Agile adoptions typically fail because they ignore organizational culture and constraints, underestimate the importance of mindset change, over-rely on tools instead of principles, and lack sufficient training and coaching. The document recommends focusing on organizational systems and culture, emphasizing principles over practices, training all levels of the organization, taking an empirical rather than predictive approach, and continuously improving through experimentation and questioning assumptions.

1. Neil Killick, Program Delivery Manager at
neilkillick.com neil2killick@gmail.com @neil_killick
Copyright Neil Killick, 2015
What to do when
adopting Agile
NOT

3. Most Agile
adoptions “fail”...
❏ Doesn’t stick
❏ Doesn’t scale
❏ Different measures of success
❏ No improvement in results
❏ Isn’t universally welcomed
WHY?

4. ❏ Ignore Systems Thinking
and Theory of Constraints
❏ Expect teams to improve but
not ourselves
Focus on “the team”
❏ Don’t seek executive
support /
understanding
❏ Ignore organisational
cognitive dissonance

5. ❏ “Adopt” rather than transition
❏ Think Agile == Scrum events
❏ Underestimate significance of mindset
Practices over principles

6. One tool to rule
them all
❏ Stifle teams
❏ Try to control vs
allow self
organisation
❏ One-way
transparency

7. ❏ Train only developers and some managers, or nobody
❏ Provide coaching for developers only, or nobody
❏ Think CSM is enough
Not enough
coaching &
training

8. Remain predictive,
not empirical
❏ Break teams up
❏ Estimate too far into the future
❏ Increment without iterating

9. ❏ Agile the destination, not the journey
❏ Too busy to improve
❏ Think we’re as good as we can be
❏ Think we can’t influence change
Stop learning &
discovering better ways

10. So what
SHOULD we do?

11. ❏ Seek to understand cognitive
dissonance & influence with
empathy
❏ Optimise the whole, not the parts
Focus on the system
❏ Seek executive
support /
understanding
❏ Be clear on the
goal of Agile in
your organisation

12. ❏ Use principles to guide
incremental
improvement
❏ Don’t blindly adopt
practices
❏ Seek out those of a
similar mindset and
work together
Principles
over
practices

13. Focus on culture, not tools
❏ Enable teams to pick the right tools for the job
❏ Use constraints rather than control mechanisms
❏ Allow teams to self organise and astound you

14. ❏ Senior managers, middle managers,
developers, designers, everyone!
❏ Lean/Agile leadership, CSM, CSC, CSD,
Kanban, BDD, XP
❏ Hire dedicated Agile coaches
Train
everyone

15. Be empirical,
not predictive
❏ Inspection, Adaptation, Transparency
❏ Keep teams together
❏ Iterate thinking, building, funding
❏ Proactively manage risk

16. ❏ Continuous improvement, e.g. Toyota Kata,
kaizen, retrospectives at all levels, etc.
❏ No “best practice” in complex environments
- Experiment!
❏ Push boundaries to discover where they are
Keep questioning the
status quo

17. Neil Killick, Program Delivery Manager at
neilkillick.com neil2killick@gmail.com @neil_killick
Copyright Neil Killick, 2015