In your experience, what are the common challenges with agile?


#1

Hi everyone! I’d like to invite everyone to contribute to a resource I’m putting together for the Knowledge Train blog :slight_smile:

I’m looking to develop a collaborative, interview style article that will explore the common challenges with agile. It would be great to include a collection of personal stories and experiences shared by the online agile community. I’m hoping it will be an informative resource for beginners, not only highlighting the challenges but the solutions too :slight_smile:

So…anyone care to share? In your experience, what are the most common challenges that arise within agile based projects?


#2

Congrats Alison! AWESOME job :steam_locomotive:

This is a big question… I will give it a shot below. However I suggest being a bit more specific and start with a individual Scrum Ceremony (…with Retrospectives). Start small then maybe work up.

If there is one Agile non-Starter to me it would be Trust. I would sooner walk from a potential customer then try out Agile in an environment that has trust issues. It will lead to frustration and ultimately you are playing a dead mans hand.


#3

I am going to write a book one day about this… But will keep this to the point. The biggest challenge I encounter when going into a new client is Leadership. Its the challenge of someone selling them or leadership thinking that agile is almost like a COTS solution… I am going to hire coaches and scrum masters and they will implement agile. Oh and I need our company to be agile in 6 weeks. Go make it happen. Its the lack of knowledge or lack of desire to understand that is so very frustrating. We can ramp teams up and get people excited just to have the flame snuffed out by the leadership. This has been my biggest challenge to date. In my opinion this is why you see a lot of the scaling frameworks so focused on leadership… “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” I try and spend a lot of time with leadership to prepare them for the discomfort… I am going to stop there… I feel my blood pressure elevating. :wink:


#4

Yes defiantly do @Leanleff! Can relate to what you are saying, it can be very frustrating!


#5

Hi, thanks for the input! With the trust issues are you saying the team don’t trust eachothers’ expertise?


#6

Hi @Leanleff, thanks for the input, sorry for bringing up the frustration :grinning: What do you say to the leadership to try to get on the same page?


#7

LOL I like to be dramatic. I like to work with leadership and have used a few things so far. We have tried Mobb Coaching so a few coaches working at the same time. Have created a “placemat” to provide a one picture view that can gives a picture of the transformation “roadmap”. Currently with the other coaches I am working with we proposed to create the coaches backlog. We will create stories based on what the leadership expectations are and someone from the leadership will be the coaches Product owner. they will prioritize the work and we work with in a sprint. The thought is to get everyone working in the framework whether its scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, whatever just so they can see and be part of the process. Help build that leadership coalition and provide the ability to lead the change. One of the coaches I am working with now said something to me that has stuck… Are we teaching agile, or are we teaching people (thanks travis).


#8

My personal experience is that most companies think Agile = IT so the rest of the company keep working in the same way.

Furthermore, in SouthAmerica you (as Agile Coach) have to deal with a lot of layers of managers so if you want to experiment anything you would convince 10 managers.

I watched a video of Michael Laotta about the problem with transforming Agile is Culture. If the company is not able to change their mindset it is impossible to move from Agile.

Last but not least, I’m able to talk over Skype (metlucero is my id) about this topic.

Regards,
Mario


#9

My experiences are similar to what has been outlined here. Trust and Culture. If there isn’t trust in the organization then the Agile implementation has trouble. So if there is a trust issue prior to starting the Agile implementation I’d think about ways to work on building trust up in the organization first. I agree with @metlucero point regarding culture. Some organizations cultures just will never accept Agile. It’s harder to recognize that issue up front I think however and attempt to do something about it in advance.

Another challenge I have seen is dealing with turnover. When Agile is being implemented some folks just don’t want to accept it and will move on which causes some challenges with lost knowledge, teams resetting in terms of their growth, etc.


#10

Seems like for your research @alisonwood when dealing with larger companies and multible teams culture is gap. With much smaller organizations or just one scrum team it is more focused on the team. The coaching aspect is more focused/or can be.


#11

That’s great @leanleff! Thank you for sharing :slight_smile:


#12

Thank you @leanleff and @metlucero, this is very insightful. @metlucero I will PM you :slight_smile:


#13

Thanks @tgalloway, some interesting points! Can you explain to me more about the trust issue? Who is it between and what have people lost trust over?

Also your point about culture. Do you think Agile is just not a good fit for some organizations?


#14

It would be my pleasure to chat with you.

Indeed, you can send me an invitation to Linkedin to get all my personal details (my email is metlucero@gmail.com).

Cheers


#15

@metlucero do you mean Michael Sahota? If so, he’s a genius. His book is something I consistently refer to.


#16

I think the hardest part with an agile transformation (two words I shouldn’t be using, I know :slight_smile: ) is middle management. Culture is hard, leadership buy in is hard, but middle management can scuttle the whole initiative if they’re not part of the journey. Middle managers are usually close to the trenches and good ones are highly influential; if they’re not comfortable with where things are going (esp. their role in the future state) they can inadvertently kneecap the initiative. Getting their buy in early is paramount.

Confession…I was a middle manager and went thru a transformation on the inside. Once I (and some of my influential peers) were bought in the transformation journey in our vertical was much smoother and gained traction quickly.


#17

yes, Michael Sahota and you are right. He is a genius.


#18

I’ll add another interesting challenge I’ve seen in IT consulting - I’ve found that when the client organization’s predominant worldview is starkly different from the consulting company’s worldview, you end up with two conflicting ideas of how to work together as a team.

For example: a teal delivery team working with an orange product management team is almost always going to result in conflicting understandings of things like what self-organization looks like, what “open communication” means, etc. Both groups may strongly agree that they value individual interactions over processes and tools - but how those individuals interact and how information is exchanged can be very different according to the worldview they hold.

Each group brings certain unspoken, inherent beliefs influenced by their worldview to the table, and these tend to be things that folks just take for granted. These kinds of innate assumptions aren’t generally discussed and may not even be recognized.

Neither worldview is right or wrong, they’re just different. It creates an interesting challenge when the two groups try to gel and work together as an Agile team.


#19

@alisonwood Let’s start with the culture point first. The company I was involved with when I first learned about Agile back in 2007 was very waterfall in nature…very siloed…very “do what the boss tells you”. Agile is such a stark contrast to the way the operated before and many of the developers had been around for 15+ years and didn’t want to have anything to do with ANY change let along an Agile transformation. So I think you need to look closely at a culture. We probably tried too much too fast and that’s what I learned from that experience. Might have worked if we had much more slowly changed the culture while putting Agile into place.

Regarding trust my experience has been a lot with the middle layers of management not trusting they will still be involved once this comes into place. Also had bad experiences with Product Managers who agree to do the Product Owner role but don’t really understand it and are ‘away’ all the time and not interacting with the team which breaks down trust between the PO role and the rest of the team.

I hope that helps some. :slight_smile:


#20

Right OK that makes more sense! Is this where the act of “servant leadership” could come in for management?