Top 10 reasons why Agile fails and some options by Ajay Reddy - Agile Maine Day 2016

Top 10 reasons why Agile fails and some options

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What is Agile organization
Agility as the ability to make timely, effective, and sustained
changes has two implications:
1. Agile orgs should register profitability rates (eg. shareholder returns, Ratio of
operating cash to assets, Ratio of buys to customer, reducing lead times etc.)
that are higher than the average of their competitive group and
2. That above-average performance should be sustained. Survival is related to,
but not the same thing as, agility. It’s common to see organizations not be
able to adapt and as a consequence not be able to survive.
Organizational agility results in sustained high performance.

Lacking supportive budgeting practices
Data driven Value streamsSmaller
feedback loop
Market changes
Agile encourages distributed cognition,
distributed decision making and small batch
sizes. Traditional budgeting practices central
decision making and yearly cycles.
Official Licensed Material © CodeGenesys, LLC@ajrdy ajay.reddy@codegenesys.com
Consider beyond budgeting practices.

Lacking convictional servant leadership
Yes, it can be cultivated
Limited
constraints
Anticipating
needs
Building Shared
Vision
Other’s (customer
incl) needs
It’s beyond just removing impediments,
advocacy and facilitation!
Continuously cultivate servant leadership practices.
Use Executive coaches where needed.

Lacking balance
Between principle and practice
Artificial data Heavy weight
artifacts
Mindless
process
Action without
understanding
While Shu-Ha-Ri has been a helpful way to
think about leaning Agile, it can also be
misused. In fact more often than not, it’s
misused.
Beware of natural proclivities in your own
organization.

Failure of traditional risk management
Particularly in the context of managing external vendors
Outcomes ContractsNegotiation Partnerships
Relationships that rest on untested capabilities ,
imagined outcomes and lack of trust.
Be willing to revise assumptions based on
learnings and empirical evidence.

Lacking the voice of the real customer
That support realization of a vision
Market trends User StoryHolistic risk Product Mgmt
Traditional Agile has represented the voice of the
customer by localized roles that have clearly failed by
and large in the industry. Product Ownership in most
case is trivialized to subjective prioritization and a
translator of traditional requirements into insipid
artifacts.
If you need to localize make sure you 1) choose right 2) person
receives appropriate training and 3) he/she has autonomy.

Lacking vision
That animates those who accomplish it
Capable Forward lookingSOO Achievable
Every team, team of teams, organization has to have a
purpose. The clearer, the more shared it is, the more
effective the team or organization is.
A vision animates, energizes a team or organization
giving it purpose.
Leaders need to master story telling and use stories to
reinforcing the vision.

Tampering
Common v/s special causes
97% Root causesLacking
feedback loops
Cascading effects
Hyper urgency, often leads to premature action
or acting on non-root causes which tends to
cause more problem.
1) Systems thinking 2) Mapping systems effects 3) Under cause effect
delays 4) Willingness to make data based decisions 5) Patience.

Lacking concept to cash thinking
Data without
Why
ArtifactsProcess without
purpose
Local optimization
Missing value stream understanding and
management of end to end flow of value.
Very few are able to make value stream level decisions. Even
fewer are capable of having a value stream perspective.

Underestimating change fatigue
Patterns not
logic
Roles and Job
Titles
Evolution vs
Revolution
Multiple initiatives
at the same time
Change is hard. People resist change. Large
change is more difficult. Forced change is
painful. Fatigue becomes the fabric of the
organization.
Few well thought long term initiatives. Eg. Toyota, Amazon, Spotify,
Nationwide.

Not understanding complexity
No traditional
metrics
Knowledge
work
Not allowing
failure
Variable causes
and effects
Strong tendency in companies to look for 1) best practice
type strategies and solutions 2) Prematurely converging on
a solution ignores unknown unknowns.
All large enterprises deal with complexity. Yet many of
these companies approach problems deterministically.

02
01Lacking
understanding of
complexity
Underestimating
change fatigue
Top 10 reasons why Agile fails

04
03
Top 10 reasons whyAgile fails
Lacking
concept to
cash
thinking
Tampering
05
Lacking
Vision

45
06
Lacking
the voice
of a real
customer
07
08Lacking
balance
between
principle and
practice
Failure of
Traditional
Risk
Management

0910Lacking
supportive
Budget
practices
Lacking
Convictional
Servant
Leadership

Top 10 reasons why Agile fails and some options by Ajay Reddy - Agile Maine Day 2016

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