It's Fundamental
5 Reasons Agile & Lean Fundamentals Are Core to High Performing Teams
Leaders of progressive companies know they are in a knowledge acquisition game. Smart organisations are in a race to skill up their knowledge workers on understanding their customers, which in turn enables them to become sources of value generation for their customers. It’s the ultimate reason that companies have to exist. Now and into the future we must shift from value extraction to value creation, but how can we know what’s valuable?
High performing teams understand their customers and how to deliver value to them, they are empirical, using data to help them figure out what’s going to keep their customers coming back.
empiricism /ɛmˈpɪrɪsɪz(ə)m/ The theory that all knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses and observable results.
You may be in an Agile organisation, transforming your teams to be more Agile or you might have heard “Agile talk” happening around you. It’s hard to find organisations that don’t heavily leverage Agile ways of working, in some capacity in some, if not all, of their teams, since Agile uptake is still on the rise.
The status of Agile
■ Capterra states that 71% of companies are implementing Agile.
■ VersionOne reveals that Agile adoption has helped out 98% of companies.
■ Harvard Business Review declares that 60% of companies experience revenue growth and profits increase after using an Agile approach.
■ Agile has become the norm, replacing Waterfall as the preferred model of choice, for software development and project management.
■ Standish Group Chaos Study reports the Agile success rate is 42%, as compared to Waterfall’s success rate of 26%. This means Agile is 1.5x more successful than the Waterfall model.
Agile is more than a mere Project Management methodology that came from software, it’s a philosophy and a way of thinking that pre-dates the Agile manifesto itself and is born of a long history of systems thinkers and empiricists that were obsessed with understanding and improving how their organisations worked.
“Progress cannot be generated when we are satisfied with existing situations. ”
1. Shu -> Ha -> Ri
Traditional Wisdom -> Breaking with Tradition -> Transcendence
The pattern of Shu Ha Ri is a useful metaphor for Agile adoption and comes from the pattern of learning something new and finding a path to mastery, borrowed from martial arts. In martial arts it’s useful to first study the form of one art under one teacher and remain faithful to the form with no deviation, this is known as ‘Shu’. In Agile, learning to implement the ceremonies and practices by the book and with discipline can be considered Shu.
‘Ha’ is about breaking with tradition, branching out and seeking wisdom from theory and underlying principles. ‘Ha’ could be a Scrum team learning and experimenting with Kanban.
In ‘Ri’ the students transcend the need to learn from other people and learn from their own practice. They are sufficiently fluent in wisdom to create their own approaches and adapt what they’ve learned. In Agile the need for coaching falls away and teams are able to adapt and improve their own way of working.
In learning Agile we encounter people who have never followed this path and have skipped learning both the original form ‘Shu’ AND the underlying principles and theory ‘Ha’. This shows up as people attending ceremonies that seem empty and don’t achieve the intended purpose, or with teams that appear to be Agile in nature but are not able to achieve the results of frequent and early delivery of value to their customer.
In this situation the simplest thing to do is go back to basics. With experienced coaching, returning to Shu can lift teams faster into performance then layering different adaptations and techniques on to poor performing Agile teams.
2. We move faster when we’re aligned
It’s observable that we can move faster towards common goals if those goals are articulated and we have opportunities to align. When we can use the same language, and the same basis to inform our ‘Shu’, we can move quickly to baselining this new knowledge, and then further knowledge acquisition can be accessed more rapidly. Higher order techniques can be accessed if all members of a team have learned the basics together. As a team they share the same foundations, the same experience.
Since Agility is a team pursuit of performance, the team acquiring the fundamental skills together is more efficient then all team members picking a different Agile approach and scattering to learn them as individuals.
3. We don’t know what we don’t know
“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge”
The Dunning Kruger effect - the cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability, appears to be the most insulting of cognitive biases.
It presents as a double whammy to those who have Agile Transformation sweep through their organisations like a freight train. Messages like ‘Applying Agile is easy’ and ‘Agile change is hard’ show up in equal measure which is not helpful.
The problem with the Dunning Kruger effect and skipping Agile basics is that we move on in our ignorance. Because acquired habits are hard to break we return to applying old models we are comfortable with and thus find failure.
We see this manifest in organisations trying to remain faithful to old ways of working and new Agile ways of working at the same time, this can result in DOUBLE work and you can see why people may reject that notion as a failure. We can see this as a failure of Agile or failure of ourselves, but failure can be avoided with a little learning in the mix.
Fundamental knowledge and practice helps us step forward with confidence and let go of old models and the burden of doubled processes.
“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
4. Coaches have ‘The Curse of Knowledge’
Experienced Agilists have another bias which is known as the curse of knowledge. Knowledge bias occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand. This may manifest as the feeling that other people ‘just don’t get it’ and can be a problem if coaches, impatient to help with change, swiftly blast past those individuals without providing them time and space to absorb new information.
Agile Coaches often get asked to dilute the whole body of Agile learning into a brief 15 minute conversation - I can tell you, as an experienced coach it can’t be done.
Our Agile Fundamentals course has concepts that are easy to absorb with a focus on self learning because organisations with some level of expertise can unintentionally neglect going slowly enough for the more inexperienced people to catch on and catch up. The whole organisation will conquer the challenges of value generation quicker if the whole organisation can embark on the same journey.
5. The Agile Mindset - Why Agile?
Agile is more than a Project management methodology that came from Software. It uses empiricism, which states “knowledge comes from experience” therefore we must practice doing Agile in order to Be Agile. Once you develop your Agile Mindset it is always with you and is a powerful tool to apply to many contexts and situations.
Agile Fundamentals must encompass the History of Agile, the Values and the Principles of it, and lead the learner to the path of developing their Agile mindset. A fundamental approach that can achieve this leaves the learner comfortably seated with a powerful answer to the question ‘Why should we be Agile anyway?’
Agile Fundamentals can break the barrier of engagement and accelerate teams to higher levels of performance in empirical systems of work, to transform them into data driven, customer centric engines of value generation.
WE’VE CREATED…
Agile Fundamentals
Start your journey into the world of Agile the best way possible with our introductory course to Agile ways of working - we cover everything needed to set you on the path to high performance!
Our fundamentals course has an emphasis on learning FIRST about the History, Values and Principles of Agile and also the Agile Mindset so you get a deeper appreciation of how to apply agility to your own work.
This course is delivered as high quality videos broken down into easy to understand topics honed from our years of experience. We use simple and clear visuals, as well as handbooks to supplement your learning.
We cover all the important practices and techniques that will provide you with not just the knowledge, but also the confidence to apply it. This is going to unlock YOUR ability to add value every day with your team and what they are delivering.
WE OFFER GROUP DISCOUNTS - If you want your WHOLE team and organisation to get on board with Agile Ways of Working then get in touch, because we have discounted packages so you can make it accessible to large groups too!
Contact us at: rebootme@rebootco.com.au
ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Alex Stokes is a co-founder of ReBoot Co and has spent many years in the industry specialising in Agile and Lean approaches. She finds pleasure in coaching, teaching, and helping other companies solve their problems.