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Your company is insane and you might be insane, too.
I bet you’re suspicious right now, aren’t you? You think this sensational opener is there just to suck you in and get you to read something that’s totally unrelated. Well, I mean what I said. Let me explain.
There’s this old joke. I think it’s a joke. Maybe it’s a saying. Or it could be an adage. I’m pretty sure it’s not an axiom and I know it’s not a koan. Hmmm. Might be a riddle. Anyway, where was I?
Oh yeah. The joke. It goes like this:
Q. What’s the definition of insanity?
A. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
OK, so maybe “joke” was stretching it a little, but it is kind of pithy, don’t you think?
Why do companies want to adopt Agile methods? After all, it’s expensive and painful what with all the training and change management and readjustments and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) and so forth. And why do people come to CSM courses hoping to find new ways to build software? Because they’re bored and they want to get into arguments with their management? Probably not.
I think the reason is the same for both. It’s because pretty much everybody wants better (different) results from their software development efforts. Management wants more software to sell, and they want it to be higher quality, and to arrive faster, and to be more liked by their customers.
Employees would like at least an even chance of succeeding in what they do, and they’d like to feel like they are contributing the best that they have to offer as a valued part of their company. They want to feel like an accomplished, highly skilled professional and not some interchangeable cog in a soulless production machine.
OK, fine. So far so good. Everybody is aligned. It’s win-win all around. What could possibly go wrong? Well, here comes the funny part. Nearly all companies, nearly all management teams, and many employees don’t seem to understand that getting different results is going to require doing different things, or doing things differently (I’m not sure if those two are the same or not).
When I’m teaching the CSM course or introducing Agile at a company, the minute I bring something up that is actually, obviously different from what they are doing today, somebody gets upset.
When one of my students gets upset, they start raising objections such as:
“Oh, well, we can’t do it that way at our company.” (Betcha you can.)
“That’s not how it is at our company.” (Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you?)
“But what about having the complete architecture before I start? I have to have that!” (Should I do this the nice way or the mean way?)
“We can’t do all of that testing. We don’t have testers.” (Gosh, I hadn’t thought of that. I guess you’re right. Just do the Agile without the testing and you’ll be fine. I’m sure no one will notice.)
“We don’t actually have anybody who could be the Product Owner.” (Do you hear what you’re saying?)
“We have a very mature phase-gate development process that we have to keep in place as we move to Agile.” (Say what????)
“I’m a manager and I’m paid to leverage my maturity and experience by telling people what to do so they don’t make mistakes. I’ll be doing that with the Agile teams, too.” (Don’t roll your eyes…don’t roll your eyes…)
“Our QA is in a separate group and they won’t talk to us until we have a complete set of specs to give them.” (And how’s that working for you, and them, and your company?)
And on and on and on. I talk about this when I teach Agile to new teams or new CSMs and CSPOs. Then later on during the class, when they start in with this stuff, I can get away with saying:
“Oh! So you mean your company is insane. They sent you here to learn a new way to build software, but they won’t let you build software in a new way!”
This is fun because I get to call companies and my students insane in a way that’s fun and also makes a point.
What to do about this is a serious question for those of us who coach, train, consult, or champion Agile within our organizations. Teams tend to get it, but I fear that companies of a certain size tend not to get it. And they keep not getting it while their Agile adoption loses steam, fails to deliver as well as it could, and finally fades away entirely. This is where many of those “scrum failed” stories come from. What happened was that in reality, they didn’t really try scrum because they were afraid to change anything.
Your company is insane because what they wish is that you could somehow get all the benefits of Agile without making any difficult or scary changes. You might be insane because you think some things can’t be changed and we can still get the benefits of Agile without changing them. As long as either you or your company is insane, neither of you will get the benefits of Agile adoption.
I guess that’s all I wanted to say.
About the Author: Alan Atlas is a Musician, Certified Scrum Trainer, and Agile Coach at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.
