When are we "agile?"

 I hear the questions all the time -

• "How long will it take for us to be agile?"
  
  
  
• "How do we know when we are agile?"
• "When will we be done transforming to agile?"

Honest coach's answer?  I don't know.  I really don't.  Does it mean that all of the people in your organization are on Scrum Teams?  Does it mean that everyone has taken the "Agile 101" course and has a MBO that says "Do Agile this year?"  Does it mean that we've done a bunch of stuff over the last year and someone with an important sounding title declares that we are 100% agile?  See where I'm going with this?

As I've argued before, agile is a mindset.  How do you know when your organization has adopted a mindset?  How do you know when your teams are basing their decisions and behaviors on the Agile Values and Principles?  You know it when you see it!  You know it when you live it!

 

We recently challenged some of our agile marketing team members to give us examples (real life) of when they have lived the agile value - "Individual and Interactions over process and tools."  Here's what we heard -

 

 

Creative development –

• Current process would have OC work with I&A on insights, deliver as package via SAB to IM who works with IHA, who coordinates with creative team to develop creative piece (working with creative director, designer, writer, etc), which when polished then goes back to IM to OC. If adjustments need to be made, the telephone game reverses itself and the process starts all over again.
• Agile process: We bring a small team of IM, IHA, OC in room with business partners when gathering/sharing insights, creative development is collaborative (IHA bouncing ideas off team for real time feedback), resulting in creative output that requires fewer adjustments. IHA has a seat at the table earlier in the process (with input on the SAB to ensure it reflects something they can activate on).  

 

Legal review – bringing legal to the table earlier as strategy is being developed does result in some efficiencies with respect to quicker review turn-arounds (Note - this is a work in process and doesn’t always work as designed).  When it does work and legal is available to participate in strategy discussions upfront, we are able to get their perspective and guidance on what to do’s and don’ts resulting in less rejected creatives and quicker reviews.

 

 

Creative development process has streamlined tremendously, since our creative partners are part of the scrum team. The creative team participates in all of the strategy discussions, target audience definition, etc, so developing creative is a natural extension of all the conversations that transpired... This results in less rounds of creative review and less time overall on creative development.

 

Retrospectives allow the scrum team to reflect on what worked well and where there were areas of opportunity in the prior sprint – so they can apply these best practices to future sprints – this constant reflection or post-mortem of sorts ensures that the team is not running into the same challenges multiple times

 

Scrum team members stepping out of their traditional roles to ensure tasks in a given sprint are completed is another example. This includes partner discussion, creative reviews, creative lead, reviews/approvals, etc.

Our SAB has become so much more streamlined, because the scrum team already has line of sight of strategy based on backlog and ongoing discussions and retrospect... Therefore, pre-SAB analytics, LOB buy-in, etc, is done on an ongoing basis. Therefore, when it comes time to develop an upcoming campaign, all of the upfront strategic work is already done with scrum team prioritizing, defining target audience, etc.  In fact, we have moved away from a SAB for every campaign and now have an over-arching annual SAB that covers our work effort.

 

You don’t have to stay in your lane –

• If someone has a strength, apply it for the benefit of the team even if it isn’t “their traditional role” 
• Feedback from the team is respected, even if not applied (for example, don’t need to be in OC or IM to provide feedback on a piece of creative – great to weight multiple perspectives and then make a decision)

 

In a horizontal process, the campaign analytics and insights process is well-defined with pre/mid/post campaign report out along with set process for socialization.  While the intent is good, it often creates blind spots about performance and waiting for specific “big bang” reports and handoffs for socialization (and a feeling from the LOB that Marketing is slow).  In Agile, we value transparency of performance and everyone shares ongoing views of performance as we find the data-driven insights in real-time and conversation across agency and internal partners in the scrum teams provides meaningful in-the-moment understanding that fosters iteration and improvement during the campaign when it can make a difference!  This Agile principle enables faster reports, quicker optimization, a culture of vested mutual interest and transparency, and a spirit of continual learning with everyone being able to contribute along the way toward the team goal.

 

WOW!

All these great examples from team members doing their best to live and breathe the Agile Values and Principles every day!  I'm sure there are hundreds of additional examples that we could use to highlight how our agile teams embrace just the first Agile Value.  

That still begs the question - how do we know when we are "agile?"  As a coach, and as a believer in the Values and Principles - I think that is a question we have to ask ourselves every day.  

 

As an agile team member - 

• Was I agile today? 
• Did I show the values and principles? 
• Did I provide honest feedback for the good of the group, even if it was hard to do? 
• Did I take a risk and offer an option that was outside of my day to day role? 
• Did I offer to help a teammate even if it wasn't "my job?"   

 

As an agile manager or leader -

• Was I agile today? 
• Did I empower my team member members to make their own decisions today? 
• Did I solve my team member's problem today, or did I encourage them to solve it for themselves? 
• Did I ensure that my team members were protected from distraction so they could focus on their customer and their team's backlog? 
• Did I help to remove an organizational impediment so our teams could become more efficient? 
• Did I hold my partner managers and leaders accountable for embodying the Agile Values and Principles with their behaviors?

So to answer my original question (did you think I had lost track of that?) I think we are always on our way to being agile.  It's a journey with a destination that is always right around the corner.  

• Should we expect to be perfect?  No!  
• Should we expect that just because we are using scrum or Kanban that we are being agile?  No!  
• Should we expect that we will have moments where we are less agile than we could be?  Yes!  
• Should we expect that every day there is another opportunity to learn, reflect, and to find ways to embody the Agile Values and Principles?  YES!

As unsatisfying as that answer is - it's the best as I have to offer.  We can offer timelines on how long it'll take to train on one of the agile frameworks.  We can tell you about how long it'll be before a portfolio is converted from waterfall to scrum.  But to be able to answer how long it will take to truly BE agile...  well that's up to you, now isn't it!

 

I will end this with a quote from one of my partner Coaches... I think it sums up how I feel about all of this...

"When will we be done transforming to agile?  My answer: There is no end.  Think of music, Musicians continuously practice, there is no musician who will say that I am perfect..."

We all win together.