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Picturing What Good Agile Looks Like Posted on : Aug 31 - 2020

Agile management began as a work of passion and as a desire to set things right. It continues excite passion in its advocates and its critics. My article “What Good Agile Looks Like” has generated many excellent questions and suggestions. Perhaps the most unintentionally illuminating came from my long-time colleague, Dave Snowden, who wrote: “Utopia on the left, dystopia on the right and little or no truth in either - why do people do this?”

Why Do People Do This?

Let’s start with why.

In its simple form as shown in Figure 1, the table is a way of portraying the concept of what good Agile looks like. It is analogous to, say, a table aimed at representing “what healthy living looks like,” with one column showing what healthy living looks like and another showing what unhealthy living looks like. Such a table would not imply that any particular individual embodied either all of the healthy behaviors or all of the unhealthy behaviors. The table nevertheless provides the basis to start diagnosing to what extent an individual or group of people are engaging in a healthy lifestyle.

Thus Agile management as presented here is not utopian in the sense of “an impractically ideal social and political scheme.” It is the reality in many organizations around the world, including the most financially valuable firms on the planet. It only sounds unrealistic if you have suffered under constraints of bureaucracy for your whole working life and never learned that other ways of working are possible.

But for those who have experienced Agile management, or who have observed it first hand, Agile management often unfits you for working in any other way. When workers have a clear line of sight to those for whom the work is being done, work becomes meaningful in a way that isn’t possible in a bureaucracy. You are spoiled for life. The spaciousness of it, the clarity, the energy, the excitement, can make it an experience of a lifetime. You undergo the thrill of adding value to the lives of others. Once having experienced this, you never want to let go of it. Of course, when a traditional manager hears you talking like that, they look at you strangely as though you belong to a cult, which is one of the common accusations against Agile. It is therefore important to understand what are the detailed practical steps that lead to the Agile experience.

Nor is 20th century management necessarily “dystopian” in the sense of an imagined state where there is great suffering or injustice. This was the way most corporations were managed in the 20th century. It is the way in which many, if not most, big corporations are still managed today, if we are to believe frequent articles in Harvard Business Review, such as “Where People Management Went Wrong”. 20th century management is not without merit. It is still taught in business schools. It is a coherent and consistent set of principles, processes and practices that are focused on preserving order and making money, at least in the short term. In the  20th century, this kind of management led to the greatest material improvement in the history of the human race, and is still an appropriate way of managing some aspects of the economy, such as commodities.

Yet this way of management often fails to draw on the full talents of those doing the work or generate value for those for whom the work is being done—a critical failing in an increasingly fast-paced and complex customer-driven marketplace. Since in most sectors Agile management will be more appropriate, understanding the detailed steps that are necessary to get from here to there becomes crucial.

Thus, the pictures shown in in Figures 2-4 can be used to depict and understand the actual steps of a journey to achieve Agile management in any organization or group of organizations. View More