Agility in 2019
Agile in 2019
Every organisation nowadays is riding on the waves of Technological Evolution whether it is platforms, processing, operations , support or analytics. While the Business Executives are looking beyond tangible benefits on adapting a cultural change in the mindsets of the resources. With composition of several backgrounds, cross functional teams, collaborative tools yet only few organisation have succeeded in their path to Agility. Since trials and experimentations with various models are still undergoing, however the pace at which the failures are met and how an organisation is prepared to change for better outcomes, in 2019 this still tops the priorities for any Senior or Executive Leadership or CxOs.
Agile Manifestos and their effects in 2019
While the 4 key foundations of Agile Manifestos are being challenged by the evolution in Technologies , changing business dynamics, organisational developments, risks and their mitigation towards a better tommorrow.
Note :The 4 key foundations well known to everyone are as follows :-
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
Often in various group discussions of Agile Coaches and Agile Practitioners, the questions revolves around are as follows :-
- What are the best practices to spot a Talent who would be best fit into Agile ( based on the existing transition phase and planned phases of that organisation based on their Transformation Roadmap towards Agile ) ?
- Does same practices are applied to Development Teams, Testing Teams or even IT Infrastructure or Operations Teams, extending to DevOps Teams too ?
- If these Practices don’t fit across, then what are the options available for any organisation to standardise them and leverage the benefits across their various Value Streams ( Business Units )?
- Who are the guardians of such change at any organisation for leading and transforming these Critical Change ?
- Does annual performance appraisals holds true today, based on self sustaining and self development teams whereby we don’t wait for the yearly failures, while we use feedback loops to share constructive, timely feedbacks ?
- Do we still need to deploy managers or leads on a continuous basis to monitor codes, verify and validate from our Developers, Tester so that we prevent failures later ? Does it sounds anything valid today ?
- Should there be embark a culture of Trust, Transparency while empowering, encouraging individuals to build efficient and best software codes, without doing micro management or we are missing something ?
- Is having just Developer mindset enough for DevOps? And does it requires further more to be collaborative and be aligned with learning curve, availing the benefits of cross functional teams?
- Are we really addressing those 12 principles of Agile Manifestos in every sphere of our Digital Transformation roadmaps ? Are we missing something and what is it ?
Often there is an ongoing debate between various support functions , value streams, business units, leaders and executives of an organisation. Some of these are as follows
- Leadership levels ( based on individual or collective background and experiences ),
- Risk appetitie ( Risk Management Frameworks ) ,
- Acceptance to Change ( based on Organisation Culture, Feedbacks, Rewards & Recognition, Innovation culture, Openness to feedbacks, suggestions etc,.)
- Manager’s mindset based on his projects requirements related to Technologies, Process, Skill sets ? And is there anything which is missed out since they seems to only focus on Problem solving, coding, communication while attrition management seems to be out of their scope for them (not for all , however there is some % of Managers thinking like this ) , since resource would leave organisation anytime, anywhere in the lifecycle of Software Development and they are always worried about the knowledge gap that resource would instils while departing.
- Should resources in 2019 be concerned more on Corporate Politics ( who gets promotions, visibility, recognition or is always with executive management cabins, meeting rooms , etc. ) or should they be leading into environments of Openness, Systems Thinking, Feedback Loops ( constructive and timely ), Innovations by empowerments, encouragements, challenging the status quos, thinking out of box for problem solving, etc,.
- One of this question frequently discussed in Agile Coaches groups – Is quality of code the ultimate sign of a good developer ?
- My thoughts are on this particular question is as follows :-
- *If we have defined quality and levels of Codes, then why do need to micromanage resources ? Is this an organisational needs or rather personal needs by some of us ?
- *If the quality is low , what are your plans to address them as a Manager?
- *Being people manager, how well you define and discuss learning curve with your direct reports?
It’s an amazing discussions from various groups which helps to arrive at consensus on what is really right and what needs a change and where does it need that change.
I would continue to write further on this, and I would like to thank all my readers to go through this. Also I would like to encourage you all to share your best and worst scenarios whereby we all would definitely learn on how to navigate across this together in Agile 2019 world and beyond.
