3 Things Your Agile Coach Doesn’t Tell You

What I love about being an agile coach, is that I get to have long, meaningful chats with the clients I work with. From these chats, I got to know many of them individually and find out what gets them excited, annoyed, or motivated. Their feedback, both good and bad, has enabled me to teach them ways to be better at what they do.

However, it’s also through these interactions that I’ve come to some important realisations about agile in the real world. Although important, somehow they are rarely talked about.

So here are my 3 main realisations.

1. The world doesn’t care about agile

Whenever agile gets praised by leaders from big companies like Tesla or Amazon, agile coaches would go wild. Such news make us feel acknowledged, validated.

But, do you know the real reason behind the excitement? It’s because we’re not used to it, since people rarely praise agile.

Do you know why people rarely praise agile? It’s because agile don’t matter that much to them.

Back when I used to be a wedding photographer, my clients hardly ever ask about the cameras I use. All they cared about was having beautiful photos that would get them teary-eyed whenever they look at it. Interestingly, the ones who often discuss (argue) whether a camera from Canon/Sony/Nikon/etc is better, were my fellow photographers. And those discussions never gave any value for the clients.

Knowing how to operate a camera is good, but knowing how to take great photos is much better. The same goes with agile.

The only time agile gets a big reaction is when you talk to agile coaches or enthusiasts. The rest of the world don’t really care about it, and why should they? In reality, what matter to people are things like great product experiences, better product value, or more enjoyable workplaces.

So, the next time you’re about to create burndown charts, increase the team’s velocity, or roll out Lean Portfolio Management to a whole department, please take a pause. Use this time to think about what matters to your customers first, then figure out if the things you do will get you there.

Bottom line, people only care about how you can make their lives better, not the processes and tools you use.

2. You should not aim to be a fully agile company

Fully agile companies don’t exist.

You may be thinking: “That’s such a bold claim, considering there’s no way he knows all the companies in the world!”

The answer is: I don’t have to.

I don’t have to know all the companies in the world to know such companies don’t exist. Because, the term ‘fully agile’ has no fixed meaning and everyone have their own interpretation. If seasoned agile coaches regularly argue on LinkedIn comments on whether it’s safe to do SAFe, then what are the chances of us agreeing on what ‘fully agile’ really means?

Having a fixed definition for ‘fully agile’ is practically the same as defining the term ‘fixed agile’. Just like ‘accurate estimate’ or ‘slow sprint’, the term ‘fixed agile’ is an oxymoron. It’s contradictory, and in the context of agile it doesn’t quite work. 

What might a fully agile company be anyway - is it when every 3rd person in the company is an agile coach? Or is it a company with no chairs in their offices, so everyone naturally have ‘standups’? Even if there was a definition, it would have to be so broad and generic, that it defeats the purpose of having one.

Now that we’ve established fully agile companies are a myth, you should stop aspiring to be one. Remember, the world doesn’t care about agile anyway. Instead, aspire to build a routine of continuous improvements with your team, to serve your customers better.

3. You cannot blindly follow agile textbooks to solve real business problems

All textbooks are made for a perfect world, and the world is not perfect.

Do you remember that moment in your first job out of uni where you thought: “This is nothing like what I learned in the textbooks”? Well if it was true for your textbooks in uni, it’s certainly still true for the textbooks in agile.

What I meant by agile textbooks are any conceptual or theoretical explanation of agile and its related concepts - such Scrum, Kanban, or Lean. They are also known as guidebooks/playbooks/handbooks or similar.

Here’s the thing about these textbooks. They are great because they can guide you to apply an agile framework. But, straight out of the box they expect certain conditions to exist, such as having certain roles, processes, or even certain characteristics in a person. You can think of these conditions like the ingredients to food. To prepare a good dish, the first thing you need is the right ingredients. Fair enough.

But unlike food ingredients, in the real world you have minimal control over your working conditions, and you’ll only get to work with what you have. These conditions are rarely what your agile textbooks wanted. There’s complex bureaucracy, language barriers, timezone challenges, personal conflicts, cultural differences, government regulations, and the list goes on… It takes way more than textbook knowledge to make agile work.

Agile is about adapting to real conditions. Since you cannot instantly bend everyone and everything around you to fit a textbook, what you can do is maximise what’s possible, and slowly influence the conditions around you to improve. Focus on the intended outcome behind each textbook concept you learn, instead of the conditions. So when your situation calls for it, you’re more prepared to find other ways to achieve the same outcome, while steadily building towards that ideal conditions.