Hi guys, this week I got a call from my friend Herman who works as Agile Coach in Super Soft, here you can find a bit more about what he already did. He sounded quite sad and frustrated, though he didn’t want to explain the reasons. So, I invited him for lunch since no one can resist a Schnitzel and Weiss beer.
During the lunch my fears were confirmed - Herman was down and depressed. After my insistence he finally opened up to me. As it turned out, he was extremely frustrated about the latest happenings in Super Soft. This time his responsibilities were beyond Agile Coaching, he was in charge of a project as Project Manager. So he finally had a better overview of the entire release process in the company. Being quite an experienced Agile Coach and a System Thinker, Herman felt extremely frustrated about the way things were managed within the release process.
The way software release is managed in his company is completely against his vision of how the process should be. In his opinion the company should have a complete cross-functional team responsible for software releases. The team would make independent decisions, and if they decide that the product is ready to be shipped - it would be shipped.
At the moment the company is full of small boxes (different departments), and the release of software depends on the decision of each of these departments. Herman has a feeling that most of the people in his company can only see their own small boxes and cannot understand the big picture. What is worse, he fears that people have little understanding of customer value, because instead of reducing the time to market they prefer to spend most of the time on acceptance gates.
Then I asked him, “Why are those acceptance gates there?” The poor guy almost exploded telling me that quite a few times in the past there were situations when something went wrong, but instead of understanding what went wrong, the company created more processes to prevent the same happening in future. He then quoted “Mary and Tom Poppendieck”: “When an organization experiences software development problems, there is a tendency to impose a more disciplined process to the organization usually one with more rigorous sequential processing: Document requirements more completely, obtain written customer approval, control changes more carefully, and trace each requirement to the code”. This is exactly what is happening in Super Soft.
He then gave me his opinion on how things should be managed. In his opinion, his company should try something what Toyota does. They should “stop the line” and understand the problem. They should find the root of the problem, its cause, instead of creating another process just to avoid the issue. Because creating another process will never fix the problem but only waste resources, and, most probably, sooner or later the problem will re-appear elsewhere in the organization.
Herman believes that Super Soft has a difficult culture – it is a culture that does not tolerate mistakes. If people make mistakes - they are punished, and it is easier to put acceptance gates into different phases of the software development process rather than try some other approaches until they find the root causes. In his opinion it will be extremely difficult to change his organization because it is not a learning organization. If an organization is not open to learning, it will be unable to develop.
After that I could not really say much to him, the problem is quite complex and I do not have any ready solutions. The only thing I suggested was that he could try to map all the release processes using a Value Stream Map and with that try to understand how much time his company spends on doing something that brings real value to the customer.
Based on what he told me, though, I believe he would have a difficult time trying to agree with his colleagues on separating the activities that are a waste of time from those that actually bring value to the customer. But that is another story
What do you think about it all? Can you help us with your suggestions? What other options do you think Herman has?
To close this post I would like to say this is a fictitious story, any relation with the characters or the company’s name is mere coincidence.
Looking forward to your suggestions,
Luis
In a word, Herman is screwed. If he is in a Whack a Mole organization then the adoption of Agile will never take. Transparency will never be achieved, people will be risk averse, forget getting a straight answer. Could you really do root cause analysis in a place that might punish people? I doubt it.
Hi, thank you so much for your feedback. I tend to agree with you but I still believe he can do something . I know changing a culture is quite difficult but maybe trying to chose some allies could help him. I know that some people in other departments agree with him, they are good people in a bad system. The question maybe will be: How to change the system little by little?
Once again thanks
Luis
Without a very high up sponsor, he will never be able to change the system. If he was able to “find” the true nature/root cause of the problem and show how fixing that is more efficient then adding more layers of prevention downstream saves costs/increases reliability, maybe he has a small chance. Either he has to fall in line or get a new job. Been there.
Similar problem at an old job. The “PMO” was made up of traditional project managers, scrum masters/project managers and 1 agile coach (me) who was also an SM/PM. When something went wrong the head of the PMO (also traditional thinker) would put more documentation into place, acceptance procedures, and people that needed to be involved. At one point she hunted down the head of the Ops dept and told them she wanted every script that is run on production documented (everyday) with the time the script ran. This could have required hiring a new employee, instead my great developers found a solution that would run in the background and log the time. However the rest of it was not so easily solved, my solution was, I quit. Don’t necessarily know it was the right one, but when the head of the PMO overrides all the Agile methodologies/does not believe or understand them you eventually get fed-up. P.S. She was Scrum Master certified, but apparently could not reform.
This is quite a common challenge You do not learn Agile by taking a certification course its a complete new way of thinking and acting This is quite difficult for most of the people its a paradigm change
Thanks for your feedback
Luis
Nice writeup.
It is a little strange - you say he is an Agile Coach working for Super soft - it means somebody in Super Soft is interested in adopting Agile processes - yet he not able to bring the change. If his job is to educate folks on Agile - then he should be ready for such kind of challenges of bringing the changes in the Organization.
He should start start small - with small team and start infusing the culture - educate and motivate.
Convince the top leadership of the value proposition of Agile - it would happen - if not overnight - but in due course of time..
Thanks Basav.
He is already doing that . But like you said there are several problems and some times he had difficulties in getting new ideas That´s why he did ask for some help
But thanks for your feedback
Luis