The Agile Thermocline

  Agile   Leadership   Scrum   Stakeholder Management   Strategy   ProjectsAtWork  

The higher levels of an organization often struggle to keep track of the work they direct. A different set of obligations keeps them out of the day-to-day work and challenges project teams face. When adopting Agile, this gap can become even larger due to a separation of leadership values from team values.

In many adoptions of Agile, particularly larger implementations, companies find themselves facing a barrier ofunderstanding and communication between those doing Agile work and the leadership at the higher levels of the company driving the work. We call this the Agile Thermocline.

A thermocline is an ocean property that can be thought of as an invisible blanket separating an upper mixed layer of warm water from calm deep cold water below. Sound does not easily pass through this barrier, just as information and needs can often get lost as they try to travel across layers of management in a company. So the Agile thermocline is thebarrier of communication that often develops between leadership and the Agile teams within an organization.

Let’s set the stage: A company wants to adopt Agile to increase productivity and morale while reducing costs by being faster to market. The company’s leaders have the hard facts of the productivity possible with Agile but may not be aware of the soft costs of achieving this value, such as changes to culture and leadership …

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