Agile at Scale or Scaling Agile?

 

First published on LinkedIn.com

Agile at scale or scaling Agile? Which is a more appropriate description?

Steve Denning recently wrote about Microsoft's 16 keys to being Agile at Scale in an article at Forbes.com. The first key he cited was to Pursue “Agile at Scale,” not “Scaling Agile”.

Denning described the distinction between the two perspectives this way:

Let’s begin by noting that managers at Microsoft talk about being “Agile at scale,” not “scaling Agile.” There is an implicit recognition that “scaling Agile” makes no more sense than “scaling the legal department” or “scaling the cafeteria.” The methodologies of “Agile” and “Scrum” do not constitute, as zealots sometimes imply, a panacea for every possible managerial or leadership issue. There are many aspects of an organization’s activities, including strategy, planning, finance, marketing, and sales, where the goal of “working software” as prescribed in the Agile Manifesto is simply not relevant, at least without significant modification.

The question addressed at Microsoft is: “How do we make the whole organization agile?” not “How do we scale Agile or Scrum?” In answering this question, the methodologies of Scrum and Agile in software development have a huge potential contribution, but they are only part of the story.

He went on to note:

Nor is “Agile at scale” at Microsoft a matter of requiring the teams to comply with the goals of the organization, whatever they happen to be. Inherent in “Agile at scale” as practiced at Microsoft’s Developer Division are the core Agile values. This includes a tight focus on delivering continuous value to customers, not merely generating quarterly profits or boosting the current stock price. It also rests on a deep respect for the talents and capacities of those doing the work, and the teams in which they work, not treating workers as “resources” that are assignable, optimizable and ultimately disposable.

In our book Agile Value Delivery: Beyond the Numbers, which was published about 6 months before Denning's article, we concurred with Microsoft's perspective with the following:

One of the hidden benefits of the model in our book is that we believe, at some point in your propagation of the blended practices within it, that people will have stopped referring to Agile as something that is separate from how the rest of the organization works.

Once that happens, people will stop calling it Agile and simply see it as how they normally work.

This is the state we refer to as “Next Generation Agile” and the point at which we can stop using the term entirely.

Until that time occurs however, a lot of change must occur not just within individual organizations but also in what we teach in universities and business schools.

Agile is not itself a methodology or a set of processes.

Currently, the primary focus for many in the IT industry in particular is on the methods (e.g. Scrum) rather than on Values side of it that help to inculcate the right mindset. But if Agile is a mindset, then clearly it is about people – not process, methods, or practices. It is when it becomes how we think that we can stop referring it as a named something.

This will also be when we can stop talking about trying to scale Agile. To get there we need to start recognizing what that means in practical terms for people who are members of Agile teams.

Microsoft had some additional advice beyond their 16 keys for other big firms setting out on an Agile transformation

• Get good at the science of Agile and Scrum but don’t be overly prescriptive
• Don’t copy others: learn from others
• Build the culture you want … and you’ll get the behavior you’re after
• Stop trying to predict the future
• Optimize around customer feedback

What do you think? Is it Scaling Agile or Agile at Scale?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.