The Agile Enterprise: We tried Agile, and it didn’t work - What’s next?

Agile, for many a silver bullet, worked pretty well for software development teams with most of them being the first attempt to have a structured approach. Bringing some order to chaos was beneficial, and the results were in some cases spectacular. Most, if not all Agile frameworks were developed by software engineers and for software engineers. Apart from a couple of frameworks, like Disciplined Agile and SAFe that combine Agile with traditional Lean practices used in manufacturing, most Agile frameworks were developed for small teams (less than 10) and a start-up culture.

In real life, Agile does fail, more often than we think and far more often than we learn in the training courses. Agile became the victim of its success with some organizations trying to use Agile as a remedy for core issues like lack of vision, lack of decision or even lack of skills. Contrary to public opinion, Agile and self-organization require more skills and discipline than command and control. To be Agile, an Organization must be Agile at all levels not only at the team level. Agile is based on trust; verbal agreements should be enough. There is no need of sign-offs and approvals for each and every activity. But that's a risk when there are multiple parties involved, especially when commercial agreements are made between entities.

This webinar is a collection of real life projects that had to balance Agility with traditional practices. In most cases, the solution was the return to following a plan. For each example there will be an assessment of the causes that lead to failure, what the organization could've done better, and lessons learned that could prevent such issues.