cargo cult agile: is your organization getting agile wrong? — a quick poll to check your...

Cargo Cult AgileIs Your Organization Getting Agile Wrong?

A Quick Poll to Check Your Organization‘s Agile Health

Berlin, March 17th, 2016

You’re Agile, Yet Sort of Stuck?A common problem nowadays.

“Agile practitioners” are increasingly entering the coaching market without experience beyond a 2-day training or reading a Scrum book.

The result is called Cargo Cult Agile: The “rules” are followed to the letter, without understanding why, thus making Agile as a philosophy looking bad.

Here are 25 questions that allow a quick poll to check the Agile health status of your organization and probably spark a discussion on what and how to improve…

What Is the Purpose of the Poll?

The purpose of the whole exercise is to start a conversation about what part of your agile

transition is going well and where action needs to be taken.

The poll supports this approach in several ways:

• It is anonymous—no one will hold back, contrary to retrospectives as a competing format to

gather feedback.

• The poll delivers data, it’s no longer a gut feeling, and hence a good basis to start talking to

the management.

• It is very affordable.

How to Run the Poll?

That is simple:

Just count the number of ‘yes, this applies’ for all

25 questions…

Question 1/25

(Product) vision and strategy are not

communicated

Download a printable PDF here: https://age-of-product.com/cargo-cult-agile-state-agile-checklist-organization/

Question 2/25

Roadmaps with fixed release dates are

provided for a year ahead by the CTO


Question 3/25

No one from the organization

is talking to customers


Question 4/25

CTO and stakeholders insist on every change to

be approved by them in advance


Question 5/25

Offline boards are banned for

confidentiality reasons


Question 6/25

Product owners are bypassed by stakeholders

talking directly to the CTO


Question 7/25

Stakeholders decide on shipping product

increments, not the product owner


Question 8/25

Projects are shipped only when completed,

but not in iterations


Question 9/25

Stakeholders are prevented from

talking to the Scrum teams


Question 10/25

The product backlog is defined by a

product council or committee


Question 11/25

Features of doubtful value are being pushed

through, e.g. to secure bonuses


Question 12/25

Sales is promising non-existent features to

close deals w/o including the product owner


Question 13/25

Deadlines or fixed schedules

are still in use for noncritical issues


Question 14/25

Product management isn’t granted access to

business intelligence to make

informed, data-driven decisions


Question 15/25

Stakeholders communicate to product and

engineering in the form of

requirement documents


Question 16/25

Product owners spend time mostly on the

creation and administration of user stories


Question 17/25

Sprint backlogs are changed on short notice

after the sprint started


Question 18/25

There is a dedicated Scrum team even for

bugs and minor change requests


Question 19/25

Scrum ceremonies are never attended by any

stakeholders


Question 20/25

Velocity matching commitment is the main

metric to measure the success of Scrum


Question 21/25

Developers are not participating in

user story creation


Question 22/25

Scrum teams are changing in size and

composition, depending on the number of

simultaneously running side projects and

task forces


Question 23/25

During stand-ups, the team members are

reporting to the Scrum master


Question 24/25

Retrospectives are held regularly,

but no changes follow


Question 25/25

Scrum teams are not cross-functional and

therefore depending on other teams or

departments


Interpreting Poll Results

Now, count the number of ‘yes, this applies’

—your total should be < 25—

and progress to the next slide…


Interpreting Poll Results (2)

0–2 boxes: I’d like to talk to you how you managed to do that. Care for a Skype-call?

3–5 boxes: Well done! You’re on a good way.6–8 boxes: There is room for improvement. Lot’s of it.9–14 boxes: If you haven’t very recently embarked on your

agile voyage, then it is time to change your approach.

15–20 boxes: Okay, start over with agile–it is not working in the current set-up within your organization.

21–25 boxes: You either haven’t started going agile yet. Or you are sugar-coating command & control structures to look “agile”. It won’t work, by the way.


What Is Your Experience?

Please share your experience:

Cargo Cult Agile: The ‘State Of Agile’ Checklist For Your Organization

https://age-of-product.com/cargo-cult-agile-state-agile-checklist-organization/

How to Get in Touch: Email: [email protected]: https://age-of-product.com

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cargo cult agile: is your organization getting agile wrong? — a quick poll to check your...

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