As Lean thinking began to permeate the Agile community in the mid-00’s, a set of guiding principles emerged. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) website includes a list of these principles and some good definitions. The first Lean-Agile principle is take an economic view. You may ask: An economic view of what? Well, basically everything we do, at all levels. One way to think about it is to consider how much value we obtain compared to the effort necessary to obtain it. I like to call that the value-to-effort ratio. A value-to-effort ratio greater than 1.0 might be okay. A value-to-effort…

A recent discussion got me thinking about how governance (assuring regulatory compliance, etc.) fits in with “Agile” delivery methods. We were discussing how to advise a client about where to apply agile approaches and why. When the subject of governance came around, someone tossed out a statement along the lines of, “Well, that’s just like waterfall, so there’s nothing to do there.” The statement took me aback. I asked for clarification. The reasoning was that governance requirements are predefined and fixed, while agile methods are based on collaboration and feedback loops to discover stakeholder needs and to steer work in…

I’ve worked for LeadingAgile for the better part of four years.  Did you hear that? The word is even in the name of the company that pays me.  Agile.  It used to matter to me, but now that  I’ve been an Agile practitioner for almost 15 years—I’m not even really that passionate about it. I’m sure by the time this is published I will have had to reassure my executive team and peers that they don’t need to worry. However, don’t get me wrong. Agile techniques and practices are about the only tools I would ever use in my consulting…

You’re not Agile. That isn’t Agile. That isn’t how you do Scrum. That’s not SAFe. When did we decide to canonize the gospels according to Cockburn, Schwaber, Sutherland, and Leffingwell? What ever happened to: “we are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others to do it?” When did we begin putting Agile over Agility? Let’s be real. Most companies can’t actually do Agile. They can’t do Agile at scale. They aren’t built for it. Faced with that reality, you have two choices—change Agile, or change the company. Most companies will benefit from better organizational alignment.…

Suppose your organization doesn’t truly know what would be valuable to your customers and you don’t have good technical practices, delivery capability or Agile project management. What would you improve first? Would a focus on customer value lead to improved technical practices? Would a reliable delivery process enable the organization to explore and meet customer needs more effectively? Okay, let me ask you this….Is there any point in a software development team learning to build higher-quality software and learning to do it faster if it doesn’t solve a business problem, remove a constraint, or help meet our business goals? Focusing…