Karl had approved the new agile transformation the consultant guided them towards. He said the team in charge was now called “The Control Tower”. Sakura was not impressed. “The name of this team screams lock step, not flexibility. This feels like we are starting at a disadvantage. Can we at least change the name and then talk about the plan?”
Karl: No, the CEO has sent the coms already. The teams still aren’t delivering how he wants so he wants so our team to take back control.
Sakura: Shouldn’t we find out why the teams are underperforming rather than creating a solution for something that’s not clearly understood.
Karl: No, we’ve called in group of consultants, and they are going to create the single standard everyone will be measured against.
Sakura: But there’s no room for people to learn and innovate when their every move is laid out for them.
Karl: Well, we need control and this is how we’ll get it.
Sakura: Then we're not building agility. We're building compliance and calling it agile
The tooling committee had selected one platform for all teams. It had dashboards. It had integrations. It had a learning curve that required admins. Karl described it as perfect. The teams described as unusable and asked why it seemed more like something IT might like, but not them. Three teams had already built workarounds in spreadsheets. Izabela had raised this with Karl who said the workarounds were temporary.
Karl: One tool gives us one view of the whole organization.
Izabela: One view that nobody wants to use, leading them to duplicating their real work elsewhere.
Karl: They'll adapt.
Izabela: They already have. To spreadsheets.
Karl: That's not the tool's fault.
Izabela: If the mandated tool isn’t fit for purpose, it's the mandate's fault.
Karl had given Deepak the “transformation playbook” and asked him to review it and provide feedback. When he got to the section on the new position of Account Manager, he had some concerns.
Karl: The account managers handle the relationship with the customers so the teams can pay more attention to delivery.
Deepak: So, the teams are expected to build value for their customers without ever interacting with them?
Karl: They get the requirements.
Deepak: They get a filtered summary of someone's interpretation of what the customer said. That's not access.
Karl: We can't have developers talking to clients.
Deepak: Then don’t pretend that this playbook is going to lead to agility.
We are a group of avid travelers who love to explore new destinations and share our experiences with others. Our goal is to inspire and help others plan their own trips.In Karl’s opinion the consultant’s candidate had aced the interview. She knew PI Planning and ARTs inside and out. Hilda had asked her how she might go about an agile adoption without SAFe. The room had gone very quiet.
Karl: She knows the framework cold.
Hilda: Sure, but there’s a lot more to agile than SAFe.
Karl: SAFe has everything the teams need.
Hilda: No, SAFe appropriated and changed a lot of people’s work to make it fit their limited view. You need someone who has vast experience with multiple frames works, methodologies, and tools all used with multiple types of teams in all types of organizations.
Karl: You're being harsh.
Hilda: I'm being precise. A coach with one lens doesn't meet teams where they are, they meet them where the framework is
Interviews were taking place to see which of the consultant candidates would be chosen to join Karl’s organization. She had two brand new certifications and an MBA. Karl was impressed. Rey had asked her one question during the panel review: "Tell me about the best Scrum team were you on?" The pause that followed had been long enough to write a novel in.
Karl: She's got credentials.
Rey: Credentials without experience is like a Michelin star recipe given to a cook who’s ever been in a kitchen.
Karl: She's coached teams before.
Rey: She just took them through her understanding of agile which comes from beginner classes, not experience. She's never sat inside a sprint as a team member. She's never felt the pressure of a sprint goal that the team committed to focus on.
Karl: Theory transfers.
Rey: Swimming theory transfers too, right up until someone gets in the water for the first time.
We are a group of avid travelers who love to explore new destinations and share our experienMost so-called agile transformations have one flavor of agile and most often it’s loosely related to Scrum. The legal team must use Scrum. The data analytics team must use Scrum. The janitor, if he had a backlog, would do Scrum. Anja had asked Karl what he thought this offered the teams whose work wouldn’t be good fit for Scrum. The answer had been a blank stare.
Karl: Scrum is proven. Why wouldn't every team use it?
Anja: Because not every team builds products in increments.
Karl: They can adapt it.
Anja: Adapting Scrum until it's unrecognizable isn't Scrum, it's theater.
Karl: The vendor assured that this worked for all their clients.
Anja: It didn’t. It’s just the only thing they know how to sell.ces with others. Our goal is to inspire and help others plan their own trips.
When the consultants came in, they broke everyone into scrum teams. There weren’t enough Product Owners to go around, so team Finch's Product Owner was actually the director of the department. The developers and the Scrum Master all report to her. She set their objectives, approved their leave, and ran their performance reviews. She also prioritized the backlog, alone. Mildred had noticed a pattern: nobody challenged her on anything. Ever.
Karl: She's very efficient. Teams love a strong Product Owner.
Mildred: They don't love her, they report to her. Those are very different things.
Karl: She has deep domain knowledge.
Mildred: She also has hiring and firing authority over every person in the room.
Karl: So?
Mildred: So, there aren’t supposed to be sub-teams or hierarchies on Scrum teams for a reason.
Karl asked Juan if he’d had a chance to read though "The Complete Agile Playbook" that he got yesterday from the consultant. Juan shook his head in disbelief. This abomination had one hundred and forty slides of step-by-step instructions for every conceivable situation. He wanted Juan’s opinion before he shared a copy with all the teams.
Karl: Look at this; chapter four covers exactly how to handle a struggling team.
Juan: Every struggling team struggles differently. Chapter four doesn't understand you’re your work or your teams.
Karl: It's based on years of research.
Juan: Research into other companies, other teams, other problems. Context doesn't translate between teams, much less companies.
Karl: You can't just wing it every time.
Juan: I'm not winging it. I'm reading the room. The playbook can't do that because the playbook has never been in this room.
Karl had asked Dhia to "hold teams accountable" for following the framework. He'd used the phrase "agile discipline" without irony.
Karl: Some teams are drifting. They need someone to keep them in line.
Dhia: In line with what?
Karl: The process. The meetings. The cadence.
Dhia: I'm a coach, Karl, not a hall monitor.
Karl: But who enforces the rules?
Dhia: If you need enforcement, you don't have buy-in. And if you don't have buy-in, enforcement won't give it to you.
Karl had read an article forwarded to him from the consultants. The article said agile teams should be five to nine people. He had immediately begun splitting a well-functioning team of fourteen into two groups of seven. The team had protested. They worked well together. They had been working together on a kanban and were finally achieving a predictable flow. Auggie had been called in to mediate.
Karl: The research says small teams are more effective.
Auggie: The research says small teams CAN be more effective. Context matters.
Karl: Seven is the magic number.
Auggie: This team ships consistently, collaborates well, and hasn't had a stakeholder complaint in months.
Karl: But they're too big.
Auggie: For what? They're the right size for what they do. If that changes, the team can sort it out.
The memo had gone out on Tuesday: all teams would now operate in two-week sprints, effective immediately. The data science team, which worked in research cycles of six to eight weeks, had questions. The infrastructure team, which worked in continuous flow and frequent delays, had more questions. Douglas had read the memo they showed him and sighed.
Karl: According to our consultant, two weeks is the standard.
Douglas: Standard for who?
Karl: Scrum teams.
Douglas: Not every team here is a Scrum team. And Scrum allows for sprints to be up to a month.
Karl: Two weeks keeps things moving.
Douglas: You are right, forcing the data science and infrastructure teams into two-week sprints will keep things moving, backwards.
Karl had asked Raphael for a delivery plan. Not for a product, for agile itself. He wanted milestones. He wanted a RAG status. He wanted to know when agile would be "delivered" so he could move the coaches onto the next thing. Raphael had stared at the request for some time.
Karl: When will agile be done?
Raphael: It won't be. That's the point.
Karl: Everything has an end state.
Raphael: Not when you are dealing with continuous improvement.
Karl: So, what exactly are you delivering?
Raphael: Capability. Over time.
Karl: That's hard to put in a status report.
Raphael: Yes. That's also the point.
Let me know if you’ve experienced something similar in the comments
The contract was signed. Three million over 18 months for a complete agile transformation. The consultancy would provide the framework, the coaches, the training, the tooling, and the operating model. Karl had called it "a turnkey solution." Blanche had asked what the company's own people were expected to contribute. Karl had said "adoption."
Karl: We're buying the best.
Blanche: No, you are buying something that won’t work. Transformation is not a service you can purchase and install.
Karl: They have a proven methodology.
Blanche: They say they have a proven methodology, what they actually have is a proven sales process. Change only sticks if your people own it. And right now, you've outsourced the ownership.
Karl: We don't have the internal expertise.
Blanche: Then build it. That's the transformation.
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Karl had spent two months evaluating frameworks. He had a comparison matrix. It had weighted scores, color coding, and a section titled "Framework Synergy Potential." Luca had asked him what problems the teams were actually having. Karl had said that was a “Phase Two” question.
Karl: We need to pick a framework before we start.
Luca: Before you start what?
Karl: Being agile.
Luca: You can be agile without a framework. The values and principles don't require one.
Karl: That sounds unstructured.
Luca: It sounds like trusting your teams to figure out what works.
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