Are we destined to be WAgile?

In more than one recent conversation with large organizations, I’ve heard about the strong push for adoption of “Agile” methodologies in their respective IT organizations. However, there is also an acknowledgement that they are all ending up in their own customized versions of “WAGILE” (Waterfall – Agile). It got me wondering on why and whether we are likely to go past this stage into full blown adoption of Agile approaches.

However, let me dispel a few misnomers that I’ve seen and heard:

1. Renaming “Requirements” as “User Stories” and putting them into JIRA instead of a Word/Excel document does not make you Agile
2. Renaming a team as a “Pod” does not make you Agile
3. Naming two-week sections of your project plan as “Sprints” does not make you Agile

A true adoption Agile requires the changing of mindsets to align with the Agile Manifesto.  In reality however there are several challenges to aligning with this mindset in large organizations. A large part of that challenge comes from the simple reality that “software development” is just one of many things an organization like a Bank, a Telco or a Retailer do. “Software development” is not the reason for their existence and never will be. So, what happens is:

• For “economies of scale” and “standardization”, processes and tools are mandated
• For “business continuity”, comprehensive documentation is encouraged (though rarely if ever delivered and maintained)
• For “procurement compliance & business controls”, contract structure and negotiation play a dominant role
• For “financial market projections / targets attainment”, plans and dates are set in advance and not movable easily

When you combine this with the fact that a significant portion of the business value is added from software development that happens in the “back-end integration” (i.e., the plumbing) not involving UI/UX with end-customers & users; testing, delivery and deployment cannot easily be incrementally delivered. One can certainly break up the overall scope into phases, but each phase needs to be fully integration tested prior to release. And if there are regulatory or other external constraints…all the intermediate phases, to an executive, are largely irrelevant.

And that is how we end up with W-Agile. Here’s my depiction of how this shows up on the ground. 

The procurement & contracting element is not intended to suggest that firms contract in a fixed price manner for the entire project. However, it is intended to remind us that software development teams are forced to work within the constraints of what procurement boundaries are drawn for a given initiative.

So, are all “Agile transformation” efforts doomed to end-up as W-Agile? And is that such a bad thing, if they did? Are there things we can do to make this “as Agile as it can be”?

My answers would be “Yes, we will live with a version of W-Agile for a while”. “No, it’s not such a bad thing if we do can do some things to push the Agile mindset”. Here are my suggestions to make the best of being W-Agile.

1. Don’t fight it, don’t pretend to be “fully Agile”; you will only cause team members, especially the younger ones, to lose trust
2. Use whatever terminology fits your culture, but make sure there is a common understanding of what it really means
3. Place a premium on domain/industry experience and familiarity with your working habits, methods and culture while forming your team…mashing together a set of “bodies for hire” likely won’t be agile. Simply hiring “agile certified” folks is likely a costly endeavor for limited value
4. Acknowledge and invest in practices like DevSecOps and automated testing to accelerate the “middle of the chain”, but recognize that it can have a varying level of impact on end-to-end timelines and estimate & plan accordingly
5. Recognize that your senior business stakeholders are focused on the end-result (including the time and cost to get there) and you’re focusing on “driving agile adoption” may not be what drives the best outcome for the company overall

Those were some mid-week thoughts from me. 

What are your experiences and opinions?