One of the questions we frequently hear in the organizations and teams we work with is “Should we perform the Sprint Review activity?” The shortest answer to this question is: “Don’t do it if you don’t like!”

Let’s elaborate on this question with an example. Imagine a Scrum Team that releases at least 4 or 5 times per Sprint. Therefore, the team thinks that the Sprint Review activity they perform at the end of the Sprint loses its meaning. They even say that they receive feedback directly from the field and ask you, “Can we not do the Sprint Review?”

We asked this question to our Agile Coaches and we wanted to share different opinions with you.

Most of you have probably heard that the words we use are strongly related to our thoughts as well as our lifestyle. When your thoughts begin to change, that can be observed in your language too or when your language begins to change, also your mindset begins to change. We, ourselves, are the reflection of the words that we frequently use.

When we consider thinking of Scrum Guide at a similar point of view, the most critical points in terms of artifacts, events, roles, and values are Development Team (89*), Product Backlog (61*), and Increment (45*). Although the most widely mentioned and discussed roles are Scrum Masters or Product Owners everywhere, it is often overlooked that the Development Team is actually the heart of Scrum.

Given the fact that the main purpose of Scrum is to create value for the customer; when we consider a scenario that exists only the Product Backlog which can be prioritized by the Development Team and the product vision can be created by them, also the value can be represented with a high quality or without impediments, other members lose their functionality to a great extent. Neither the Product Owner, who gives the vision to the product and the sole accountable of Product Backlog; nor the Scrum Master, servant leader and the protector of Scrum Framework, or the Sprint Backlog, which shows the details of how to create a DONE Increment, sustain their former criticality or functionality. Even though we all know that our journey is not just on happy paths, sometimes the purpose of the work or the value created by the people at the coalface can be overshadowed by the means.

It should be never forgotten that Scrum or other approaches are just tools for creating value for the customer, and the people that use these tools differentiate the value created.

*Number of uses in the Scrum Guide.

Actually, this depends on the team’s maturity level. I usually prefer Plus-Delta method for newbie teams. I do not want to hurt their motivation by stating the negatives in the first Sprint which is the beginning of a long journey. When we approach issues as “went well” and “can be improved” they see that even undesirable situations can be addressed with proper actions in the next Sprint. In the following Sprints, where the problems become more prominent, I mostly use the Mad-Sad-Glad technique, because I find it very effective when sharing emotions. If there are too many topics to discuss and I observe disorganization among the team, I use “Dot Voting” to prioritize the most important issues and prefer to go over them.

Companies are renewing themselves by getting rid of their old cumbersome structures in order to keep up with the new rapidly changing digital world. Organizational structures are reconsidered to keep up with the speed and flexibility (agility) of Start-ups, and new roles emerge with new structures. One of these important roles is the role of Agile Coach. We asked our ACM Agile Coaches, who have been experiencing this role for many years, to tell us about this role which increases in number in our country as well as in the world.

We have been experiencing a radical change in terms of market dynamics and economic models for the last few decades. In fact, we are shifting from a world where giant companies are kings to a world where clients are kings, in other words, from a production-oriented world to a new service-based world. This radical and great change also affects the company structures and ways of doing business. Today, companies are trying to pull away from the old concept of the huge, pyramid organization dominated by hierarchy and bureaucracy which was the norm in the 20th century. If I may open this up a bit, I can say that the functionally organized institutions that take advantage of the economies of scale are now divided into many small ‘start-ups’ that are focused on fast value production, independent of each other but able to work together. In summary, we are leaving behind the old organizations that look like the Titanic. Instead, we have entered the era of companies which consist of many large and small boats and can move faster and more flexibly, namely “The Age of Agile” as Steve Denning calls it.

However, this is not an easy transformation. So much so that, when we compare the old business model and organizational structure to the agile approach, it is almost impossible to find something in common between the two. Therefore, this transformation process is a challenging and error-prone journey. In order not to repeat the same mistakes, let us look at the 5 basic setbacks that we encounter and practical solution proposals.

 

1- Disharmony of Transformation Vision and Strategy

In order to have a successful transformation, we need to start by answering this question first: ‘why to transform?’. As I mentioned, transformation is a long journey. You should clearly determine the goal you are aiming to achieve with the transformation efforts so that you do not depart from your goal in this journey. You should also create a common ground for everyone to understand this goal within the company. With the excitement of the wind of change, you may assume that everyone is on common ground and harmonization may be missed out.

For example, let me tell you about a study I have done with about 20 top executives of a global company that serves in the European region. When I asked them which ‘3 main’ subjects they wanted to improve within a year with the agile transformation journey they were carrying out, I had the following results:

As it is seen in this example, it will not be easy to obtain the desired results in a transformation study where different managers have different goals and priorities. Especially if we are talking about a radical transformation journey, it will be very difficult to even make a progress. Therefore, based on this example, improvement in 7 areas mentioned above can be the ultimate goal. However, it is important to tackle two or three areas at the most to reach this ultimate goal step by step, and to agree on this priority. Otherwise, this disharmony in management-level goals could lead to a greater ambiguity in the rest of the company.

Practical Solution:

Establish a guiding coalition that will start the transformation studies and lead it up to a certain point. This coalition should determine the transformation vision, lead the strategic steps towards this vision, provide guidance to the organization for the implementation of transformation efforts, and increase the visibility of all these studies.
Speaking of the guiding coalition, I suggest you read John Kotter’s “Our Iceberg is Melting”.

 

2- Management Makes No Progress

Agility is a culture transformation that is far more than just a set of practices to be applied at the team level. It means that the company’s entire way of working evolves into a whole new form. An important part of this is the process of managers’ transformation into next-generation servant leaders, leaving their old chain of command understanding and practices. In companies that go through the agility process, the management should start to change its own behaviors first and should set an example. Otherwise, there will be a serious tension between the teams that adopt the agile practices and those who are still using the old practices. As this tension builds up, it will seriously harm the transformation and will set back the evolution process.

According to the research conducted by AgileTurkey.org in Turkey in 2018, the two biggest obstacles to agile transformation were found out to be the resistance to transformation and culture transformation. Current managers have a lot to do in order to cope with these two major challenges and turn into an Agile company. Managers should be part of the transformation starting from themselves, their daily behavior, and should guide the whole company by supporting the process.

Practical Solution:

Focus on training and coaching studies at the management level for your managers to abandon their old and traditional management habits and become the next generation Agile leaders. Start transformation studies not only by focusing on your teams, but also the management.

 

3- Rushing the Transformation

When was the last time you made a radical change about yourself? How long did this change take? People whom I ask these questions usually think for a while and then tell me that their last experience was years ago. So, perhaps for many of us, radical changes are not something that we are accustomed to in our lives or that we easily accomplish. This is the case with individuals. Imagine how long it will take to achieve a radical cultural transformation in an organization that has adopted a certain stance and habits over the years and has hundreds or thousands of employees.

As I mentioned previously, there may be situations where the management does not include itself in the process and forces the team to be ‘Agile’ as soon as possible. However, this rush only causes you to create teams that appear to be ‘Agile’ and create problems in the medium term. So, you end up with an elephant pretending to be a cheetah-like the one in the picture I shared at the beginning of this article. Furthermore, the dyes on the elephant can only withstand a few storms.

Thus, start by acknowledging that you started a challenging and long-lasting journey, that you will take radical actions, and that it will take time. Remember, you will make some mistakes in this complex transformation process and you will learn from them and change direction from time to time. Therefore, it is good to be open to mistakes from the beginning. Remember, experimentation is one of the most important values of being agile.

Practical Solution:

In order to accelerate and advance in the medium term, one must start slowly. Start a transformation in a strategically important but relatively small part of the organization. Following your experiences here, extend the transformation studies to the entire organization.

 

4- Top-down Unilateral Progress of Transformation

In addition to establishing a guiding coalition I mentioned in the first title, it is important to ensure that the transformation is widespread and that there is a wide participation in the transformation efforts. Otherwise, what starts like a rapid fire under the leadership of a powerful guiding team cannot be more than a new approach adopted by a small visionary group. Or even if it can, it will not be resistant to storms because it will not be internalized and fully absorbed. To spread the fire, there must be strong winds (I’m talking about the guiding coalition) as well as sparks on the ground at different points. In summary, the transformation must proceed collaterally in both directions, not top-down or bottom-up.

Change has always been painful. The reason for this is that it usually contains many uncertainties, which is quite normal. These uncertainties trigger concerns and fears within the organization. At this point, the most effective method is to ensure that all experiences within the organization can be shared openly. Let your teams or people share how they see this change, how they experience it, share their good practices and discuss among themselves. This transparency will lead to adoption and improvement. Support them with tools (authority, time, money, etc.) so that they can solve problems on their own.

Let me tell you an interesting experience I had in a company I worked with. Usually, it is very difficult to trigger knowledge and experience sharing and create a community culture within a company. Or these sharing processes begin as a well-intentioned and constructive initiative, but they don’t last long. There are several reasons for this; the content may not be satisfying, there may be a small number of participants, the problems revealed may not be addressed. Though, the first few stories may need to be guided or supported in terms of content to set an example. However, it may still not be possible to establish adoption and ensure that stories continue on their own accord. At this point, we took advantage of “fame” to make these sharing platforms more attractive, getting inspiration from Andy Warhol’s words “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”. In fact, what we did was pretty simple; we published interesting announcement communication tools, which consisted of the pictures of the person or team that will share something. This simple transparency has aroused curiosity within the company and paved the way for many people to say, “I have something to say too”. This sharing platform has been going on for three years and it still continues.

Practical Solution:

Create internal competency-based and/or practice-oriented communities. Invest in these communities to make them functional and sustainable. Authorize these communities to be part of the transformation. Thus, you can have an organization where people not only share something but also take actions.

 

5- Failure to Take Necessary Steps for Persistency

“Agile” is a brand-new way of working. Therefore, both your leaders and teams will need a lot of support along the way. For this support, select volunteer and competent people who are interested in Agile practices and want to be part of this transformation journey. Support their personal development as transformation agents. These transformation agents, your internal Agile Coaches, will play a critical role in implementing the agile practices properly and turning this new way of working into a permanent culture as the transformation of your organization accelerates and expands.
Consider the role of Agile Coach as your accelerator that enables your organization to achieve autonomy and derive the maximum benefit from it; as well as enabling this new structure to transform into maximum employee happiness and business value production. It is normal for your old reflexes, your point of view, and your old ways to come to the surface many times in the transformation journey. When you encounter difficulties, you will need the guidance of your Agile Coaches very much to avoid going back.

Practical Solution:

Begin by setting up a small Agile Coach community consisting of experienced and eager people in your organization like Agile team members, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. Train and guide this community with the support of outside experts. At least some of them will be your successful agents of internal transformation in the future.

“Can’t we rest for 1 Sprint?” Does that sound familiar? Unfortunately, many teams that have been working hard for a long time are asking this question or they at least think about it even if nobody wants to express it. The statement “I don’t think we should get jobs above capacity…” uttered by the coaches, Scrum Masters or some team members in the first Sprints that start with excitement and determination gets lost in the depths of the outer space. I think the most crucial question here is: “What is capacity?”

More often than not, team members take jobs as they think that they could “handle it”, assuming that they can use all the time that is left in that Sprint. For example, let’s say the speed of the team is average of 50 Story Points based on the previous Sprints, then comes this perfect dialogue:

+ Let’s take that many jobs in this Sprint.

– OK, but I’ll be on leave for 1 day.

+ I have 2 days of training.

– I’m in a study group, count me out for 1 day too.

+ Okay, let’s take a look at the jobs and we’ll take them accordingly.

(THEY COULDN’T)

They can’t because their perspective is different. The above dialogue is based on the man/hour approach. Is this a wrong approach? No. As long as everything is stable, the man/hour approach can be very consistent and logical. However, when you add the human factor into the complexity of the jobs, there is not such a stable environment. When so many extra jobs come out once you start to do one job, when everyone has different competencies and experiences, trying to calculate something over man/hour is nothing but a great optimism. It is assuming that nothing will change, everything will proceed according to the most ideal plan. Everybody wants to think that Ahmet has as much experience as Barış and that he can do the job at the same time; Duygu will never get sick; Umut completed a similar job in a very short time before, so now he can do the same again; but things do not work like that in real life.

This dialogue is actually the result of wanting to relate the effort of the job directly to the time out of habit. Is the time insignificant? Of course, it is one of the most important factors but only ONE OF THEM. Therefore, when using methods such as Poker Planning, T-Shirt Sizing; the factors such as the complexity, uncertainty, experience level, dependency of the job are also taken into consideration as well as time. So, “Team Speed” ​​is not just time. That’s why we do not make plans that will use the Sprint time until the last second, but we make plans that leave a buffer time in line with the team’s capacity. Buffer is a term that is interpreted differently by everyone, but I think it is the time for jobs that cannot be foreseen. If it is something we know, we write it down and show it (see Transparency). If not, that job is doomed to disappear into the Buffer black hole before it can be seen. This is the starting point of the “Sprint Fatigue” concept. The part we call Buffer is the time period where you can read, breathe, and do things to improve yourself, as well as get the unforeseen jobs done. If you spend this time for jobs that are already seen clearly and planned to be done, it is natural that you say, “Can’t we rest for 1 Sprint?”

 

Duygu Balcı

Agile Coach & Trainer

Agility is the ability of an organization to adapt to new conditions and change direction. The new service-based economy replacing the production-based economy of the previous century makes companies’ ability to change much more important than before. This changing economic model and new market conditions have already caused many transformations and will continue to cause more. For example, we live in a period when being customer-oriented, instead of being investor-oriented, should have priority for the companies. Alternatively, users prefer to buy simple and focused products/services instead of multi-functional services. In fact, now users do not prefer to buy as before. As you know, instead of owning the products or services, the trend of renting/using them as a service gained popularity. It is likely that this trend will accelerate, and perhaps will be not be limited to costly items such as houses and cars, but also expand to areas that are difficult to imagine, such as clothing. Therefore, it is highly probable that in the forthcoming period new service models in many fields will enter our lives.

So, how ready are the companies when everything, from consumption habits to economy, is changing fundamentally? In fact, the situation is not very heartwarming for large organizations with a hierarchical and traditional functional structure with strong bureaucracy. Why? Because pyramid-like organizations have a structure in which power accumulates at the top but the value is expected to be created at the bottom of the pyramid and therefore speed and creativity are prevented by many stages and procedures. Furthermore, the production of a product/service to be released to the market is dependent on functionally independent units (such as marketing, software development, etc.) which are focused on different targets/priorities. These units are responsible for producing a piece of the product / service that does not create any value by itself (cannot be presented to the user alone). That is, no unit takes full ownership of end-to-end product / service. The decision processes are extended and the priorities conflict in these structures, which are not customer-oriented, and where the value is divided into many parties and the value creation has been made dependent, and the chain of command and order is preserved strongly. More importantly, instead of value creation in the organization, tension creation is triggered constantly. That is why companies now need to transform fundamentally and structurally, evolving these cumbersome structures into customer-oriented, end-to-end value creating team organizations.

As you can see from the above image, when defining an agile company, I’m talking about evolving into a flexible network (almost like a combination of many start-ups), which satisfies customer expectations and journeys end-to-end, and where, in this sense, many different competencies (such as sales, marketing, software development etc.) run together at the same target as part of the same team, with the minimization of hierarchy and bureaucracy. This new structure means establishing a new organization with a common purpose of creating customer satisfaction, and which, in this direction, can be renewed quickly according to the changes in the users and market; that is, fluid and living.

Let us consider a bank, for example. Let us define customers who want to manage their investments as a possible bank customer (persona). The goal of this person is to make the most of his/her earnings and get a comfortable future life. In this sense, let us form a team, which will adopt this goal and create and manage the banking products, services, and solutions end-to-end, for this persona (customer). Imagine that this team joins a variety of competencies, from sales to marketing, from software development to operation. This team will work dedicatedly, and develop services, test their ideas and create value in periods of a few weeks continuously. If we think about the process of a concept coming from the marketing, passing to the software with details and then going into the sales and operation from there, in the traditional organization structure, I think we can imagine how quickly this newly formed agile team will turn into a learning and evolving organization by generating ideas and testing them.

In summary, the digital new world will be the world of companies that can adapt to this and adopt rapid change as a fundamental characteristic feature. Therefore, this new era will be dominated by agile companies. On the other hand, unfortunately, becoming agile is not so easy. In order to become agile, the existing company structure, more importantly, the culture, and the ways of conducting business need to be changed entirely. What kind of changes am I talking about? Let me try to summarize with the table below and end my words.

“Cumulonimbus clouds indicate stormy weather. This type of clouds, which can reach a height of 20 km from the ground, can cause hail, strong wind, thunder, lightning, heavy rain, and even hurricanes.” The hurricane Katrina, which hit the southern coasts of America in August 2005, began with these clouds. It caused the biggest destruction in history with a loss of $ 125 billion. It was very difficult for people to meet their immediate needs during this natural disaster, but Walmart’s agility in this “stormy time” helped solve this problem. Walmart followed the meteorological information through its own emergency center, following the direction changes of the hurricane. They determined when, where, what was needed, and led all the shipments accordingly. Walmart succeeded in surviving this hurricane by improving its reputation which was shredded due to various reasons. More importantly, it helped people survive.