9. Transforming Ways of Working
The Trouble with Frameworks
A ReBoot Co. blog series that helps you & your teams discover a better way of working.
In our Transformation blog series I am turning my attention to the Trouble that we see commonly in Agile Transformations today with the installation of Frameworks.
Some people install the practices, processes and governance parts of agility and neglect to attend to Principles, Values and Behaviours. Framework salespeople are incentivised to implement overly prescriptive heavy frameworks, because it’s a money making machine for them. Paying for certifications makes the Framework owner money, but does it make you better at delivering value?
An agile mindset is far more valuable than a ™ Trademark that you pay for. Your mindset is continually updated and adapts to changing conditions, it’s portable to new situations and contexts. That’s why a mindset beats a Framework ™ every time. We should be endeavouring to create our own ways of working instead.
There is no ‘one way’ to Transform, although the frameworks and large consultancies promise that there is. Every organisation is unique in its people, practices and culture, to be truly faithful to the challenges an organisation faces, a “way” of Transforming for that organisation can’t be transplanted from somewhere else. This is where the inauthentic and templated ways of working have failed in their missions to transform organisations.
This is one reason why you'll find so much passionate debate around the topic of SAFe - Scaled Agile Framework for the Enterprise. It is intended to bring agility to very large organisations, however very large organisations are inherently more complex and therefore their challenges more unique.
So if there’s this opposition to SAFe and other frameworks ™ why is it so successful? Let me paraphrase that, If there is opposition, why is it implanted into so many organisations? Why do large organisations make the decision to use it?
Here’s some of my theories on that…
Over the years it’s been hard to apply a formula to agility. Most organisations know they need agility, but it’s taken a long time and we have some confusing transformation messages:
Here are opinions I have heard in my years of bringing agility. Agile is…
much more disciplined than waterfall
much less prescriptive
It’s an approach
Is a set of practices
Is hard to implement
Is easy to implement, but hard to scale
It makes you faster
It’s slower but higher quality
It’s faster but increases cost
It makes you build the wrong thing quicker
It’s more expensive AND slower but increases team engagement.
I’ve heard all of the above arguments. We [the agile community] don’t have a cohesive well understood message that enterprises can apply. Enterprises want to roll things out big style and once. They like programs and consultants. Programs and consultants like big enterprises.
When we say Agile Transformation: “It’s a journey”, “It’s a way of continuous improvement” or “It’s a mindset change” we are hard to understand. Enterprise wants a “Do it once and do it for me approach.” Naturally they reach for a framework, “Just give me a little head start, give me a ‘bump’, give me the rule book!” they are saying.
Issues I see in the organisation post implementation of a large framework approach turn up very soon after implementation, and become hard problems to budge:
Teams can plan for a quarter, build but can’t get code into prod
Teams are not allowed to deviate from the plan they made for a quarter even when a pivot is needed
Quarterly planning that is expensive and demotivating
Teams are asked to accommodate found scope during a quarter
Scrum of Scrum ceremonies are followed mechanically and serve no purpose
Organisational governance expects all prior governance processes to be complied with
Prior high performing teams are slowed down
Delivery of value slows down
Stakeholders who have never been involved in delivery become highly critical of technology teams
Leaders of technology teams now have full time jobs explaining slow delivery
Teams feel disempowered to improve anything beyond their own narrow remit
Teams believe that the ideas for value delivery come from outside of themselves, and start to ‘wait’ to be told what to build next
Showcases become big and theatrical, only good news is reported
I could keep adding to these the longer I type…
Confession time, I have implemented these large frameworks myself! Fixing large systems of work is hard, I’ve been in the situations, despite all my authenticity claims where people have demanded “Just give us SAFe!” It takes a lot of fortitude to turn that conversation around to something that’s more productive for the organisation, to help them understand that they probably don’t want the results SAFe will give them. It would have been easier to follow the framework as they demanded. It takes a lot of fancy footwork for a coach and consultant to help implement the best parts, and cut the worst of the framework approaches.
Fixing this system of work stuff is hard. It requires skills, experience and resilience. But we need to address the hard stuff if we can hope to achieve:
The culture we want to belong to,
The ownership of the work by the people and,
The engagement of the whole person in their work, which includes their creativity and problem solving abilities
Your mindset is continually updated and adapts to changing conditions, it’s portable to new situations and contexts. That’s why a mindset beats a Framework ™ every time.
Large enterprises don’t have the time and attention to devote to wholesale culture change, or wholesale system disruption, SAFe gives you a licence to play on terms they can tolerate.
In this hard morass of complexities we see organisations who don’t know any better reaching for the large frameworks and calling up the big consultancies, we need to critique those decisions.
Did we bring the framework because we wussed out of the hard problems?
Did we believe in individuals or did we just favour a really big process tool?
If the people implementing change are unskilled at agile transformation, a framework may be their only route to any form of agility, but it’s not a productive one.
There's a difference between "sharpening the saw" and getting certificates that say "this saw is sharp". Jason Yip Staff Agile Coach at Spotify, ex-ThoughtWorks, ex-CruiseControl
I met Dean Leffingwell, the creator of SAFe at an Agile Australia dinner, here’s a pic to prove it.
Dean’s reasons for inventing SAFe were quite altruistic. He perceived that developers were in the dog house, unloved and unappreciated in their organisations.
He invented SAFe to save developers from the tyranny of the enterprise.
Dean Lefingwell, yours truly, Cam Gough
I shared with Dean many of my frustrations at our implementation of SAFe at Auspost where I was a Head of Digital Engineering. Although I found some good things in the framework, I observed a large collection of the negative.
When we implemented SAFe at Auspost I started to feel like I was following a plan instead of creating something from experience and judgement and my own knowledge of what worked and what was needed. I started to feel my engagement levels dropping.
There’s something more engaging about creating something, creating that system of work that’s right for your organisation. I resigned from Australia Post and was free to pursue better ways of working free from the oppressive weight of frameworks.
Like many other agilists I’ve come to realise that there are very few redeeming features of the large framework approaches, and that anything positive can be put in place without needing to pay to get certifications for them, or get big consultancies to roll them out.
My main criticism is that these frameworks are so prescriptive they can be applied without addressing culture change at all. In fact that’s why some places do it, they don’t want to address the hard system problems and toxic culture in the workplace but still want that good agile stuff.
Transforming Ways of Working Blog Series full list of articles below:
Early in 2023 I’ll be releasing my book on Authentic Agile Transformations, it’s a practical guide that will help you Transform ways of working in your organisation. Aimed at an Executive and Senior Leader readership it will give you an approach that you can apply to leverage the benefits of agility, genuinely, increasing the delivery of value to your customers without losing the contribution and engagement of your people.
Watch our Blogs and Newsletters to receive advanced copies and selected excerpts.
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