The Agile Superhero

The super role individuals play in post-agile transformations

Origin stories Every superhero has an origin story. From radioactive bites to supernatural intervention to harnessing natural gifts, a set of powers transforms the character from normal to superhero.

Superheroes make the world a better place. When companies transform to agile principles and operating models, they too are looking to make their organization a better place. They institute a new team structure, ways of working, and, occasionally, a new set of core values that aspire to increase productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee morale. These scrum team members are agile superheroes.

Emerging agile superheroes also have an origin story, and like their comic-book counterparts they face stumbles and risks. To quote Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Getting powers is only the first step. Superheroes need to refine and channel them for the greater good. For employees, that means embracing their responsibility following the transformation.

Agile practitioners follow this path to becoming an agile superhero. The secret identity

Tony Stark, Peter Parker, and Bruce to create balance, leverage their Wayne each hide an alter ego. Their expertise, and embrace the new super- secret identities allow them to balance identity. Applying agile superpowers their unique personal role in society, across all business functions requires their relationships, and their desires. each product owner, scrum master, and team member to evaluate where Following the agile transformation, new their identities fit between traditional practitioners also have secret identities. business and agile roles. They have been endowed new powers of sprints and scrum teams, but must Another challenge is team members combine these with the life they had with multiple secret identities. When previously. As organizations transition surveyed, the highest weighted to scaled agile, team members often reported challenge for newly formed ask questions such as, “I was the digital agile teams is having members marketing team director and now I am split their time across multiple roles a product owner – what product am I or functions. And scrum masters even owning?” Her identity has created frequently have one too many secret tension with her new agile superpowers. identities. They play scrum master across multiple teams and functions in Being product-centric and creating user addition to their legacy role, straining stories should not create tension with their agile superpowers and the a secret identity. Instead, new product individual’s ability to adequately meet owners must focus on transforming the demands of the identities. The fine their mindset, practices, and processes tuning of these roles and identities is a crucial aspect long past the initial transformation. Without playing both roles and functions, new agile powers cannot be put to full use and both roles suffer.

2 The agile superhero The montage The super suit Most superhero sagas open with a montage of the character fumbling with No montage is complete without powers, being mentored, and donning iterations of the super suit. Scrum their super suit for the first time. These masters too must iterate on and montages cover weeks, months, and optimize their use of agile tools. More even years as the new powers are than 40 different agile methodologies tuned. It is a critical piece of the origin and frameworks exist on the market, story that transforms an erratic slew each with a different set of tools of abilities into a set of tools to save and practices designed to optimize the world. and promote agile practices. Tools such as JIRA, VersionOne, and Azure The training DevOps enable transparent work-item Following an agile transformation, management, while rituals such as training and coaching are crucial to the scrum-of-scrums promote cross- hone the skills of new team members program information and practice and reduce stumbles. When surveyed sharing. The scrum master is challenged about the benefits agility will bring with sifting through and iterating on to an organization, delivering value this myriad of tools to build out their to customers is most frequently listed utility belt and full super suit to meet the (71% response rate). However, product specifics of their powers and teams. owners are only trained and receive certifications at a rate of 40%.

Without the training and opportunities to flex their new powers, product owners are stymied. Superheroes often need mentors and coaches to help direct their powers. Mentors are critical in shaping the mindset and skills of mentees. Similarly, organizations without proper coaches often leave new agile practitioners struggling to maintain momentum. Agile coaches bring years of expertise to aid in the training of agile practices, while instilling and reinforcing new mindsets.

3 Vigilantes

All budding superheroes come Vigilantism also occurs within middle into conflict with conventional law management. When deploying our agile enforcement. They are labeled as maturity scan to assess newly agile vigilantes. To strike a balance between organizations, we often find middle traditional laws and an individual managers struggle to balance duty code, they adopt a hybrid of societal to sponsors and leadership with their and personal rules to make their newfound responsibility of empowering world better. agile teams. Only 26% of respondents in one survey stated that more than half Regarding laws, the world of agility the teams in their company are agile. often leaves its fundamental rules rather vague. The official Scrum Guide is a mere Accordingly, many managers operate in 16 pages and the Agile Manifesto only the gray space between conventional 12 bullet points. With little prescriptive and agile principles. Tasked with information to drive the day-to-day ensuring teams stay autonomous actions of team members, product and self-organizing, they must also owners, and scrum masters, teams are deploy governance to ensure they can empowered to create their own codes. communicate in conventional terms They must operate under the guidance to functions of the organization that and base principles of agility while are yet to transition to agility. Too customizing and contextualizing agile much governance hinders teams from practices, principles, and behaviors to creating their own ways of working, their unique constraints and operational while complete autonomy inhibits values. They become vigilantes with the leaders from having a consistent and means and abilities that conventional comparative view of where teams and teams and methodologies may lack. programs are trending. These middle They operate autonomously where they managers create their own code to can, while, in a scaled agile environment, balance conventional practices with the they define the practices and processes promotion of agile principles as a true to seamlessly operate within a system agile superhero. of teams. They seek to aid other teams and complete the tasks others cannot. Overall, they focus on making the organization a better place.

4 The agile superhero establish their personal codes, culture waits to potentially bring down the collective power of our superheroes.

If companies do not constantly monitor their culture and shift it toward agile principles, they leave their people at The Achilles’ heel risk of becoming powerless. Culture is pervasive across the functions of No origin story is complete without an a business and the hierarchy of the Achilles’ heel. Superheroes must face organization. The responsibility to the reality that they are still mortal, manage culture, promote the agile with weaknesses that can be exploited. mindset, and reinforce agile behaviors Transformations to agile are similar; must be accepted by all members of they promise organizational invincibility, the agile organization, superheroes and often neglecting any notion of potential normal citizens alike. Without this, the weakness. New powers make them feel agile organization and its heroes are invincible but, just like the superheroes at risk. of comics, they too have a looming The agile superhero Achilles’ heel. In an agile organization, individuals are No factor of an agile transformation responsible for taking ownership of threatens the momentum and mission their new roles, responsibilities, and of agile superheroes more than the abilities to harness the power given organizational culture itself. Sixty-three to them. Only by tempering their percent of organizations with a failed identities, abilities, and codes can they agile implementation primarily blamed truly transform from conventional team the clash between culture and agile members to agile superheroes. When philosophy for the failure. As individuals that happens, these people truly can develop their identities, train, and save the day.

5 Authors:

Logan Lally Senior Consultant – Future of Technology [email protected] LinkedIn Profile

Sheila Patel Principal – Future of Technology [email protected] LinkedIn Profile

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