The agile manifesto turned 23 this year, signaling over two decades since the lightweight, iterative approaches to software development went mainstream. Frameworks like Scrum have been widely adopted to help increase transparency, inspection, and adaptation in the software process.
However, the road to successful agile transformation is rife with pitfalls. One of the most insidious is a phenomenon I call "Agile Anarchy" - a state where teams fall into cargo culting agile practices without embodying the actual agile mindset and values. They become rigid in their own way, lacking the very flexibility and adaptability that agile aims to enable.
The Signs of Anarchy
Agile Anarchy manifests itself in many ways across teams and organizations. At the team level, you may notice anti-patterns like:
- Treating Scrum events like empty rituals rather than valuable collaboration points
- Cherry-picking a few convenient practices while ignoring others core to agile
- Individualism persisting despite the emphasis on team empowerment and swarming
- Lack of key agile skills like backlog refinement, continuous integration and more
At the organizational level, Agile Anarchy may look like:
- Agile being mandated in name only as a top-down dictum without leadership buy-in
- Hierarchical structures and silos obstructing transparency and cross-team collaboration
- Contractual obligations and approval processes hindering responsiveness to change
- Annual planning and budgeting cycles being misaligned with agile's iterative cadence
Ultimately, all these dysfunctions point to a lack of understanding of agile as a mindset and cultural transition rather than just a new set of processes.
The Vicious Cycle
When teams fall into Agile Anarchy, they get the worst of both worlds - the perceived chaos and lack of structure of being "agile", without actually reaping any of the core benefits like fast feedback loops and increased visibility.
This warped view perpetuates itself in a vicious cycle. Demoralized teams struggling with the disillusionment of failed agile initiatives will lack the motivation to improve. This results in further dilution of practices, eroding what little agility remained. As the shift loses credibility, management support dwindles. This continues to fuel the anarchy.
Escaping Anarchy
Breaking out of this degenerative spiral requires a renaissance of agile leadership – from those who recognize the depth and urgency of the culture change needed. Some key steps include:
- Training: Ensure teams have proper training on agile principles, not just shallow knowledge of Scrum roles and events. Embrace agile as a mindset from customer focus to breaking down silos.
- Coaching: Follow up training with ongoing coaching support. Having an experienced guide to mentor teams through the inevitable sticking points is invaluable.
- Addressing Cultural Tensions: Identify and work through cultural dissonances that hinder true agility like hierarchies, lack of psychological safety, silos between functions and more.
- Leadership Support: More than just lip service, leadership has to model the transparency, respect for team alignment and response to rapid feedback expected in agile.
- Patience: Agility is a journey of iterative improvement, not a binary switch. Patience will be required for the transformation to take effect organizationally.
While difficult, escaping the quicksand of Agile Anarchy is critical for teams to realize the full potential of frameworks like Scrum. Teams need to understand that agile is about mindset shifts and giving up outdated waterfall habits. Only then can lightweight processes act as enablers of the true agile promise – producing valuable, high-quality software through transparency, adaptation and collaboration.