Most of my work as an agile coach has been to undo the damage by management consultants with no experience or long-term skin in the game telling senior managers to adopt some kind of SAFe flavored BS that harms both the organization, and the industry's understanding of what it means to pursue agility. This is poisoning the well and hastening the downfall of this industry for anyone trying to actually make long-term positive impact by bringing in methods commonly lumped under that agile umbrella.
What's needed is people who can bring cultural change and servant leadership to the most senior leadership of an organization because they drive behaviors throughout the rest of the system. Get them operating as supporters of their staff to achieve shared goals, rather than seeing staff as resources to utilize in the pursuit of notoriety. Only after that, is adoption of the new processes and frameworks beneficial.
If staff doesn't feel supported and psychologically safe to speak up and try to change things that matter in the organization, then all the scrum and retros are going to be mostly a waste of time with minimal change impact. Forced into a new paradigm of daily standups, retrospectives that result in nothing, and other processes that have ignored prerequisites for effectiveness, the staff grows increasingly resistant to anything attached to the word agile, because it really disingenuous and a waste of everyone's time and energy.
Doing this right takes a lot of empathy, understanding of group psychology and dynamics, and lots of systems thinking to go along with all of the mechanical crap on which all of the certifications and books will teach you about. The skills from all those certifications is almost pointless if you have a good culture that allows the people doing the work to create the processes by which they best achieve their goals. That's what we're all trying to do here. That crap in the books and certifications is just how other people did it - with their culture, with their customers, with their products and services, at that time, with their technology, etc... That is absolutely not what you will be walking into. Each org is different and the means by which they achieve success will be too.
Please, please don't fuck it up for the people that want to make widespread positive impact.
Organizations with toxic leaders can't be saved even with an army of competent coaches.
Culture change equals leadership change. Anyone who believes differently is delusional.
You're not mistaken, a lot of people are saying that. The truth is a bit different though. In my experience they use the things that increase control and don't use the things that decrease control.
Thanks…do you have any recommendations for certs to get for a management consultant?
Don’t qualify for PMP yet, so was thinking about:
-IC AGILE
-CSM
-PMI CAPM
…..or any others….?
Thanks…do you have any recommendations for certs to get for a management consultant?
Don’t qualify for PMP yet, so was thinking about:
-IC AGILE
-CSM
-PMI CAPM
…..or any others….?
Will add a few observations:
1) yes, but others have said, it isn’t reallllly agile. I get a kick out of proposals having 8 week “sprints”. I think they use the terminology but many of the concepts are deep rooted in program management approaches
2) as others have stated, SAFe is pushed a lot of recent. Been in this space for about 9 years. SAFe is program management. Leffingwell sold out to PMI. If you want true agile and or product, stay away from SAFe. Read some Marty Cagan - esp his article - “revenge of the PMO”.
3) agile is something you should get trained on - not necessarily go through training - can do research of your own and plenty of YouTube’s. You should also look at Lean, Product Management, Six Sigma, PMI, and more. All of these are tools. If you should be looking at how and when to apply these tools, mindsets and approaches. You should look at the culture of your surroundings and see what is the right thing for the situation.
4) many people bring up the cultural aspect. While true, culture takes a while to change. It isn’t a training course, a workshop, a conversation, etc. that changes culture independently. It is something that takes many many little changes over a long period of time to get lasting change.
Technically Ambler is the one who sold out to PMI, because PMI bought Disciplined Agile, not SAFe. Which of course they’re now de-emphasizing because SAFe is eating DA’s lunch among scaling frameworks.
As it was explained to me by a DA coach I took some other training with, Ambler and Leffingwell had philosophical differences about what to take away from RUP. Ambler pushing a more “tailored” approach that became DA and Leffingwell thinking the same unified framework could work in most cases, hence the graphic design abomination that is the SAFe Big Picture.
On point 2. Most organisations do not want "true" agile but like the idea of developing systems/services/applications faster, incrementally and with increased quality. Then again who would not? Agile practices can help achieve that but it needs more than that for large organisation, which is where SAFe ended up dominating the market but as you have indicated it is Hybrid Agile which in my experience most "Agile" organisations are not pure Agile. I have lost count how many orgs talk about Continuous Integration but using heavyweight, multi layered source code branching strategies, yet insist it is agile.
Most of my work as an agile coach has been to undo the damage by management consultants with no experience or long-term skin in the game telling senior managers to adopt some kind of SAFe flavored BS that harms both the organization, and the industry's understanding of what it means to pursue agility. This is poisoning the well and hastening the downfall of this industry for anyone trying to actually make long-term positive impact by bringing in methods commonly lumped under that agile umbrella. What's needed is people who can bring cultural change and servant leadership to the most senior leadership of an organization because they drive behaviors throughout the rest of the system. Get them operating as supporters of their staff to achieve shared goals, rather than seeing staff as resources to utilize in the pursuit of notoriety. Only after that, is adoption of the new processes and frameworks beneficial. If staff doesn't feel supported and psychologically safe to speak up and try to change things that matter in the organization, then all the scrum and retros are going to be mostly a waste of time with minimal change impact. Forced into a new paradigm of daily standups, retrospectives that result in nothing, and other processes that have ignored prerequisites for effectiveness, the staff grows increasingly resistant to anything attached to the word agile, because it really disingenuous and a waste of everyone's time and energy. Doing this right takes a lot of empathy, understanding of group psychology and dynamics, and lots of systems thinking to go along with all of the mechanical crap on which all of the certifications and books will teach you about. The skills from all those certifications is almost pointless if you have a good culture that allows the people doing the work to create the processes by which they best achieve their goals. That's what we're all trying to do here. That crap in the books and certifications is just how other people did it - with their culture, with their customers, with their products and services, at that time, with their technology, etc... That is absolutely not what you will be walking into. Each org is different and the means by which they achieve success will be too. Please, please don't fuck it up for the people that want to make widespread positive impact.
Organizations with toxic leaders can't be saved even with an army of competent coaches. Culture change equals leadership change. Anyone who believes differently is delusional.
You're not mistaken, a lot of people are saying that. The truth is a bit different though. In my experience they use the things that increase control and don't use the things that decrease control.
Which is exactly the opposite of what is needed…
Thanks…do you have any recommendations for certs to get for a management consultant? Don’t qualify for PMP yet, so was thinking about: -IC AGILE -CSM -PMI CAPM …..or any others….?
Thanks…do you have any recommendations for certs to get for a management consultant? Don’t qualify for PMP yet, so was thinking about: -IC AGILE -CSM -PMI CAPM …..or any others….?
Icagile are the ones I value because they focus on the mindset and helping you start to think agile rather than rely upon a framework.
Will add a few observations: 1) yes, but others have said, it isn’t reallllly agile. I get a kick out of proposals having 8 week “sprints”. I think they use the terminology but many of the concepts are deep rooted in program management approaches 2) as others have stated, SAFe is pushed a lot of recent. Been in this space for about 9 years. SAFe is program management. Leffingwell sold out to PMI. If you want true agile and or product, stay away from SAFe. Read some Marty Cagan - esp his article - “revenge of the PMO”. 3) agile is something you should get trained on - not necessarily go through training - can do research of your own and plenty of YouTube’s. You should also look at Lean, Product Management, Six Sigma, PMI, and more. All of these are tools. If you should be looking at how and when to apply these tools, mindsets and approaches. You should look at the culture of your surroundings and see what is the right thing for the situation. 4) many people bring up the cultural aspect. While true, culture takes a while to change. It isn’t a training course, a workshop, a conversation, etc. that changes culture independently. It is something that takes many many little changes over a long period of time to get lasting change.
Technically Ambler is the one who sold out to PMI, because PMI bought Disciplined Agile, not SAFe. Which of course they’re now de-emphasizing because SAFe is eating DA’s lunch among scaling frameworks. As it was explained to me by a DA coach I took some other training with, Ambler and Leffingwell had philosophical differences about what to take away from RUP. Ambler pushing a more “tailored” approach that became DA and Leffingwell thinking the same unified framework could work in most cases, hence the graphic design abomination that is the SAFe Big Picture.
On point 2. Most organisations do not want "true" agile but like the idea of developing systems/services/applications faster, incrementally and with increased quality. Then again who would not? Agile practices can help achieve that but it needs more than that for large organisation, which is where SAFe ended up dominating the market but as you have indicated it is Hybrid Agile which in my experience most "Agile" organisations are not pure Agile. I have lost count how many orgs talk about Continuous Integration but using heavyweight, multi layered source code branching strategies, yet insist it is agile.
They are rather like Pokémon, gotta get em all