As more organizations attempt to transform from traditional management practices to more agile, they are confronted with a Chicken and Egg causality dilemma.
Chicken: Organizations that choose the “way of the Chicken,” want to select an agile framework and implement it in their organization. The majority of organizations attempt to take an agile framework/methodology such as Scrum, Kanban, or XP “off-the-shelf” and implement it. These organizations will identify the appropriate resources, train only them, and expect agile to just happen. According to Dr. Ahmed Sidky these organizations want to “Do Agile.” In my opinion, they want the Chicken, fully grown and ready to lay more “Agile eggs”.
Egg: Those on the egg side of the dilemma want to ingrain an understanding of Agile within the organization. These organizations will commit to training executives and other stakeholders across the organization in Agile in order to create a baseline understanding and taxonomy. Per Dr. Sidky, these organizations want to “Be Agile.” In my opinion these organizations are laying Agile eggs unsure of exactly what the Chicken will turnout to be. These organizations are not sure if they are going to hatch a Rhode Island Red, a Leghorn, a Plymouth Rock, or some new breed of chicken. They believe that with enough care and feeding they will end up with a chicken.
In my experience the “way of the chicken” is not a long-term approach to transforming an organization toward agility. The organization may have a few successful agile projects but there will be a reliance on a few heroes to pull the projects over the finish line. The agile projects will be challenged with organizational stovepipes and fiefdoms. In a lot of cases resources are not fully allocated to the project and the product owner is not fully empowered. Worse yet, there are different understandings and expectations of Agile. For example, I consultant an organization where the CIO repeatedly press his PMO to eliminate all documentation for his agile projects because he believed Agile meant “no documentation.” Meanwhile the CIO refused to purchase any tooling that would support the reduction of documentation he so desired.
Laying “Agile Eggs” is the best approach I have experienced. Training executives and stakeholders brings about a common understanding of Agile as cultural and management paradigm shift. The organization may realize that integrating agile into the organization may require a change in the structure of the organization. Organizations that have traditional hierarchical structures may soon realize that they need to organize around portfolios of products and services.
As you can see I prefer the egg side of the dilemma over the chicken side. This solely based upon my experience. I believe agile is a way of being rather than an off-the-shelf practice. I believe management must change from our traditional management paradigm which is based in scientific management to a more adaptive and sensing paradigm. But these are topics for future posts. I guess you can say, I believe we should, “lay more agile eggs.”
