Dark Agile:Part 1 - How to Recognize Anti-Patterns

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“Agile is Dead”12 , “Dark Scrum”11, “Scaling Agile Does

Not Work”13, “If Agile is So Good, Why are our Products so

bad”14, “Agile Hangover and Antifragile Organizations”15,

and ‘’Rise of Zombie Scrum”16 are examples of recent

articles with discussions by Agile thought leaders and

corporate executives that lead some to think Agile is dark

and a sinister aberration.

When I started my career in software engineering, we

embraced the new structured software development life

cycle approach; like the one James Martin and my other

fellow IBMers created because we knew what it was like

without it. Now it’s labeled Waterfall and not a right-fit

for today. We were successful and created some great

solutions, but also failed monumentally many times as far as

budget and meeting expected completion dates. Waterfall

fit our technology, business demands, and human-systems

at that time.

Today technology is pervasive; it is changing our society

and way of life profoundly. Most companies depend on it to

be in business. Many people depend on it to be productive

and happy. Business markets, customer demands, and

technology changes and their related impacts are outpacing

human consumption and adaptation abilities. Technology

and social advances create a symbiotic relationship with

Agile, allowing us to deliver faster and sustain customer

delight in the digital and interconnected world.

Agile today consists of: an open mindset, an empowering

and safe organization culture, a pragmatic set of practices

and tools, and a visionary relationship between internal and

external environments. Collectively, these form an open

and coherent ecosystem. Waterfall is not relevant for today

and is replaced by Agile, mainly due to the constant need to

sense, respond, and adapt. Agile is pervasive and changing

our organizations and individual interactions as well as our

social fabric.

I am a first generation Agilist; witnessing, and to some

degree, influencing, today’s mass acceptance and adoption

of Agile. Over the last 16 years, especially the last five

years, Agile has matured via obvious successful outcomes

in pure business efforts without a technology enablement

component, as well as being applied in the typical software

development efforts. We see a continuum of Agile

implementations; from startup companies using Lean Agile

to large companies using a Scaled Agile Framework. Many

large enterprises are building close relationships with new

startup disruptors resulting in the Agile for Innovation2

movement.

Source: Sterling Murmuration, Nature and Agile17 www.matrixres.com2

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Agile is an ecosystem and involves four quadrants: the Agile Humanity, the Agile Practices and Tools, the Agile Organization and Culture, and the Agile Environment. These quadrants need recurring alignment and constant synchronization. The Agile Ecosystem is a human-system that needs ethnographic 6 focus to succeed and evolve.

Agile Ecosystem1

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www.matrixres.com4

Quadrant I contains Agile Practices and Tools – this is where most implementations of Agile focus primarily within the IS/IT

departments at the enterprise, and more Lean Agile and Design Thinking practices for startups. The focus is on individual and

team proficiency so the team and organization becomes high-performing. There is additional focus on the exterior organization

to bring in latest practices and tools to be tailored. Quadrant I is more fluid then the others because many new ideas and

vendor solutions are arriving on the market and are concentrated here. The increase of market solutions in the quadrant

generally indicates that it is easier to tackle, and this is where Agile started in the software engineering arena.Agile, allowing us

to deliver faster and sustain customer delight in the digital and interconnected world.

Quadrant II contains Agile Humanity – this quadrant is the most commonly neglected with most Agile Adoptions, Transitions, or

Transformations. We think humanity is a good name for this quadrant as it expresses an all-inclusive participation of individuals

in a human-system. This is where the “Being Agile” starts for each of us, as we reflect on our internal readiness to change.

Today we are not seeing increased speed of focus in this area except for leadership training and coaching offerings. Emerging

focus on ethnography6, happiness8, sense-making6 and stories, crews, competency tribes or communities, high-performing

team practices, along with internal self-evaluation and awareness practices and tools, are shaping this area.

Quadrant III contains Agile Organization and Culture – this is commonly missing with most Agile Adoptions, Transitions, or

Transformations. This quadrant looks at interior organization structure and the organization collective. We are seeing increasing

focus in this area especially with newer and high-tech companies. With increasing frequency, we are seeing relevant Social

Sciences findings interwoven within Change and Organization Design. In addition, we are seeing some companies use this

information to experiment and adopt more purposeful business models. For example, replacing yearly performance reviews

with more frequent or continuous feedback or changing our skill concentration to more customers’ needs focus.

Quadrant IV contains Agile Environment – this is where we have seen focus but rarely outside the IT/IS external software or

staffing vendor relationships as we build software solutions. There is some significant movement is this area. For example, the

financial services sector is using Agile more as they work with appropriate parties to simplify regulations. The U.S. Department

of Defense has mandated that software vendors submitting proposals demonstrate Agile competency, while simultaneously

simplifying the contracting and execution processes. Many disrupted companies like Financial Services are determining how

to partner or integrate with FinTech companies. Some companies are integrating hardware and software Agile environments

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Since 2001, Agile has been successfully implemented thousands of times with real, positive business results and human-system positive outcomes. It’s had some failures, too, but the root cause is not Agile but misalignment with one of the Agile Ecosystem quadrants. Of course, for many of us, when we fail we have a difficult time looking within to learn and adjust. Instead, we tend to point at the external idea as the reason; after all, we are flawed humans. It is easier to look outward, but doing so puts our business, government organization, or non-profit existence in peril.

Agile is more mature and in hyper-demand. For new ideas there is a common maturity progression. Most think Agile is in the “late majority”7 or “trough of disillusionment”5 phases, where there is: a plethora of practices and tools, self-identified experts, expert infighting, cottage certification and validation industries, and increased usage complexity. We are left with an ever-complex task to determine the right fit for our needs.

Our current Agile maturity state has led to Agile anti-patterns causing Dark Agile. Dark Agile is the antithesis of the Agile Values and Principles. I submit that this is the root cause of most failures.

Dark Agile embraces non-Agile thinking and throws us into chaos or disorder. However, one way to appreciate this perspective is to think that Dark Agile is a natural part of the journey path to reach your true Agile. Dark Agile is like the Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the universe, which makes up 96 percent of the universe, which inextricably coexists with Matter and Energy to create and maintain our universe, thusly our existence. Like Dark Matter and Matter, Dark Agile does not have a pleasant interaction with Agile, but may be necessary to evolve.

5 Photo Source: NASA/ESA/Richard Massey

Dark Matter & Dark Energy 5th Dimension D-Branes18

3D map of the huge distribution of dark matter, reconstructed by weak gravitational lensing with the Hubble Space Telescope

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Agile Ecosystem Flow Examples

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Developing all quadrants in equipoise will prevent Dark Agile and many common anti-patterns from emerging. However, should Dark Agile anti-patterns develop, they require a fast “sense and respond” reaction to prevent them from becoming adopted practices which leads to underperformance and costly reset. Here are some commonly seen Dark Agile anti-patterns:

• Technocentrics Anti- Pattern – Too much focus on Agile Practices and Tools within IS/IT and little to no effort within the other quadrants. This is a common anti-pattern. It is where most large companies and many technology-centered startups start their journey. The common thinking is: “Agile is only for the technical side of the house” or “we are a SaaS company and that is all we should care about”. We see significant “buzzword bingo” talks and disdain behaviors within the business areas. This inevitably leads to suboptimal results from a combination of low-performing teams, missed opportunities, little delivered business value, and minimal adoption of effective Agile within the organization.

• Self-Absorbed Anti-Pattern - Too much focus on one or two of the Agile Ecosystem Quadrants I and II, horizontally across, the Agile Humanity and Agile Practices and Tools. This is common for some early Agile journeys concentrated within the IS/IT organization, with the perspective that we have to change everything in the practices and tools world because we are different and we know more. Here the overriding thinking is “my promotion” and “my importance”. This results in suboptimal expected results, low-performing teams and missed opportunities, low business value, and minimal, if any, adoption of effective Agile within the organization.

• Augmented Reality Anti-Pattern – Too much focus on one or two Agile Ecosystem Quadrants without any work within the Agile Culture and Organization quadrant. This is very common and seen in early Agile journeys across every sector and business model. The thinking is that we will define and start our Agile Adoption or Transition or Transformation with little or no alignment with the culture, leaders, or organization’s current state and evolving the future state potential. Many people create their own reality that the culture and organization will magically change once we start doing the training and practices by bringing in the magic tool, software vendor, or Consultancy Company. Surveys,

research, and articles by Scrum Alliance3, VersionOne3, Harvard Business Review4, Gartner 5, Forrester6, and many others, indicate that mindset and culture misalignment are more than 70 percent the root cause of Agile not being successful. This anti-pattern delivers suboptimal expected results, minimal adoption, limited proliferation of effective Agile, stunted organization design changes, and Agile resets within the organization.

• Laissez-Faire Anti-Pattern– Too little focus on all four Agile Ecosystem Quadrants reduces traction and stickiness for Agile. This common approach is typically seen in large enterprises with significant resistance to adoption and rarely seen in high-tech startups. The common thinking is “speed to market” and “we do not have time to learn, apply, and adapt”. The typical symptom is organizations depending on their partners in software solutions or staffing to deliver products or services with no or little involvement or collaboration. Another symptom is a command and control culture with demanding micromanaging leaders. This results in Agile Fatigue due to multiple attempts, suboptimal business results, and mass exodus of talent.

• Grand Unified Theory Anti-Pattern – Too much selected across the four Agile Ecosystem Quadrants to do in a short timeframe, where the people and technologies are overwhelmed. This inevitably results in many stop and reset actions and feelings of chaos. This is less common now, because we have tried and learned, except for some organizations that use the heavily regulated internal rationale. Most small, high-tech startups can successfully implement this model. The reason for this anti-pattern continuing is the thinking “we need it for large programs and complex systems, with large PMOs, and many layers of people to accomplish the work”. There is a fine line to determine what changes the organization can absorb while meeting operational demands. The thinking is: “we do not have a choice due to market demands and competition” or “we hired the smartest and best people so they can figure it out”. Typically, people wear multiple hats while working on multiple critical efforts, but nothing really gets done or we never meet internal and external expectations. This results in suboptimal expected results, a strongly negative view of Agile, Agile resets and organization realignments, and mass exodus of talent.

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This is the first of six papers that will discuss Dark Agile, released monthly in 2017. The papers will be available on the MATRIX website.

We invite you to participate in a first-of-its-kind experience where the objective is to share knowledge and dive deep into each of the Agile Ecosystem Quadrants through practical and visionary events.

MATRIX is working with other partners and notable professionals to produce and deliver the Gateway to Agile Series. For more information and to RSVP or watch the real-time video, visit the Agile Gateway Meetup page. We are starting in the San Francisco Bay Area but will be expanding to other regions soon.

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About the Author: Gervais Johnson

Gervais (Jay) Johnson is a first generation Agilist with 20 years of implementation experience within large to small companies across multiple business sectors. Currently serving as Senior Agile Delivery Manager at MATRIX, Jay has more than 31 years of business and technical experience utilizing cutting-edge technologies to deliver innovative ideas, products, and services. Jay is currently working with several companies and associations to introduce and evolve Agile. His 16-year tenure at IBM provided insights across organizations and industries that led to transformative outcomes using Agile.

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REFERENCES1. Agile Coaching Institute and Integral Agile and Spiral Dynamics2. Agile Innovation movements identified in Scrum Inc, Innovation Labs, Future Labs, Wells Fargo Innovation Center, General Electric, and many more 3. Scrum Alliance – 2016 State of Agile , VersionOne – 2016 Agile Survey4. Harvard Business Review – Embracing Agile, Forbes on Embracing Agile5. Gartner Group: “The Gartner Hype Cycle”6. Forbes and Forrester – Bi-Modal Debunked , Forrester 2015 State of Agile Development7. Cognitive Edge and Sense-Maker8. Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore, Bass Diffusion Model, and Technology Adoption Model9. Management 3.0 and Happiness10. Dark Scrum by Ron Jeffries11. Agile is Dead by Dave Thomas12. Scaling Agile Does Not Work by Jez Humble13. Frankenbuilds - If Agile is So Good, Why are our Products So Bad by Gabrielli Benefield14. Agile Hangover and Antifragile Organizations by Russ Miles15. Is Agile on the way out by Justine Brown CIO Dive16. Rise of Zombie Scrum17. Sterling Murmuration,Nature and Agile18. Dark Matter & Dark Energy 5th Dimension D-Bra

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