Agile: Recipe for success  

Executive Summary

Businesses often adopt Agile to improve delivery speed, collaboration and customer outcomes, yet transformation programmes frequently fall short of expectations. In this article, FDM Delivery Director, Rachel Lintott draws on over 20 years of transformation experience and more than a decade of Agile delivery expertise to share the key ingredients for success. From securing leadership buy-in and building organisation-wide capability to creating consistent ways of working and fostering the right culture, these practical insights will help organisations turn Agile ambitions into sustainable results.

Businesses often adopt Agile with the best intentions, yet many transformations fail to deliver the expected results. After supporting Agile transformations across a range of organisations, I’ve observed that success rarely comes down to the methodology itself. Just like baking a cake, success depends on having the right ingredients, following the recipe, and ensuring everyone involved is in lockstep.

Ingredients for Agile Recipe for Success  

• 1 cup of clear strategy
• 2 tablespoons of leadership support
• 1 generous handful of team consultation
• 3 cups of Agile training across all levels
• 1 cup of adapted business operations
• 2 teaspoons of standardised ways of working
• 1 large serving of Agile mindset and culture
• A sprinkle of Agile champions and expertise
• Continuous feedback to taste

Eight Strategies to fool-proof your Agile transformation

1. Top down and bottom up 

In an organisation, usually someone at the top decides Agile transformation and adoption are needed, the message is then issued and a programme is initiated. But the way in which the teams across the business are consulted and engaged is not effective.

People have different views on Agile and how it should work. Organisations should consult teams early to understand their Agile knowledge, training and preferred ways of working. Doing this initial consultation and research will make people feel listened to, provide an essential baseline and expose knowledge gaps, misconceptions and inconsistencies, providing a clear starting point for transformation.

2. Agile training programme   

Knowing what Agile looks like for your organisation and which parts of the methodology you are going to apply before you start is critical. Often Agile training is not rolled out early enough or throughout the whole organisation. Training should start with the C-Suite and extend across every level of the organisation, creating a shared understanding of Agile. Often, companies take a technical squad, train them, and bring in a Delivery Manager (DM) or Scrum Master (SM) and Agile Coach to train a development team. This creates a silo in that one squad, or a few squads are now applying Agile in a vacuum. They will be hampered by the other teams around the business still applying waterfall and burdened with huge amounts of governance and business operational processes that have not adjusted to their Agile ways of working.

3. Business operations

From procurement, to finance, HR, Resourcing, and PMO, all horizontal and supporting functions in the business need to be:

1) Trained in Agile

2) Adjust how they work to accommodate applying agility

Why? For example, Agile roadmaps often span months, but detailed planning is only completed a sprint or two ahead. So, the level of detail that is known and agreed upon comes much later than in waterfall projects.

So, business function processes must be adapted to cope with the reduced lead time in receiving low level detail. Agile does not mean abandoning control. Most organisations, particularly in regulated sectors, need governance, but their operational processes must adapt to support Agile delivery.

4. Blaming methodology

“The reason this isn’t working is we are being told to use Scrum which doesn’t work for us. We need kanban, or maybe we should be doing it waterfall.”

People want to stick to what they are comfortable with, and that pivot to another methodology may be correct but, in most cases, (unpopular opinion coming up) it’s that the framework isn’t being applied properly or the Scrum methodology isn’t being implemented correctly, or Scrum of Scrum isn’t being run etc. In my experience, the issue is rarely the framework. More often, it’s how consistently people apply it. Great Agile teams aren’t defined by perfect methodology, they’re defined by trust, collaboration, ownership, transparency and a commitment to getting a little better every sprint.

5. Start with strategy

Before launching an Agile transformation, organisations must understand what isn’t working, why change is needed and what success looks like. Once the what and why are agreed upon, then move to the how (Agile is a how). Most companies have some of this worked through, but it hasn’t then been translated into how applying Agile methodology helps or why waterfall doesn’t work. This messaging then needs to be communicated across the organisation so employees can help drive the change and a one-team culture can be created.

6. Standardise ways of working

Often, there is a lack of consistency in Agile practice, as people who have been in Agile teams before have picked up bad habits or the ‘wrong’ way of doing things. Unless each organisation creates its own documentation outlining the correct ways of working, it will be open to interpretation. People are often using the same terminology to mean different things. Without shared standards, templates and terminology, inconsistency quickly creeps in.

7. Culture and mindset

This is the biggest issue that companies face. You can’t simply apply a methodology and expect to be Agile. Agile is as much about mindset and behaviour as methodology. Without cultural change, Agile adoption will always be limited. Successful Agile teams typically demonstrate:

• Timeboxing to create focus and maximise delivering value
• Applying good enough principles, with progress over perfection
• Being extremely lean and avoiding admin burden
• Only refining as needed, just ahead to prevent waste
• Collaborating with stakeholders for transparency and tight feedback loops
• Iterative development and testing that focuses on delivering value
• Having a fail-fast mindset, to turn mistakes into learning opportunities and accelerates continuous improvement
• Putting customers and users at the heart of what you do, to build solutions people genuinely need and will use

8. Build Agile expertise

This maybe a controversial opinion, but many times I see people working as a Scrum Master or Delivery Manager and they are not that effective. The ceremonies are not well facilitated, and they are not coaching / guiding the team in Agile ways of working, culture and mindset. Effective facilitation that is high energy, will create alignment, engagement, ownership and team cohesion.

Having Agile champions (not the same as agile coach) across your organisation and a community of people who can spearhead the change and support people in all areas of the business, is critical.  They will promote the benefits of agile, as both practitioners and advisors and help to guide people in a supportive way. They will help teams move from ‘doing Agile’ to ‘being Agile’ by turning principles into everyday behaviours.

Conclusion

There is no single Agile framework that guarantees success. The organisations that realise the greatest benefits are those that combine clear strategy, strong leadership, consistent ways of working and a culture of continuous improvement. Get the recipe right, and Agile becomes far more than a methodology. It becomes a powerful enabler of business value and organisational change.

Whether you’re just starting your Agile journey or looking to improve an existing transformation, FDM can provide the expertise, coaching and delivery support needed to help your teams succeed.

Looking for support with:

• Agile strategy and transformation
• Agile coaching and leadership development
• Agile delivery teams and squads

Let’s talk about how FDM can help accelerate your Agile success.

Contact me: Rachel Lintott, Delivery Director, FDM Group