Agile is Dead, McKinsey Just Killed It

hi folks i'm a bit fired up today recently i saw mckinsey promoting an agile transformation office and i got fired up because for me it really means the end of agile as i know it and love it it's not that agile doesn't work agile and the agile movement have been hugely successful they've been one of the key driving forces behind companies like facebook airbnb so many different startups that have done well so many organizations have done so well in their technology and other areas of the business but agile isn't what it used to be agile was originally proposed as a way of managing work and organizing teams that develop software it emphasizes customer collaboration over contract negotiation individuals over processes responsiveness to change over following a plan and results over documents for the organizations that applied it it became a competitive advantage for the professionals that used it it became a common source of reference and a way to work much more productively the success of the people and companies that adopted agile drove its popularity and uptake within organizations of all shapes and sizes across the planet large listed companies small startups government agencies you name it banks miners they've all adopted agile in one shape form or another or at least tried to but agile's success and popularity has also become its undoing the butchering of agile over the last few years has center on a downward spiral agile has shifted from a shared set of values and principles to an empty overused word that's been misapplied to almost anything in how an organization works so let's go back to mckinsey's promotion of the agile transformation office the agile transformation office is a completely unnecessary rebrand of the program management office and it goes against the fundamental principles behind agile every point that mckinsey is listed as a key difference between an agile transformation office and a pmo is a almost an exact description of a program management office and b uses a whole bunch of things that really go against some of the fundamental principles let's just look at a few for example an office that first of all it's an office that defines overall strategy tracks progress and sets minimum standards really directly contradicts the agile manifestos principles around self-organizing teams and almost certainly contradicts in practice people over process mckinsey is not alone let's take pwc's agile enterprise when you peel away agile and you peel away the jargon and you get to the bottom of it it really offers little beyond some basic common sense business statements like companies that succeed meet customer needs and better technology gives you better efficiency what this has to do with agile i have no idea and how it's specific to agile i don't know but i don't want to just pick on mckinsey and pwc we're all kind of to blame here the promotion of these concepts that mckinsey and pwc put forward though are a bit of the symptoms of the final stages of the agile movement the final stage to me really began when one of the founders of agile dave thomas gave a presentation titled agile is dead and from there it's been this gradual kind of downhill slope others uh have commented on safe being the beginning of the end for them but the dates all kind of line up around 2015 so we'll we'll do it approximately around there now the other thing is is it when i say mckinsey and pwc are alone and they're a bit of a symptom the other thing is when you look at job applications or job applicants you see a lot of people listing agile and you almost have to delete the word from the resume and probe deeper as to what they're actually saying because it just appears so much in so many different concepts and many contexts it means so many different things to so many people the other one is most organizations go out of their way to explain how agile they are they market this to potential staff shareholders the market their customers to the point where it's really unclear as to what's going on and you've got to dig below the detail to find out whether those principles that are really being adopted where those principles being lived and values have been lived now what does this mean in practice what does this mean in practical terms well what can you take away well the biggest thing you can take away to start with is it's really difficult to take any meaning now from the word agile like i said whether it's on a job applicant or a company explaining what they do or a team explaining what they do we have to find other ways to understand whether the values and principles that are behind agile those underlying values and principles are being applied by the team you've got to look closer at the behavior the mindsets and the processes and structures in the organization or that a team's following in order to understand if if agile is being practiced in its original form or whether it's kind of a derived or different form or not really being applied at all and so just a bit of a refresher the principles of values known as the agile manifesto were penned by a group of self-described organizational anarchists which phrase that i love from the software industry at a ski resort in utah back in february 2001. the agile manifesto which is just here gave rise to the agile movement a movement to promote the use of agile principles to build better software two decades later and the movement succeeded agile's underlying principles and values are still and now their table stakes for every organization every company most people but the degree to which an organization is applying agile is really now a matter of kind of small increments of improvement and productivity rather than a revolutionary game changer the challenge and the opportunity for the industry is to move past the misuse of agile and to really focus on the underlying principles and values that and how they fit in the context of your company your business your organization the opportunity is also to look beyond agile for other sources of competitive advantage when it comes to ways of working disciplines and mindset thanks for watching this hopefully you're as fired up as i am about it whether it's you agree with me or you don't would love to hear what you think in a comment below uh otherwise if you love this video please hit hit thumbs up hit subscribe you can see more videos on agile product management on our channel thank you for having me

Channel: Terem

Views: 13,852

Keywords: agile, Agile, McKinsey, PMO, ATO, agile movement, agile transformation office, agile values, agile manifesto, where agile is today, why is agile dead, agile popular, agile popularity, agile enterprise, software industry

Id: 9taykEOnvzU

Length: 7min 24sec (444 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021