Top 12 Agile Transformation challenges and strategies to overcome them

Top 12 Agile Transformation challenges and strategies to overcome them

Agile transformation of an organisation is influenced by different factors that can hinder the initiative’s success, such as lack agility in agile transformation itself, lack of leadership commitment to change, organisational culture, and lack of understanding of problems and challenges.

15th State of Agile Report by digital.ai states that “this year’s findings indicate significant growth in Agile adoption within software development teams, increasing from 37% in 2020 to 86% in 2021.”

As the number of enterprises deciding to embark on an agile journey increases, these companies are facing significant challenges in agile transformation challenges and strategies implementation. In this blog, we are discussing the challenges that they are facing and how to overcome them.

Agile Transformation Challenges

1. Lack of systems thinking and feedback loops on agile transformation itself

Agile transformation is a complex journey. A decision made to hire low cost developers to increase team throughput, may initially look at higher throughput in near term but in long term this may end up injecting several defects and increase large number of technical debts, which may eventually decrease the throughput. It may further increase the overall cost of product development, which may further lead management into cost pressures, triggering them to hire more low cost developers. 

Another example of lack of systems thinking, which one gets to see quite often is how agile leaders push agile in organisation. When a scrum master or agile coach starts enforcing scrum events or rules, without actually having empathy for the current practices and choices, they are very likely to get resistance in agile transformation. This resistance may further translate into non-cooperation or slow-cooperation, which may cause more delivery issues such as missing sprint goal or lack of commitment, which may further push the scrum master to enforce scrum even harder. After a few cycles of such resistance, it is likely for teams to conclude that agile does not work for them, while it was not about agile but the way agile transformation was carried out caused people to move away from agile.

Agile teams and leaders should have the ability to see these interconnections, understand the mental models behind the decisions we make and identify such potential impacts. 

In the absence of missing to see such interconnections, it is very likely that agile transformation will run into issues.

2. Organisation’s Culture Blocks the Change:

An organisation’s core culture impacts not just how it works but also how it treats its employees. Better commitment, more appreciation, transparent communication, dedicated employees and teams,openness to learn, are all the signs of an agile culture.

An organisation that has firmly controlled processes, that has policies and practices focused around following those processes instead of learning and improving, such organisations find it hard to change.  

3. Lack of people engagement in change

Agile transformation runs into challenges when management decides to push changes top down without engaging people on ground enough opportunity to understand the need for change. When management wants teams to move to agile however team members do not think that agile is the right choice for their work environment, it usually creates more resistance. This resistance may translate into demotivated team members, slow and poor quality in delivery. 

4. Bringing agile to scale:

It’s alright to start small, perhaps at the team level or a department level, yet change must be done in the whole organisation. Just having a couple of groups that are agile won’t help you in your transformation.

Agile practices need to be embraced by the entire organisation to ensure business agility. The benefits of the agile will be limited in case it’s not taken beyond the trial stage. 

5. Failing To Adopt A New Organisational Culture

To make any transformations or changes to be effective, the leaders should be convinced of the change. A change across the organisation is unimaginable without the help of the leadership.

Agile leaders lead the change from the front, get the vital insights, and help in making a culture that fosters employee development. Agile leaders create a platform for open conversations among employees and leadership.

An organisation can put resources into a change, even hiring agile mentors and coaches, however if leaders keep on working in the old mindset, little progress will be made.

6. Rushing the transformation:

A real challenge for organisations executing agile practices is how to scale the methodology appropriately. Often, organisations do not have the right structure, policies, enough planning and support systems to scale and end up rushing the process of change. Organisations need to set aside the effort to consider whether they are prepared to roll out this improvement in case there are limitations or even the absence of leaders.

A proper transformation should include a multi-year plan that over time transforms an organisation’s mindset, invokes cultural change, and includes the execution of committed resources across the board. Furthermore, Organisations need to tailor their plans for transformation as they begin to gather insights as various aspects of people and process, as change gets rolled out. 

7. Not helping employees’ transition:

As a company, it is necessary to provide the required support that will enable teams to operate using agile practices, which includes training teams in Agile mindset and practices, providing agile coaching, providing the leadership trust and support, making changes to company policies and processes, and supporting tools. Without this support and initiatives, teams may find it hard to execute and stick to an agile mindset that will prevent innovation and increase time to market. 

8. No business involvement, agile is just an IT effort

Agile usually starts with IT in many organisations, however if it only stays within the boundary of IT, business continues to expect delivery to be based on the initial plan and scope and their engagement remains low. This causes a flurry of changes towards the end of release, which pushes the overall cost and increases project risk. Eventually this impacts an organisation’s ability to gain business agility from its effort. 

9. Agile becomes a set of strict process to follow

When agile coaches or scrum masters or management start to push agile as a set of strict processes, it can create loads of resistance. People in such an environment also tend to focus on looking agile more than being agile. 

Agile transformation is not about rolling out SAFe or Scrum or any of the agile practices. These frameworks are of great value, if teams can see value in them, without it, they just remain as another set of processes.

10. People holding several myths about agile

Many times agile transformation runs into challenges merely because people hold certain beliefs about agile, which are nothing but myths. Some of those beliefs are

• Agile has NO documentation – now one of the agile values says that we value working software over comprehensive documentation but this does not mean that agile has no documentation, it only means that in agile we value working software more. 
• Agile has NO planning – again agile has the practice of iterative planning instead of spending effort in planning as one Big Bang approach. Iterative planning helps in learning from experience and improves your planning.
• In agile, management micromanages every day work – this is another myth that usually developers tend to carry. Agile actually emphasises on empowering teams towards self-management, hence micromanagement will certainly make things worse with or without agile.
• Agile does not work for large projects – if you are undertaking large or complex projects, which may have uncertainties, agile helps reduce significant risks early on as against traditional project management.

11. Old policies and structures

Agile requires one to focus on creating value for customers as early as possible, creating working software, taking ownership at team level and bringing continuous improvement. Structures such as functional hierarchy based structure sometimes become an obstacle for teams to take ownership at team level. Policies such as individual reward and recognition creates more individual competition instead of encouraging team collaboration. Similarly companies which have strong hierarchical structure can pose significant challenges in creating a culture of continuous improvement or self management. 

12. Lack of experience and expertise in leading change

Agile transformation is not about changing a tool or a process, agile transformation is about solving business problem and helping business succeed. If you are just doing agile transformation because management said so or because everyone else is agile, it is most likely run into resistance. However when you are there solving problems of people and through the process, agile practices offers solutions to the problems, real transformation begin to happen, people start to see value in it.

Unfortunately today agile transformations are done top down, or some SAFe or Scrum gets enforced upon team – there isn’t anything agile about such transformation process.

Agile transformation itself needs to be agile, which begins with delivering value to customers, in others words solve business problems. Agile transformation itself should be incremental with continuous learning through the process.

Agile transformation usually involves mindset shift in people otherwise we end up seeing shadows of traditional waterfall in most agile implementations. Mindset shifts take time and require empathetic leadership that can understand, connect and work with people inside out instead of pushing change outside-in. 

What to do for a successful transformation?

Before one gets into agile transformation, ask some important questions

• Why agile transformation?
• What problems will agile solve for this team or organisation and how?
• What are the reinforcing and balancing feedback loops through the change and how would you reduce the impacts of balancing loops?

1. Get the Leadership Commitment

Successful agile leaders support culture transformation.  Agile leaders should focus on

(1) creating and nurturing a culture of experimentation, focus on value creation and continuous learning. 

(2) create org policies and structure that can reinforce self-management and team ownership.

(3) collaborate with people at all levels and create a common shared goal. 

2. Identify Change Agents

Identify individuals in leadership and various teams who can influence your cause of agile transformation within the organisation. Work with these individuals in a formal and informal setting to create a larger buy-in around agile transformation. Enable these individuals to become your transformation leaders within the organisation.

3. Define Transformation Strategy

Agile Transformation requires a thought through strategy to roll out change in the organisation. Your strategy will depend upon various factors such as organisation structure, organisation size, mental models, leadership commitments, organisational politics and existing mindsets and practices.

Consider applying an agile mindset of iterative, incremental, value based agile transformation with continuous cycles of improvement and learning. Engage agile leaders in creating an agile transformation road map and backlog.

4. Implement 

Implement agile transformation in a small incremental approach. While implementing agile, work with teams in understanding their challenges, support them through coaching and facilitation, enable them through training and mentoring on what works for them the best.  

5. Retrospect

Agile Transformation requires learning at two levels.

1. Continuous improvement at the strategy level – what worked and what requires improvement. This learning is also called single loop learning. This learning will help implement agile but this will also bring out mindset issues or larger structural issues, which will limit your team’s ability to bring about transformation.
2. Continuous Improvement at the mindset and structural level – this type of learning is called double loop learning. This learning will enable organisations to see through the underlying structures and mindsets that are limiting agile transformation of an organisation. 

6. Solve business problem through your transformation – it is important that your agile transformation is not about rolling out scrum or SAFe or Nexus top down. Agile transformation should be about solving problems. You will very likely find agile practices as levers to solve those problems and there-by naturally become lever of change.

7. Help the Employees of all levels

In this journey, employees need to be guided through agile training, and learning. It will help the team to feel confident & work in a new environment. Agile training and coaching are great tools that help employees to acquire an agile mindset. 

Agile is an organisational culture transformation

A successful agile transformation requires an agile-friendly culture. Big companies that are following the traditional approach may find it difficult to accept new ways of working. Agile coaches should work with leaders and teams to help them reflect on their own behaviours and mindset and their variation from agile mindset. Agile transformation coaches should work with org leaders on bringing a perspective shift from plan driven approach to value driven approach. 

You have a culture ready for agile if you are listening to your customers, can respond to change quickly, trust and support self-organized teams, and have transparent and approachable leadership, and many more. 

Final Words on Agile Transformation challenges and strategies implementation

For a successful Agile transformation, companies must learn from their mistakes and be open to adapt to the changes. Transitioning to agile also needs an experienced agile coach or mentor who can guide employees and the organisation with coaching, training, and working with leaders and help them to bring about change.

According to the 15th State Agile report, “Organisational culture and Agile Values are becoming more aligned. A few years ago, more than 8 out of 10 respondents identified culture as a significant barrier to Agile adoption. That number now stands at slightly more than 4 in 10.”

How we can help

If you are looking for help with Agile Transformation challenges and strategies implementation within your organisation, either with transformation coaching or agile training, reach out to us at info@leanmantra.com and we will be happy to help.