Darrell K. Rigby - Doing Agile Right

Agilethe business philosophy that relies on fast-moving, self-managing teams for innovationhas officially entered the mainstream of corporate management. Tour almost any large company these days and you will find scores of agile teams working to improve customer experiences and business processes. John Deere has used agile methods to develop new machines, USAA to transform its customer service, and 3M to run a major merger integration. Boscha global supplier of technology and services with more than 400,000 associateshas adopted agile principles to guide a step-by-step reshaping of the company. Digital natives such as Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify have incorporated agile methods into a wide range of innovation activities. Meanwhile, agile has virtually taken over IT departments, themselves the source of countless innovations. At last count, 85 percent of software developers use agile techniques in their work.

The reasons for agiles rapid spread are neither obscure nor surprising. Most big companies find it difficult to innovate. They are weighted down by the structures and procedures of bureaucracy. Agile liberates the innovative spirit that so many organizations stifle. It helps companies reshape both what they offer their customers and how they operate internally. It transforms the work environment, making peoples jobs more rewarding.

These are grand claims, but the data support them. Study after study find conclusively that agile teams are far more successful at innovation than teams that work in traditional fashion. Improvements come rapidly and at less expense. Satisfaction and engagement among employees rise. Moreover, companies can implement agile without the need to spin off separate business units or hide skunkworks from hierarchies. They can deploy agile teams in any business or function that might benefit from them, including corporate headquarters. Once they have learned the basics, they can scale agile, establishing hundreds of individual teams or teams of teams to tackle large projects. Saabs aeronautics business created more than one hundred agile teams operating across software, hardware, and fuselage for its Gripen fighter jeta $43 million item that is certainly one of the most complex products in the world. Military analyst Janes has deemed the Gripen the worlds most cost-effective military aircraft.

So agile is spreading, and agile teams are mostly achieving their objectives. It looks like encouraging progress toward an appealing vision. Is there anything wrong with this picture?

Certainly theres nothing wrong with the basic idea. We are business consultants, and we have seen the power and potential of agile in hundreds of companies around the globe. We have helped many of these companies implement agile. We count ourselves among its biggest fans.

But as with so many good ideas, the practice sometimes belies the promise. Agile has spread so rapidly that it threatens to spin out of control. Along with the companies that use it effectively are those that misunderstand or misuse the ideas. They may be egged on by some zealot who promises the world. They may sign on to an agile transformation before they know anything about what such an effort might entail. They may use agile terminology to camouflage distinctly nonagile objectives.

The outcome of these misuses in many companies is chaos rather than constructive change. But the damage is greater than any one companys experience. When agile is done wrong, it almost always leads to lousy results. Lousy results lead to nervous customers, dissatisfied employees, activist investors, and a push to replace the management team. Replacement managers are understandably skeptical of any strategies that got the prior regime fired. They are likely to clean house, disband agile teams, and (probably) launch a round of layoffs. Its a version of Greshams law: bad agile drives out good. If that happens too often, agile will be discreditedand the business world will be back where it started, with top-heavy bureaucratic corporations struggling hopelessly to keep up with brash upstarts and rapidly changing markets.