Real Mature!
We have Scrum teams, hold regular retrospectives, and estimate with story points. We’re Agile now, right?
Lemme start off by saying that I dig Scrum. I love its simplicity, how it calls out dysfunction, and forces you to do the hard work to fix it. That being said, I absolutely hate-hate-hate the title of Jeff, and J.J. Sutherland’s book, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. It gives off the impression that folks are magically gonna be able to do more work, and save the company a ton of money. Sure, that’d be nice, but it doesn’t automatically happen after reading the 256 pages written by the Sutherlands.
I’ma say it. Scrum isn’t about getting more sh*t done. It’s about getting the right sh*t done, at the right time. Unfortunately, people have a tendency latch onto speed. Take the Sprint, for example. It’s not doing us any favors. The word literally means to run at full speed over a short distance, so of course the misconstrued takeaway is: Scrum = fast.
At some point, C-levels will wanna know how much faster the organization has become. Time, and money were spent adopting Scrum, so I get it. They want tangible returns on their investment. Inevitably, someone decides that rolling out an Agile Maturity Model, or Agile Maturity Matrix (AMM), will answer to the question: “How agile are we?” An AMM promises some sort of metric that can be measured.
- Point: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” — Peter Drucker
- Counterpoint: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” — Charles Goodhart
Scrum isn’t about speed. Quantifying something that’s not easily quantifiable isn’t that simple, and AMMs feel like old school outputs to me. They come off like checklists. Check all the boxes, and you’re Agile, right? It’s the same mental association of defining agility as a process; something with a distinct beginning, middle, and end rather than a continuous journey. Maybe it’s just me, but AMMs are less a measure of maturity, and more of process conformity.
I’m not down with AMMs because they don’t move the conversation away from measuring outputs altogether. It’s about uncovering a metric. I’d argue that you can make a similar assessment by asking a few questions:
- If you’re obsessed with speed, how fast can a developer get hold of an end user? 4 minutes? 4 hours? 4 weeks? Never? Your feedback loop needs work.
- When a stakeholder has a request, how long before a Product Owner can have it ready for the development team to start building it? Identify, and eliminating waste in business processes can help your improve your overall lead time.
- When salespeople are out there selling, and making promises, do they know the capacity of the team who’s gonna be building it? If not, why? That speaks to transparency.
- Can development teams deploy to production without a series of complex checks & balances, release processes governed by external teams, or committee? Hmm… seems like self-organization, and trust issues.
- When’s the last time forecasted vs. actual spending was shared with development teams? Here we go again with transparency.
- How many times has a C-level attended a Sprint Review? If the answer is, “They’re too busy,” then how does the team know they’re building the right thing? How does leadership build trust with the team if they’re consistently absent?
To me, those questions speak to real, top-to-bottom agility. Stop giving a sh*t about burn-down charts, team velocity, and story points. Sure, they may serve a purpose, but if everyone can’t speak to what’s going on at any given time, can’t identify the organization’s top 3 goals, or have a shared understanding, what good does knowing what percentage “mature” you are according to an AMM?
“Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values.”— Joshua Loth Liebman
Let’s change the conversation. Customer value (the importance, worth, or usefulness of something) should be the only worthwhile goal. Customers don’t care whether you’re 98% Agile, or use Scrum to build something. Ensure that leadership sets direction, and everyone’s on the same page. Actively working toward a goal, and continually reassess if you’re still doing the right thing.
So, use Scrum to your advantage. Adopt it as a tool to accomplish your goals, and forget about trying to measure your organization’s score of maturity.
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