Just look, and you will see it.  Newly minted Agile projects that are oozing with success and wonderment.

The more success, the more growth.  As the Agile project succeeds and grows; we introduce more teams, more management, more bureaucracy.  And, as if we were not looking, we will take a step back and see that in fact there is very little that we would recognize from that original Agile project.  

There are many considerations, but here are 3 things I’ve observed:

1 – The need for Constant learning

In the early days of the project, everyone was trained, everyone had a similar mindset, and there was focus.  Over time, the discipline of making sure every team member and management type had a common understanding of the processes, principles, philosophies, tactics, and mindset started to slip.  We began to count on the existing teams and their members could relay these critical elements.  In reality, this didn’t happen.  How did I know?  Unfortunately, not until much later when many members of this project joined a new greenfield agile project and there again was a lot of excitement and wonderment.  But, we had experienced folks coming from a successful agile project, we should see this new project just pickup and take off.  But the reality was that most of these team members actually didn’t have the foundational understandings, core principles understood.  They were sort of living on the original project in a cargo cult type of environment.  They were going through the motions, carried by the current of the existing project, but really never understood why we were doing what we were doing.

2 – The pull of Tradition

Over time, the pull of tradition begins to drag on the project.  Like gravity, it is a never-ending force that if an equal or greater agile principled force is not applied, gravity will win and tradition will prevail.  Status meetings materialize, backlog grooming happens in back rooms, sizing is dictated, and velocity levels slowly become ‘requirements’ to be met.  This doesn’t happen overnight.  It evolves as leadership shifts, teams expand, scope grows, complexity compounds; and, without deliberate re-focusing on core agile/lean principles.  Without making decisions through the lens of agile/lean principles and values, subtle waves of tradition begin to find their way back into the process, the culture, the mindset.  If not checked, these subtle waves become bigger and erode the beaches of agile and lean.

3 – Gaming the Metrics

In the beginning, these metrics were truly empirical.  They were a matter of fact.  The velocity of the team(s), the forecasting and projections going forward were true.  They could be relied upon.  But as described above, over time, as the management on guard changes at both the customer and within the project; as a lack of deliberate vetting, explaining, and educating why we do what we do when passing the torch to the next set of program leads;  a sense of quota ensues.  Velocity no longer represents the facts.  Velocity represents a quota.  No longer is it an empirical tool for projection, it becomes a management tool for cajoling delivery/performance levels.  Lost is the art of investigating why a velocity is lower or higher than a time before; understanding the system as a whole and looking for ways to improve.

Question: There are many other observations that can be made. I wonder, have you seen something similar on any of your longer-lived agile projects? You can leave a comment by clicking here.