How I Know You Are Flailing at Agile

As a consultant I try my best to keep abreast of industry trends in technology and software development. Often one of the best ways to observe trends is to check out job boards to see what positions are being posted. For example, job postings can show trends in programming languages. You can see which companies are trying to make Agile transformations (How many big financial companies can hire multiple coaches in Foster City?). You can see which companies have caught the “DevOps” bug and you can tell which companies are flailing and failing their Agile transformations.

How can I tell which companies are failing? When you see multiple posts for the same position over time is a good indicator. For example, you see a post for an Agile Coach that goes unfilled for months. While good ones can be hard to find and take some time, a position open for months can be telling that good coaches are avoiding the company. Most good coaches can very quickly size up a company’s commitment to Agile and avoid those situations where they are likely to fail no matter how good a coach they are. They can sense the fundamental dysfunction. Sometimes you will see a posting one day and the same posting a few short months later. Chances are whoever was chosen didn’t last and that certainly raises red flags.

Sometimes the title that is advertised will show a company’s inherent failure to grasp Agile. You will see a ton of advertisements for Scrum Master or Project Manager. I personally love these as they serve the same purpose as someone wearing a “Stupid” sign in that we know to avoid both. Advertising for a Scrum Master or Project Manager indicates that the company searching understands neither position. The good thing is that if one is only interested in doing Agile then one can save time by avoiding these.

Once I drove nearly two hours for an interview with a company that does only “Agile” projects. During one of the many lengthy interviews, I was asked, “What would happen if we gave you a waterfall project?” “Well for one thing you would not be 100 percent Agile anymore.”

The interview went downhill from there – a waste of a lot of people’s time. Advertising for a Scrum Project Manager would have saved everyone!

Lately I have been seeing another title that gives me pause – Technical Project Manager, especially in the context of Agile companies. I have been a part of and witnessed many abject failures of software development projects (maybe why Project Management should be replaced by Product Management). On none of these have I ever thought that maybe, just maybe, if we had a Project Manager that had more technical knowledge we would have snatched victory tron the jaws of defeat. And the colleagues I talk to agree.

Project Managers have the least amount of authority in making projects successful. A Technical Project Manager is kind of like blaming the weatherman for the rain. It is a silly tactic by management to deflect blame from them. Agile transformation is difficult because it needs change from management and change of culture. Hiring Technical Project Managers is a red herring that distracts an organization from the real work to be done, pushing the transformation finish line even farther away. And finding the kind of person who can successfully straddle tech and management is a tall order, especially when people who know what Agile transformations are all about and who will see through you and realize you are merely flailing at Agile.

Larry Apke