From its birth in the software development community, the idea of \u2018agility\u2019 has risen in prominence to the point where organizations of all shapes and forms are now leveraging agile principles (or at least trying to).\u00a0 Since being conceptually formalized in the 2001 \u2018agile manifesto\u2019 the ideas have matured to the point where agile practices have worked their way into the mainstream of the Project Management Institute\u2019s PMBoK\u00ae Guide.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve written about a number of times, agile concepts are well founded (when applied in appropriate contexts and by skilled professionals).\u00a0 However, some organizations are finding that agility is no panacea.\u00a0 To illustrate, I recently witnessed an agile team drive a project into the ground.\u00a0 In that particular case the team were skilled in the technology they were applying, but lacked the depth of knowledge of the client\u2019s business.\u00a0 In principal agility calls for constant engagement of the business stakeholders to ensure their knowledge is sufficiently transferred to those writing the code.\u00a0Unfortunately, in this case the client didn\u2019t have the number of resources dedicated to the project to adequately achieve that goal and in retrospect, that under resourcing of the project by the client was a contributor to the failure.<\/p>\n
In that particular case some may assume that the issue wasn\u2019t seen in advance, but that\u2019s not the case.\u00a0 Throughout the project, voices inside the project warned senior management that there were structural problems.\u00a0 Those warnings were unfortunately ignored and the client and investors ended up eating a very significant loss.<\/p>\n
So, why did the warnings go unheeded?\u00a0 In short – arrogance.\u00a0 To heed a warning, you have to listen. \u00a0To avert a project disaster, you have to see reality. \u00a0In this particular case listening and seeing were in short supply and people in key leadership roles maintained an unshakable belief that the project was on firm ground.<\/p>\n
In reality the project was using the word \u2018agile\u2019 to hide sloppy practices.\u00a0 Phrases like \u201cwe\u2019re agile\u201d were used in response to concerns and a cultish mindset meant you were either an \u2018agilist\u2019 who \u2018got it\u2019 or a heretic to be silenced.<\/p>\n
Despite the cult like belief in agility, the issues should have surfaced when early sprints failed to deliver working software.\u00a0 In reality a lack of meaningful quality practices meant that testing was scant and the true status of the delivered code wasn\u2019t appreciated by those high up.\u00a0 Although that flies in the face of agile principles, those raising concerns were again shot down by the project\u2019s \u2018agile\u2019 evangelists.\u00a0 \u00a0Sprints lead to releases, but the issues compounded and early releases were both late and unfit for production release.\u00a0 Only after 3 years did the project finally get canned (so much for the agile principle of fail early).<\/p>\n
Truth be told the team weren\u2019t being agile.\u00a0 The words were used, but the principles were not.\u00a0 The process used was nothing more than chaotic and the cult of agile was used as lipstick on the pig to mask reality.\u00a0 Arrogance at the upper levels acted as a roadblock to reality and the stage was set for a project tragedy to be played out.<\/p>\n
Arrogance is a powerful force in the way we as humans work.\u00a0At times it can be beneficial.\u00a0Arrogance leads to confidence and sometimes confidence is well founded or lucky and a significant step forward gets taken.\u00a0 Other times (and perhaps more frequently) arrogance is a determent.\u00a0 Arrogance is the bypass for learning.\u00a0 Why bother learning when you feel you already know it?\u00a0Arrogance is the replacement for thinking.\u00a0 Why think when the answers are \u2018so\u2019 obvious?\u00a0 Arrogance is the substitute for enquiry.\u00a0 Why ask others when they can\u2019t possibly know as much as you?<\/p>\n
When arrogance meets agility, you can easily create the context for failure.\u00a0 The nature of agility is that the processes are relatively lightweight, simple and hence easy to understand (arrogant people like that).\u00a0 That simplicity however masks the maturity of the underlying principles.\u00a0 Leveraging those principles takes leadership, thought and understanding (things arrogant people tend to skip).\u00a0 For the arrogant, the simplicity of the process is the stopping point for learning and as a result, the deeper principles get ignored.\u00a0 The net result is foreseeable and the in the case I touched on above the price tag for arrogance was $200M.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From its birth in the software development community, the idea of \u2018agility\u2019 has risen in prominence to the point where organizations of all shapes and forms are now leveraging agile principles (or at least trying to).\u00a0 Since being conceptually formalized in the 2001 \u2018agile manifesto\u2019 the ideas have matured to the point where agile practices […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,13,27,28,120,14,40,8,31,42,70,43,77],"tags":[145,150,135,138,17,151,141,143,62,93,147],"class_list":["post-8546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agility","category-behavioral-pattern","category-blog","category-causes-of-failure","category-corporate-culture","category-decision-making","category-leadership-blog","category-pattern","category-people","category-project-management","category-quality-blog","category-team-dynamics","category-why-projects-fail","tag-agility","tag-arrogance","tag-behavioral-pattern","tag-causes-of-failure","tag-leadership","tag-leadership-failure","tag-management","tag-project-management","tag-quality-management","tag-why-do-projects-fail","tag-why-projects-fail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8548,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8546\/revisions\/8548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}