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It is my great pleasure
to discuss with you

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now the frameworks trap,
a.k.a., frankly, the way

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that most companies
approach agile and lean.

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So as we've discussed,
actually implementing

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agile and lean practices.

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Well is not that complicated.

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If you understand your
organizational challenges

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and you understand the core
values of agile and lean,

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then it's just a matter of
trying stuff out and saying,

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are these values guiding
us towards solving

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our organizational challenges?

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Are these practices working.

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Are they not working?

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And if they're not working,
how do we change them?

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Easy and simple, right?

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But if you look up
the agile landscape,

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all the different frameworks,
methodologies, consultancies,

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companies trying to kind of give
you their own special sauce,

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take on agile.

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According to Deloitte,
the industry analyst firm,

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it looks like this,
which is exhausting.

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This is terrifying.

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This doesn't feel very agile.

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And looking at this gives me a
headache and massive anxiety.

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This is what a lot of the
discourse about agile looks

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like.

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It's people debating
the finer points

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of these very complicated
competing systems when we

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talk about the frameworks trap.

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Welcome to it.

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This is the trap.

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This is the endless debate we
can get into about the finer

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points of methodologies
where we totally

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lose sight of the big picture.

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And in fact, this
has gotten so bad

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that Andy hunt, who
was one of the signers

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of the agile manifesto, has
declared agile a failure.

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Think about that for a second.

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This is one of those people who
is associated with this hugely

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successful movement and who is
taking a step back and saying,

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you all kind of missed
the point on this.

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This is worth reading
in its entirety.

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Andy hunt says, in the 14 years
since the agile manifesto,

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we've lost our way.

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The word agile has become slow,
organized, meaningless at best,

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jingoistic at worst.

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We have large swaths of
people doing flaccid, agile,

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a half hearted attempt at
following a few select software

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development practices.

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Poorly, we have scads
of vocal, agile zealots

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as per the definition
that a zealot

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is one who redoubles
their effort after they've

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forgotten their aim.

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Ouch and worst of
all, agile methods

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themselves have not been agile.

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Now there's an irony for you.

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So to summarize, we have one
of the signers of the Agile

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Manifesto saying that
agile has become basically

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this weird cult where people
are yelling about the finer

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points of practices.

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But have completely
forgotten their aim.

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There's a truth here that
applies to a lot of things,

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but I think is particularly
important when we talk about

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agile and lean.

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If you don't know why
you're doing something,

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it doesn't work.

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Full stop.

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If you are following
a set of rules

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because something told you
to or someone told you to

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and you don't know why
you're following them.

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It won't work.

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It can't work because
you haven't decided

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what working will look like.

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I worked with one organization
where they said, are agile.

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Coach told us a daily
stand up meeting

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should be 10 minutes long.

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I said, OK, well, why?

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They said, well, we
don't really know.

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But if we finish the
meeting in 3 minutes,

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we just kind of stand
there for seven minutes

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checking our watches and
looking kind of awkwardly

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at each other.

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I mean, it has to be
10 minutes, right?

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That is the least
agile thing imaginable,

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saying this has to be 10
minutes, we don't know why,

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but somebody told us.

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So I guess that's what
we're going to do.

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It's not good.

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Again, it is not helping
us leverage our Agilent

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lean values to solve our
organizational problems.

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Can't really solve
much of anything

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if we're just doing it
because somebody told us to.

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Now, part of this
means that we have

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to really understand our
organizational challenges,

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right?

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If we aren't taking
the time to reflect

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on what we're
trying to solve for,

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then no amount of agile
practices and frameworks

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can help us solve
those problems.

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So what I recommend
doing is think about what

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you're actually trying to solve
for before you start looking

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at agile practices,
methodologies, looking at doing

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lean experiments, you
have to understand

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what you're trying to fix.

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So here are some
questions that can

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help you start to think
through why and how you're

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going to implement
agile practices

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and avoid the frameworks trap.

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Ask yourself, what is
the current challenge

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your organization is facing?

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Ask yourself, how do you think
that your current approach is

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contributing to this challenge?

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Why is it that you haven't
already fixed this?

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Basically, what
is the change you

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intend to make to your approach?

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How are you actually going
to alter your approach?

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What's the agile or
lean practice, you're

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going to experiment with?

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And finally, and perhaps
most importantly,

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how will when this change is
having the desired effect?

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How will when this
agile or lean practice

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methodology or framework is
actually meeting the needs?

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How will when you've changed
the thing you want to change?

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If you can't answer
that question,

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you will never know when
you have reached success.

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If you keep refining
your approach based

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on what you're learning,
you have given yourself

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the greatest gift of
all, because there

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is no longer a wrong approach.

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If you're continuously
learning and adjusting.

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Course, if you're doing this
in a truly iterative way,

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then there's very
little downside here.

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You can try something.

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And if it doesn't
work, you change it.

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So long as you know what
you're working towards

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and you understand those goals.

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This is actually not that hard.

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If your 10 minute
stand up meeting

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is a waste of everybody's
time, ask yourself,

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why are we having these
meetings in the first place?

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What are we actually
trying to solve?

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What are we actually
trying to accomplish.

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And then change the practice?

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But if you don't know what
you're trying to solve,

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changing the practice is just
going to be flailing around

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in the darkness.

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Finally, the other great
gift we give ourselves here

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is that if we're
constantly changing course

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based on what we
learn, we don't have

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to sweat the right place
to start that much.

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We don't have to evaluate 87
different agile frameworks

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with a sense of terror that
if we pick the wrong one,

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everything is going
to fall apart.

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If we pick the wrong
one, we change it.

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Once you give yourself
the gift of escaping

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the frameworks trap,
continuously learning,

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adjusting course based on a
robust knowledge of what you're

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trying to accomplish
anywhere you

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start is a great place to start.