Google reports 2 million hits for Agile Failure.

Why does the same process fail at one company and succeed at another?  And more importantly, how can you ensure your own success?

Most failure reports blame: lack of buy-in, lack of communication, lack of scope, lack of experience, lack of skills.  None of these reports help you decide if you have a chance with Agile at your organization.

If you analyze the underlying principles of Agile – team decisions, constant communication, feedback and change – you will realize that it’s a very practical implementation of collaborative management principles.  We’re talking Communication, Collaboration, Empowerment, Trust and Reflection.

If you already have a collaborative culture in place, implementing Agile will be a breeze, indeed you might already be an Agile organization without calling it Agile!

OK, you already communicate, collaborate and empower, but how can you check if your organization is also ready?  How can you check that all the people under you also believe that they can freely communicate, collaborate and make decisions?  How can you check that Collaboration is not just a buzzword in your organization, but reality on every level?

Try answering these questions:

1. Have your managers or teams ever declined a request coming from you?
2. Have you discussed their reasoning and worked out an acceptable alternative together?
3. Have your managers or teams ever reported early that their original estimates were incorrect so they can’t deliver on time or on features?
4. Have you accepted this at face value, and did not pressure them to deliver on the original terms?
5. Do the progress reports you get detail setbacks and uncertainties as well as successes?

If you answered yes to all five questions, you are good to go!  Implementing Agile will be easy and painless and beneficial for you and for your team.

Think about the questions you answered with ‘no’.  If you think your organization is working so well that these questions are irrelevant, then you shouldn’t even care about Agile – you are doing well already.

Questions 1 (employee pushback),  3 (employees reporting their own failure), and 5 (employees reporting their own uncertainties) reflect the underlying trust of your employees.  Are they willing to voice their doubts in you?  Are they willing to expose their own mistakes and weaknesses?  Do they have a safe venue to do this?  Do they see examples?

Questions 2 (accepting pushback) and 4 (accepting setback) reflect your trust in your employees.  Your trust is built on the knowledge gained through communication, so you have to get your people to trust you to openly communicate.

To sum it up:

• Agile is a great advertisement for a collaborative organizational culture.
• Without the right culture in place Agile is a guaranteed failure.
• If you want what Agile promises, start building trust and open communications throughout your organization.