#6 — Agility 101: Responding to Change and the Secret Super Power for Adapting.
By: Luiza Lima
Tags: Agile Transformation, Agility, Agile, Agile Methodology, Digital Transformation

Quick catch up from last article: The Third Agile value states that it’s all about the customer and we need to connect and collect feedback as soon as possible. Scope is not the king, the user is. So let’s do short cycles and collaborate with our customers as much as we can.

The Forth Agile Value:

Responding to change over following a plan.

If there is such a thing as a famous agile value, then this is the one. Even people that don’t understand a whole lot about agility usually get this part: Being Agile it’s all about adapting and responding to change. Unfortunately this also may be the most misquoted value too, because it led a lot of leaders to believe that agility was chaos. That Agility discarded the importance of planning and this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Agility does not discard planning. Agility simply tells you that responding to change is more important than sticking to a plan that doesn’t work. Plans are good, but since the world is changing fast you can’t waste too much time in planning the far future, because when you eventually get there you might need to change and adapt. A year ago HRs everywhere were discussing having a better workplace. Now we are discussing not having a workplace. A year ago restaurants were planning customer’s environment experience, now they are discussing delivery and ecommerce. A year ago I couldn’t live without waze. Now I can’t live without food delivery and video conference apps .

To really understand the importance of adaptability we need to accept the undeniable fact that we live in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous), and that although plans are important, they are becoming overdue faster than ever. There is a radio station in Brazil that has a slogan that says “In 20 minutes everything can change”. And this is true. So how do we prepare for this fast paced changing world?

Once I was doing a speech to some executives in traditional industries and a person asked: How can I be agile but not change the scope of my project? The answer is: you can’t. Because in agility you need to embrace change. A better question would be “How can I build a project that won’t be too much affected by change?

The answer is by being incremental. Slicing the scope to such a small component — that you will be able to plan and deliver this fraction faster than the world will change. You will need to have a high level vision to where you want to go, but you will only deep dive into the requirements of the next small delivery.

So how does this value work ?

Imagine that you have an urgent need to drive to your new workplace that is far away.

The traditional way of doing this would be to spend several weeks collecting all the requirements to the perfect car. Because since you are buying a car, then it needs to be complete. It needs to fulfill all your needs at once. It won’t just take you to work. It has to have air conditioning, best painting, the windows might have filter to adjust to lightning, leather seats, and the list would go on and on. Besides that you would also need to collect requirements from others stakeholders — to make sure everything is included.

You could consult your husband or wife and they might suggest other accessories for kids — because you want to have kids in the future. After weeks of scope, you would then start searching for all of those things, to finally buy your car, The whole process would take months and possibly it would take more time and be more expensive than you originally thought, as most software development projects used to be . And the larger the scope, the longer it would be until you receive your car and start capturing any value.

After a couple of weeks — of requirements, searching (and paying!) for your car — that you still haven’t received yet — you might discover that you don’t like to drive. Or that you don’t like your new job. Or you might find a better solution for transportation: maybe you discover a close colleague could drive you to work if you pay for the gas. But now that does’t matter anymore because you already so commited to a huge plan in the future, that change is impossible now. You already invested too much time and money to an ideal car that haven’t even been delivered yet — and already doesn’t fit your new reality. But you can’t adapt.

How would be an agile approach?

I need a comfortable transportation for my new far away job. What is the cheapest, fastest and most valuable way to do this? I will need to define a timebox. Let’s say 15 days. Bold, but feasible. So the question now is what can I do in 15 days to resolve my transportation problem? I might want to rent a car to see if I adapt driving to my job first.Or I may try to borrow from someone I know that is travelling, Another option would be to buy a car without any accessories for a start. It would be easy to chose.

After 15 days I decided to buy a simple car. Now I’m already driving to work. So in the following week I discover my job is not in a safe neighborhood, so I should prioritize locks, alarms and electric windows. Maybe I see traffic is intense and I could prioritize a good sound system to entertain me along the way. And each week, you would access your needs and budget — and incrementally start to evolve your product. But you would do so while enjoing you car and while learning within the journey.

Now this agility. To have a product view of what you want. but only invest time on short term scope by slicing your requirements.

The crazy thing for me is that in our personal lives we tend naturally to be more agile because money is not abundant for most of us. So we naturally take the startup approach. In our houses we do incremental changes. In our cars too. It’s rare to take the complete revamp decision because the steaks are high. We test providers. We experiment. We borrow things from friends and family before buying our own. We request free trials, test drives. The more scarce the money, the more agility kicks in. No wonder why agility spread so fast in startups.

There is power in being incremental. Because it’s easier to start. Cheaper to make mistakes. Fast to capture value and more simple to change routes if needed.

Usually this is the common imagery used in agile trainings …

So the forth value is about being open to change and the secret to do so is by being incremental. Break a giant into small valuable parts. This will make it possible to change the plan without too much effort.

Now I’ve concluded the forth value, and the 101 series on agility. Hope it was useful.

I really liked this agile approach for writing. I probably will be writing some more micro articles soon =)

Last Article: #5 — Agility 101: Agile Values — Customer collaboration: a New Kingdom is born