Siloed Agility
I want to talk about Siloed Agility within organizations, and what I mean by that is:
- Starting agility within specific departments
- Starting agility within specific functions
- Starting agility within different sections of your organization
This is where each of these silos have their own hierarchy and pretty much do their own thing, independently and autonomously, of other departments and functions within the organization.
Some of these agile silos do operate and are aligned with an overall organizational strategy but more often than not, the work they do in each of these silos is unrelated and misaligned with the overall organizational strategy.
Often, the work produced in these agile silos is misaligned with other departments and functions in the organization.
Why doesn’t this work?
Agility silos are a lot like asking for directions in Ireland.
Most often, the unhelpful answer provided by locals is ‘I wouldn’t start from here’.
It’s the same with Agility. It doesn’t make sense to create agile silos at all. It is probably the worst place to start.
Even though most people agree that starting with agile silos isn’t helpful, they persist, and within a couple of years it becomes incredibly difficult to ‘undo’ or ‘unlearn’ everything that has happened over the past couple of years.
Whilst you may have identified a style of working that agrees with that specific silo, it isn’t true business agility nor is it collaborative and aligned with other departments and organizational priorities.
You are simply working in an agile bubble, and you can persist with this for 4 to 5 years before it all starts to fall apart and create problems within the organization. By that time, it is incredibly difficult to get the team to realign and focus on achieving true business agility and effective product development.
The flow of value
Value flows across functions, it doesn’t stay within the functions.
We’ve got value streams. We’ve got customer requests coming into the organization and then we deliver outputs, which hopefully deliver outcomes which are valuable to those customers and end-users.
That doesn’t happen in a silo.
It happens across a number of functions and departments and so your teams need to be aligned to creating value for those customers and delivering value, throughout the organization, that flows to the customer and end user.
So, it stands to reason that agility should be horizontal not vertical.
Adopting Agile
So, as you can see, it is a big error to start with Agility in a specific department or function.
I do understand the value of a pilot, but I’m not speaking about a pilot. I’m talking about adopting and implementing agile within a silo. It may seem like a good idea, but the magnetism or gravity of the organization keeps pulling you back.
The team are reminded, day in and day out, that there is a hierarchy to the organization and a certain ‘way of doing things around here’, which is simply not going to change.
It is very difficult to roll that back.
Even if agile coaches, scrum masters, and agility consultants within those silos attempt to reach across value streams and align with customer priorities, there is often a lack of cooperation and alignment with those other departments that prevents the team from achieving their goals.
It becomes incredibly hard for them to achieve true agility because the infrastructure and organization that surrounds that silo is at complete odds with agility and it can cause a great deal of frustration and friction.
Instead of executives collaborating with one another, each department executive is instead competing with one another or implementing policies that frustrate attempts to cooperate and collaborate between departments.
Political interference.
And so, if you have an agility silo working with a traditional management or waterfall style project management department, it simply isn’t in that executive’s political interest to help your team because you may be competing for resources, recognition, or incentives.
In my experience, this happens a lot within large organizations.
In some ways, it is the definition of internal politics to work against one another in a head-to-head competition for resources and incentives. A great organization works together, across functions and in alignment with the value stream, to deliver products and services that truly delight customers.
Politics, in a positive manner, is getting things done effectively and efficiently. Politics, in a negative manner, is doing things that are great for the department but harmful for the organization.
Many executives will optimise for the local or departmental level, to the detriment of the entire system or organization when they should be optimising for the whole system or organization.
So, if you start Agility within a specific department or function, it can be dangerous. It doesn’t work.
About John Coleman
John Coleman has deep experience and expertise working with executives, #leadership teams and product development teams to achieve increased #businessagility and create environments where creativity and collaboration produce high-performance teams.
If you are interested in helping your team or organization achieve greater agility and want to explore agile training options, visit our training page.
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If you are looking for an expert agile consultant that can help your leadership team identify an appropriate roadmap to business agility and take the most effective course of action in your agile transformation, visit our consulting page.
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