Over that last couple of years, I’ve been hearing phrases like ‘Agile doesn’t work’, ‘We tried the Spotify model and it’s not fixed our issues’… sound familiar? Why does there seem to be so many stories of Agile adoption failures?

In my experience when companies try to implement Agile within an organisation they often look at others who have successfully been on the Agile journey and try to copy, at first this seems like a good approach, you learn from others mistakes and take all the good bits that worked and apply them to your environment, easy! But that’s not how Agile works, here’s why.

Agile is a journey and not a destination, it is set of values and principles to help deliver complex, adaptive systems. It isn’t a silver bullet that will solve all your problems, in fact Agile is more about identifying problems so you can figure out how to solve them. Agile is more than implementing a bunch of processes and frameworks, yes that will bring some benefits but if you want to create really high performing teams then you need to do much more than that. Creating an environment that inspires people to co-create, collaborate and want to change is vital.

Don’t try to run before you can walk. The reason why the Spotify model worked for Spotify is because they started with the basics then once that was embedded they continually inspected and adapted until they no longer followed the rules but created new ones that worked for their environment and context, they created their own Agile. Based on a solid foundation of understanding the ‘why’ of Agile they then built upon that, always reflecting on the core values and principles as they found their new way.

So, while it’s really important to learn from others experiences and share knowledge it’s just as important to fail too, that way you learn and can work out what works for your environment and context, then you can start to make your own Agile.

What’s your experiences from working inside organisations going on the Agile journey? How have you tried to create your own Agile?