Why doesn't Agile work?

In the course of my political activism, I’ve encountered a lot of angry men. The past three years have been interesting, depressing, and eye-opening, as the hidden misogyny of liberal men has been revealed and the blatant misogyny of conservative men has been enabled. I’ve witnessed how sexism can lose elections, tear up political parties, and drive destructive public policy.

As I look at the workplace through the lens of politics, distinct patterns form. It’s interesting (and depressing) that problems I once thought were endemic to business are actually just expressions of the toxic masculinity that has defined American business culture. I’ll explore this is multiple blog posts because it’s a big topic. I’ll start with a subject that is near to my heart, the weird world of Information Technology.

As an IT consultant, I’ve spent years working with clients who claim to be “Agile” or “going Agile” or some such nonsense. Agile is a really great idea. I even teach Agile Product Owner classes and give presentations on Agile techniques. But I’ve yet to see it actually work. I thought “Agile is hard in big companies.” I thought “Agile transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Give it time.” I thought, “Once everyone is trained, it will get better.” I thought a lot of bullshit.

I talk to other practitioners at conferences, events, happy hours. Same story. There are books and YouTube channels and conferences and non-profits and consultancies and training programs and this elegant, compelling philosophy and absolutely no one I’ve talked to has actually pulled it off.

The core of Agile is the concept of a self-organizing, autonomous team. Without the Agile team, no scrums or backlogs or stand-ups or sprints or anything else are going to effectively convert an organization to Agile. And American business absolutely will not, cannot give their employees the autonomy to actually make Agile effective.

American businesses are filled with people who have spent years crawling through the layers of hierarchy at their organizations so that they can have a little more authority and money. This process is accompanied by the fantasy that having rank somehow conveys legitimacy. No one, having bought into this, ever willingly relinquishes their right to tell other people what to do. It is, literally, the only thing they have. So, since no team is ever permitted to be self-directed, they never develop the relationships and commitment needed to make Agile work.

Agile teams are therefore filled with disillusioned technologists producing little increments of code under the direction of team leaders who have forgotten, if they ever knew, that their role is supposed to be facilitator, not manager. When disagreements break out between teams over some aspect of technical design or functionality, all hell breaks loose in the cube farm as people fight to defend their turf and force their opinions onto the organization.

In the happy dream Agile organization, a project would go kind of like this: business leadership decides they need a new sales application because their old application is slow and built on obsolete technology. They get a couple of Agile teams together and tell them “We need a new sales application. It should be faster, easier to use, and scalable. Here are some actual sales people who sell our actual stuff; they’re going to be your stakeholders. Let’s see what we can get done in 4 months. Go!”

Here’s what really happens: business leadership calls a manager into the room and says “We need a new sales application. It has to have these 30 features, work on a laptop or a phone, and be able to process cash or credit sales. You have 6 months and two teams, but you still have to support the existing system. Jan the sales manager can answer questions for you, but you can’t spend time with actual sales people because we can’t afford to take them off of their accounts. If you don’t get this done, we’ll probably fire you. Go!”

Why, when we know that the first approach works so well, is it always the second that happens? Are people really just not smart enough to figure out Agile? Why can American management not relinquish control over their employees and let them be the awesome, creative professionals that they hired? I would argue that without a hierarchical structure of power and control, most Americans are deeply uncomfortable. Even entrepreneurs who jump ship to start their own company are motivated by the desire to shortcut to the top of the hierarchy and be their own boss much more than by the desire to create a really amazing new product or create an empowering company culture. As soon as their new company grows a little, the same power structures are re-created. Ping pong tables and concrete floors are just window dressing for the same old game. Which is probably why their job postings are almost identical.

I wonder if a cooperative would be able to master Agile. Or an all-woman company? Not a lot of either to study, in technology or any other industry. That’s another topic to explore on another day.