Why Constructive Agility® Works
The principles of Agile 2 work together to create a healthy and agile ecosystem for accomplishing great things rapidly and with assurance.
Merely defining processes is not sufficient. Processes rely on people, and people behave according to the knowledge they have and the behavioral norms that they embrace, and behavioral norms are strongly influenced by organizational culture. All these elements need to be aligned and agility-promoting.
Behavioral Model - High Level
Notice that there are no process flows in this diagram. You need process flows, but process flows are not the root of agility. The root of agility is what Spotify call’s “controlled chaos”, plus a Constructive organizational culture. We will explain these below.
If you want to see the evidence that what we say is true, check it out here!
A More In-Depth View
The above simplified view can be expanded as in the figure below, so that we can see all the specific elements. Each of the four tiers depends on the tier to its left.
Behavioral Model - Detailed
To create a viable product, or deliver a viable solution, one must make good decisions throughout the flow from idea through implementation. That is the cornerstone of any endeavor. However, to be able to make good decisions, many conditions must be in place.
Correct decisions are made more likely by the practice of performing real world experiments—that is, testing the market, continually and thoughtfully. Experiments inform one on the realities of the market: the problem or opportunity that one is tackling. Experiments are help to eliminate erroneous assumptions or errors in judgment, thereby enabling good decisions.
Good decisions are also enabled by effective use of people, through maximizing their creative abilities and through their collaborative sharing of ideas and perspectives. It is also maximized through practices that embrace that people inhabit a spectrum with regard to what we often think of as introversion and extroversion, and more generally neurodiversity (ref, ref). In addition, both collaboration and focus are equally important for work on complex things.
In turn, effective use of people is enabled through people having (1) the required knowledge of the domains that apply to the product or problem domain, (2) knowledge of the technologies for implementation, and (3) knowledge of methods for delivery, including flow-oriented methods (e.g., DevOps, Kanban, Lean, and Theory of Constraints).
Effective use of people is also maximized through a constructive and generative culture [ref,ref], including (4) cooperative, inclusive, dialectic, and supportive behavioral norms, and (5) positive, proactive, inquisitive, and supportive forms of leadership.
The last item is actually key: agility rests on rapidly identifying cross-cutting issues as they arise, marshaling the optimal people to resolve the issue, stimulating thoughtful discussions to quickly and correctly resolve the issue, and then putting the decision into motion. The leadership styles needed to achieve that include all four of the modes defined by Path-Goal leadership theory. And the leadership can come from team members or designated leaders—all that matters is that leadership is occurring. A Constructive culture is also required, because without it, people will not have honest good-faith discussions about the issue, and might even conceal issues.
Even though good leadership and a Constructive culture are key, they are not sufficient: people need to know behavior patterns that enable agility: the Flow methods and other patterns that we mentioned above; so learning these ways of thinking is essential. And once these things are in place, people will create the processes they need.
It all matters. Merely focusing on process is getting it backwards: agile processes result from culture, leadership, and knowledge. There is no shortcut.