This document discusses why Agile adoptions often fail in organizations. It suggests that failure is usually due to cultural and political issues, not technical problems. Specifically, it notes that changing behaviors only works if based on the existing culture. It also discusses the concept of "Dark Scrum" where management does not truly learn Agile principles and reverts to command-and-control styles that undermine Agile teams. The document emphasizes that persuading others and changing the organizational culture is needed for successful Agile transformation, otherwise Agile will fade away as just another management fad.

1. Your Agile
Adoption is
Going to Fail
Michele Sliger
@michelesliger

2. Today’s talk will consist of….
• 30 minute company presentation
• Couple of jokes about waterfall
• Couple of scaling jokes
• Why I am so awesome
• Absolutely no Q&A time*
Thanks to Andreas Schliep for this!
* This one is probably true.

4. 2016

5. 2016

6. Up 7%
Up 4%
New!
2018

7. 2016
only

8. Culture … is singularly persistent …
In fact, changing behavior works
only if it is based on the existing
‘culture’.
- Peter Drucker

9. INSULAR CULTURE

10. By Mike
Hendricks & Matt
Campbell
Dec. 8-10, 2016

16. Despite Safety Training, Behaviors
Did Not Change Due To…
• Tradition
• Expectations: internal culture and society
• Safety efforts sabotaged at the firehouse level
• Disbelief
“…it takes a death in the family before a
fire department changes its approach.”

17. Nothing is
what it
seems. The
dismal truth
is so hard to
face. – Black
Metal Cats on
Twitter @evilbmcats

20. Female
Personas
You’ve
earned a
badge!
Just a
little
more!
You’re
LOSING
money
Forward
Dispatch

24. If leadership discovers that Scrum
appears not to work very well —
and done poorly [Dark Scrum] it
really doesn’t work very well —
they are likely to stop supporting it
and the whole thing goes away as
just another management fad.
- Ron Jeffries

30. CAL

32. While 95% of the respondents said
their organizations practice agile,
only 1% of the 3,880 respondents
said that their agile
implementation was unsuccessful.

34. Sources
• The 10th Annual State of Agile Report by
VersionOne (2016) and 12th Annual (2018)
• http://projects.kansascity.com/2016/
firefighters/
• http://blog.dilbert.com/post/127479255236/
trump-vs-bush-persuasion-wars (from the blog
post “The Trump Master Persuader Index and
Reading List,” Scott Adams)

35. Recommended
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
And if that book is too daunting, try:
• The Debunking Handbook by John Cook and
Stephan Lewandowsky (free!)
And if you’re more of a podcast person, try:
• FrameLab – Dr. George Lakoff
• You Are Not So Smart (especially the Backfire
Effect shows) – David McRaney

36. LEARN TO PERSUADE
OR AGILE WILL FADE

37. If your organization
doesn’t like truth and
honesty it probably
won’t like agile.
- Henrik Kniberg

38. Agile Transformation is a lot
like Karate Kid, except while
you’re painting the fence
Miagi is fired & you never
learn why you’re painting.
- David Bland

39. As per usual, it’s not a
design problem as much as
it is a power struggle.
- Alan Cooper

40. No matter how bad the
current situation is it
benefits someone(s).
- Esther Derby

41. LEARN TO PERSUADE
OR AGILE WILL FADE

42. The workers are
handicapped by the system,
and the system belongs to
the management.
- W. Edwards Deming

43. The power holders may be new to Scrum,
but they know a lot about how to handle
this problem. So every two weeks they
show up and tell these programmers what
they have to build. Oh, those programmers
will push back. They are lazy, and
recalcitrant. But the power holders keep
the pressure on, because that’s how you
manage people. So they tell the team what
to do and they’d better do it…
- Ron Jeffries, Dark Scrum

44. In Dark Scrum, management
doesn’t ever really learn
what it’s all about.
- Ron Jeffries

45. If leadership discovers that Scrum
appears not to work very well —
and done poorly [Dark Scrum] it
really doesn’t work very well —
they are likely to stop supporting it
and the whole thing goes away as
just another management fad.
- Ron Jeffries

46. LEARN TO PERSUADE
OR AGILE WILL FADE

47. We write specifications to
hide the fact that people
don’t really work together.
- Sami Lilja

48. It wasn’t enough to have Agile
teams…if the rest of the
organization was being run as a
top-down bureaucracy…[that
system] undermined, and if
continued, eventually killed Agile
teams.
- Steve Denning

49. A mix of Agile and
bureaucracy is unstable. One
or the other will take over.
- Steve Denning

50. Things that will slow you
down: bureaucracy that
masquerades as governance.
- Rachel Laycock

51. LEARN TO PERSUADE
OR AGILE WILL FADE

52. It’s no exaggeration to say that
minds can be changed. Behaviour
can be predicted and controlled. I
find it incredibly scary.
- Prof. Jonathan Rust

53. We want to believe that we are
thinking, rational people and on
occasion tangle with emotion, flick
it out of the way, and go back to
thinking. That is not the truth. The
truth is we are emotional beings
who on occasion think.
- Brene Brown

54. Emotion is contagious.
- Malcolm Gladwell

55. The gorilla study illustrates two
important facts about our minds:
we can be blind to the obvious,
and we are also blind to our
blindness.
- Daniel Kahneman