Have you ever wondered whether agile is the right approach for you? How about Kanban, Scrum or even waterfall? With so many different disciplines available, it’s hard to know which one will be best for you.
In this episode of Destination Cloud, Alex Borland and Simon McGrath are joined by Andy Spence, Merapar’s Director of Agility and Transformation, and Helen Meek, coach, trainer, consultant and director at RippleRock. They discuss the questions you should ask yourself before jumping headfirst into any of these approaches, and why ultimately you need to build a model that best solves your own business challenges.
Inside the episode
Simon McGrath opens with a scenario: a customer with a new product due for a hard date, Easter or Thanksgiving 2023, wondering whether to go waterfall or agile. The guests turn the question around: where did the date come from, what kind of problem is it, and can the scope be sliced so value arrives sooner?
From there the talk moves from method to people. Andy Spence explains why empowerment has to be grown, not announced, and Helen Meek argues that Scrum, Kanban and SAFe are a toolbox rather than a choice. The last third is about transparency: why status reports can hide trouble, and why surfacing problems early only helps where people are not punished for them. At the close, Simon describes expecting waterfall versus agile and getting culture, leadership, empowerment and transparency.
Highlights
- 06:11 “There isn’t anything that it can’t be used for.” Helen Meek on agile, asked about a project with hard dates.
- 07:20 For predictable work, predictive practices work: “this is where waterfall earns its money.”
- 09:37 “Agile changed my life.” Helen Meek, after ten years as a project manager.
- 11:26 “You can’t just empower teams.” Andy Spence
- 19:37 “It’s called watermelon reporting. It’s green on the outside, but in the inside, it’s red.”
- 21:08 “Scrum will reveal your problems. It will not resolve them for you.”
Key questions answered
Waterfall or agile when the launch date is fixed?
Before starting, Helen Meek would ask where the fixed date came from, what happens if it is missed, whether delivery can be incremental, and how coachable the programme is. The answer that follows does not write waterfall off: predictable work suits predictive practices, while complex, uncertain work needs iteration. It warns against a giant upfront scope with fixed cost, scope and time, which tends to end in quality problems, and suggests slicing instead: a well-known grocery retailer entered Europe with a single payment function.
Why can’t leaders simply empower their teams?
In project management of old, says Andy Spence, everything rested on the project manager. Remove that layer and teams often do not want the empowerment at first, while managers and teams do not trust each other. Andy grows trust through Scrum, where each sprint is a two-week experiment: delegate a small chunk, learn if it fails, extend from there. Helen Meek, who once mapped CMMI onto Scrum, adds that agile can still meet reporting demands, but people need an environment where failure is safe, because they fear for their pay and their future.
Scrum, Kanban or SAFe?
Not mutually exclusive, says Helen Meek. Fourteen years ago Helen would have insisted on Scrum; today it is a matter of taking what helps from each. “What we don’t do is sell Scrum or Kanban,” Helen says: the job is to solve business and organisational problems. What organisations are after, in a word, is “nimble”: profitable, with happy customers and products in the market.
How do you track progress without Gantt charts and RAG status?
Keep them if they help you make decisions, the answer goes, but too often they become giant status updates that let everyone feel comfortable. A daily scrum that turns into a status meeting has the same problem: it should re-plan the next 24 hours. Problems surfacing early only helps where there is trust, because if teams do not see leadership behaving the same way, “they will smell a rat and run a mile.”
Where should an organisation start?
With education, says Helen Meek, and with knowing why you want to be more agile. “If you think that you’re going to be able to get it quicker and cheaper, then sadly, that may not be true.” Be patient, and start small: even a team still delivering in waterfall can add a daily get-together now.
Speakers
- Andy Spence, Director of Agility and Transformation, Merapar, heading its Agile Centre of Excellence
- Helen Meek, coach, trainer, consultant and director, RippleRock
- Alex Borland, VP Strategy & Business Development, Merapar (host)
- Simon McGrath, VP Strategy & Portfolio, Merapar (host)
