The Problem of Management In Reaching Agility

(with apologies to Bertrand Russell..)

For a living, one of the main things I do is to advise and train technologists on how to deliver better – better systems, with better quality, better business value, better timeliness and predictability. I teach and coach lean-agile practices and patterns, and I know that they work.

But I’m wondering if I’m – we’re all – doing it wrong.

I’m at a conference with a bunch of people who do what I do, and what I’m hearing – over and over again – is that we’re having success… to a point.

And I was sitting in the sunshine outside and realized that what we’re doing is bolting a layer of lean-agile practices onto traditional hierarchical management structures.

It looks a little like this:

We’re lowering the friction of traditional organizations,

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