Surprise for the day: Agile at Scale and Agile in Science

November 5, 2019

I was walking through the Newark airport today. I looked on the book shelves, and there it was: HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2020.

I looked into it. There was the article that Jeff Sutherland co-wrote “Agile at Scale” along with two guys from Bain.

I recommend you read it, well, if. If you are a fairly good-sized company trying to adopt agile.

My experience suggests even small companies could benefit.

One of the ways is that you are (probably?) already violating some of the key ideas around agile.

And, at least for some of you, you are treating “agile” in a precious way. Agile and particularly Scrum were built to be robust and to help you solve real business problems. Scrum does NOT offer a panacea, but if applied aggressively, Scrum can help your Team become great.

And a company of great, or at least notably better, Teams is likely to be a great company.

***

Second find of the day.

So, I go to HBR after I realize that I have not bought that Sutherland article.

And the “cover” article at HBR.org is: “Why Science-Driven Companies Should Use Agile”. I found this interesting. Teams of scientists (eg, in Pharma) are using agile teams to develop new scientific discoveries. Maybe better to say to apply science in more specific customer applications (eg, a new drug).

Turns out they have the same problems as others: a need for speed, the use of teams, problems getting the silos to talk to each other, fail fast, 2 heads are better than one, getting fast feedback, etc, etc.

Surprising? Well, no, not really. Not really at all.