Why We Should Rethink Scaling Agile in Enterprises

The million-dollar question many organizations face right now is: How can we scale our agile (often Scrum) operation? They want to keep the benefits that are so obvious when they started with Scrum. Benefits like increased feedback loops, the ability to pivot on opportunities, and rapid delivery of value. These are all immediately apparent, but very hard to scale.

First, let’s take a look at why these benefits are so rapidly reaped.

The Scrum ceremonies -daily standup, planning, review, and retrospective- are all geared towards three concepts: transparency, inspection, and adaption. When the scrum team, and by extension the organization, is tuned to be transparent and gets used to inspecting and adapting frequently, it’s no wonder it’s becoming more agile. Sprinkle in some Scrum Values as a compass for the organization to reflect on itself and you got yourself a wonderful base for agile value delivery.

This sounds easy, but this process can take years. Most of the time, it’s a radical shift in thought and culture. It breaks conventional organizational models by having the operation be accountable and responsible for the value chain. This can lead to severe clashes between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘progressives’. Anyway, once you’re through that phase, most organizations can see that the trade-off is worth it…