One of the most fascinating aspects of the poker game is the “All In” call. This is when a player bets all of the rest of their chips to force another player to call or to push them out of the play. Usually this call is made when a player is reduced to only a small fraction of the chips on the table and needs to either make a bold move to stay in the game or slowly die out. Unfortunately, more often than not (especially when the table is still full) it is a feeble attempt with an off-suit King high hand and they go out in flames because everyone else knows its their only play.
However, once in awhile, you see an “All In” move from someone in a more powerful chip position. This action usually makes everyone else at the table quiver and question their hand. This is the move I love to see. It entails bold risk, and usually reaps a large reward.
Competing in business can be compared to a poker tournament. Not everyone has the same amount of chips at the table, people come and go from your table, but when they are seated at your table, they are your direct competitors. Most companies, like most players, play safe with their hands. They will bet their good hands, bluff a few bad hands and usually make incremental progress or regressions against their competition. Rarely, however, do you see larger companies go “All In” unless it is their only option left.
Enterprise Agile Transitions typically follow the same rules as all other business or organizational changes – they are made incrementally and safely. Possibly starting with a fesability study, testing the process in one or more pilots, and then (if found successful) rolling it out systematically to the rest of the organization. This approach has been well documented through a collaboration by Ken Schwaber and Rally Software in their whitepaper A CIO’s Playbook for Adopting the Scrum Method of Achieving Software Agility and I know has been used successfully to transition larger organizations toward agility. I have helped companies follow these plays myself. It is similar to the safe and consistent play of most poker players, maybe making or losing progress slowly, but assuring a safe environment to not lose everything, but eventually increase your chances against your competition.
I have had the pleasure over the past 4 months of working with a company that took a different approach. They played their agile transition hand “All In”. This is not a small shop with over 200 in the development organization. And unlike most companies making this decision as one of their last efforts to stay in the game, this company was at the top of their game – although they recognized that their incremental improvements were not dramatically differentiating and separating them from their competition. They recognized a very good hand had been dealt in their evaluation of an agile transition. They foresaw the ability to deliver more value to their customers, more frequently and with higher quality.
Now the decision to go “All In” is never an easy one, especially for a company. There were many within this organization that suggested the typical, and safer, approach. However, leadership within the company evaluated the competition’s position, knew his own position, and made the difficult decision to move “All In”. In the past 6 months since that decision was made, this company has produced two major releases – compared with one over the previous year. Key executives within the company have visibility into the product development and release status that they have never had access to before. A maniacal focus on product quality and getting features done in short iterations is keeping the product at a ship-readiness level as never before. In fact, with both core and off-product releases included, they are on track from shipping product every month this year. They are showing signs of pushing ahead of the competition in major strides.
To say that the agile transition has been easy or smooth would be a lie. All agile transitions, and every major organizational change for that matter, are hard and usually messy. Roles and responsibilities change and conflict. Cleaning up waste from old ways of developing software require extra work. Environments and automation require major investment. Old habits must be broken and new ones formed. All of this occurs whether it is done in a systematic approach or as in this case, “All In”. The difference, in this case, is that they are all in it together. They provided the right investment in training and coaching. They empowered people to try it out, allowed them to fail and praised their honesty and feedback. The created a transition team to facilitate the move. And they are learning from each other and executing to a single company heartbeat.
Moving “All In” is not an approach to take lightly and one that should be evaluated to match the culture of the organization. However, after assisting companies playing their agile hands in both ways, I would give an “All In” move serious consideration. Please share your own poker stories…