Ep. 140: Hybrid Agile

In this episode, Peter Maddison and David Sharrock tackle the often polarizing topic of "hybrid" agile approaches.
They break down why mindlessly blending practices like waterfall and agile is rarely the solution, as it creates an unsatisfactory middle ground that fails to maximize either approach's strengths. Instead, they suggest that organizations should aim to comprehensively understand the problems they're solving, and then purposefully apply the methodology best suited for that context - whether it's agile, waterfall, lean, or something else entirely.

This week´s takeaways:

• Avoid defaulting to a watered-down "hybrid" methodology that dilutes best practices.
• Deeply analyze problems to determine the optimal approach - don't blindly apply one-size-fits-all.
• Promote peer-to-peer cooperation and mutual understanding across boundaries between different practices rather than hierarchical control.
• Strive for an integrated enterprise where distinct methodologies complement each other fluidly.

We love to hear your feedback! If you have questions or would like to suggest a topic please contact us at feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com.

Chapters

• 0:04 Hybrid Agile Approaches
• 7:04 Navigating Hybrid Delivery Methods in Organizations
• 14:54 Navigating Organizational Dynamics in Agile

Transcript

Peter: 0:04

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello Dave, how are you doing today?

Dave: 0:15

I'm doing very well. I notice you're standing up and I'm sitting down, so I'll bring the conversation down and I'll let you bring the energy to the conversation.

Peter: 0:22

I'll make up for last time, where I was half asleep. What are we up to today? We're going to talk about hybrids, which kind of sounds like we're taking plants and slicing them up into different pieces. I was just going to say we're not really talking about hybrids.

Dave: 0:36

We're going to talk about why hybrids isn't what you're looking for. But, anyway, let's see where it goes. So what you're saying hybrid agile approach is when and where?

Peter: 0:43

Yeah, when and where? Well, preferably never and nowhere. But there's a little bit more complexity to this than that. Right, it's never as cut and dried as that, and I mean part of the reason is across a large organization, for example. Then having different delivery options does make sense. Some things do actually work better in a waterfall model. If you understand what needs to happen in what particular order and you have heavy dependencies between things and at the point of delivery it's very, very expensive to not plan all of that stuff up front Then a waterfall model of understanding things before you flip the switch is very valuable.

Dave: 1:26

I like what John Carter wrote about in his book Accelerate around this one. This idea of a dual system, dual model system, where you've got waterfall stuff where waterfall makes sense and you've got agile stuff where agile makes sense and the two need to play nice with one another and work together. But the reality is it's not A or B, it's A and B and you're choosing A or B or C, b, whatever it might be based on the problem at hand.

Peter: 1:54

Yeah, where it doesn't work, I think, is where we see, oh, a whole. We're going to create our business requirements document. We're going to define everything that needs to be done first before we take any steps. We're going to define everything that needs to be done first before we take any steps. We're going to wait nine months before actually starting on any of the work. We're then going to give approval and we're going to hand it to the Agile team, and the Agile team is then going to execute using Agile, even though everything's already been defined and there isn't anything for them to go on, because you have to do it this way now, and so it's that, that sort of hybrid where it's like all of the heavy up front planning, the supposedly agile bit in the middle and and then all of the delivery at the end I was just thinking.

Dave: 2:38

It sounds to me like railroad agile. What I'm thinking is you lay the railroad and then you go. You can go anywhere you want, as long as you follow the railroad. You're really there is no agility in that side of it and just to one of the things that I think becomes we need to. It isn't about finger pointing or getting caught out with the terminology. I think the reality is that, as organizations are seeing the maturity of agile delivery, they're seeing you know really good strong agile delivery.

Dave: 3:06

Hopefully, in places in their organization They've also got a good history of really strong other delivery whatever was there before, different contexts and so on. And then there's this sort of feeling that you should mix these two together or these multiple systems together, and that's one reason why I call out John Coddars' work, because his response is you don't mix them, you need both of them. And the metaphor that I have going on in the back of my head when I think about this is languages. Just because I have one set of terminology, let's call it the French language in one place and I have the Spanish language in another place, I don't want necessarily to bring the Spanish and the French language together and try and create some hybrid language. I want to use French when I'm in France and I want to use Spanish when I'm in Spain, but I'm not trying to seek some middle-of-the-road language. That doesn't make any sense necessarily.

Peter: 4:03

You mean Esperanto? Yes, I think so, but I think it's more than just French and Spanish at that point.

Dave: 4:11

You're not looking for that hybrid methodology there isn't one, there's really good methodologies that work in really good contexts over here. There's really good methodologies that work in great contexts, in certain contexts over here, and they have different contexts, so let's keep them separate.

Peter: 4:28

Yeah, apply the right way of doing things to the right problems. Now that, of course, brings up the question around how do you identify what type of problem you have, and so what methodology you should apply to it, and then how do you decide which way to go?

Dave: 4:47

But having different tools in your toolbox, I think, is the valuable part, well, and I think it's a Thomas Klein model for conflict, but where the compromise is like the worst or not the worst, but not a very good way of reaching agreement, that we should be collaborating. One of the things that I'm thinking of is part of this conversation around hybrid. That's sort of a compromise way of solving the problem.

Peter: 5:12

We're going to take a little bit of your methodology and a little bit of my methodology.

Dave: 5:16

You'll be happy because your methodology is being used. I'll be happy because my methodology is being used, but it's a compromise and it's suboptimal for where we want to go and what we're actually looking for is let's collaborate, let's figure out what problems your methodology is hyper excellent at delivering and what problems my methodology is hyper excellent at delivering, and let's break this down into how do we solve. Which problem is which?

Peter: 5:41

Yeah, and having the ability to do both in an organization and understand and look at and adapt as you need to, I think, is a critical part. And there's even better if the organization is open and aware enough to be able to say well, actually we probably need to switch tracks at this point, this isn't the right way to go about doing this, but that that's something that's difficult to do in any organization, because human behavior is quite often naturally that once I've started in the direction, it can be hard to change because you've got momentum.

Dave: 6:18

Well, absolutely, and you know all the biases that come with it, the IKEA bias and everything else we've emotionally invested in a particular route. It's difficult to get up and change particular route. It's difficult to get up and change a leadership problem, right? That's something that all organizations need to be stronger at, because the reality is we should be changing direction and pivoting more frequently than we have in the past.

Peter: 6:40

Yeah, and and this is that that interesting balance, right? It's like you don't want to be questioning everything all of the time. You want to be, but you do want to have the ability to question and have the conversation and say, okay, like, is this serving us, is this taking us in the right direction? How do we know? What are we like? What could we do differently? It's like, are we achieving what we're expecting to?

Dave: 7:01

and it brings us to a really interesting bit about. I think there's two things that jump out. One is there will be a boundary or a border, where you're working in one way of working and there's a boundary, a handoff, to working in a different way of working, and those, I would say, until recently, have been somewhat hierarchical. Whichever of those ways of working has more longevity, power, authority in the organization tends to hold sway.

Peter: 7:29

Whereas actually what you're wanting.

Dave: 7:30

There is much more of a peer-to-peer. How do we? Smoothly move backwards and forwards, some sort of seamless or at least I don't think it's ever going to be frictionless because fundamentally they have different mindsets or approaches to solving problems and tracking things and planning and all the rest of it. But it's something where there's a handoff that is bi-directional and as much as possible peer-to-peer.

Peter: 7:53

Yeah, and I think you're right, especially as you go up in an organization thinking about how do I execute on this strategy. I've got a direction I want to go in. I can see these business challenges. I want focus within the organization to go in this direction. A lot of things have to be true. To make that happen, I need work that I can align to that strategy and that needs to cascade through the organization. Now my delivery against that could be done in different ways in different parts of the organization, depending on what's most appropriate and the types of things that I'm delivering. And that's where you run into these kind of these friction points, because very often that longer term thinking and you've got a need for information at the top there that may not necessarily get provided in the way that's being expected in other parts of the organization. And then expectation of how decisions are made, some of which comes from the leadership piece at the top, with a misunderstanding of what you can know about your organization, which drives interesting conversations.

Dave: 8:59

So now how about, if that's, we've got a kind of good understanding of what that perspective is in terms of the hybrid delivery and moving away from it? There are many scenarios where organizations are not comfortable committing to one delivery framework over another. Clearly they're trying to address it with hybrid.

Peter: 9:21

What would you?

Dave: 9:22

advise those organizations to do.

Peter: 9:25

Well, it's one of those things. Right, if your organization is saying, how do we organize ourselves around the work that we need to get done, there needs to be an understanding well, what is it you're trying to get done? Because then you can decide what is the best way to go about solving some of those problems like how do I organize my plant? How do I identify where the bottlenecks in the plant are? How do I start to apply practices and remove waste from the system? Applying lean practices to that is that's a natural direction to go in to manage that type of delivery system, because it was designed there and it fits there and it works very, very well in that environment. So the applying it to that type of problem set makes sense.

Peter: 10:09

If you're then looking at okay, well, now I've got these things I'm managing in that plant, but I need to start to think about how do I tie that into my digital systems, because the products I'm selling need to be.

Peter: 10:20

I'm going to create artwork for the things I'm doing and I need to tie that into those digital systems. Now I've got potentially a world and especially if I'm coming from that and I've never done this before where I'm going to have to learn and I'm going to have to experiment, but I'm also going to have to be much more flexible in how I interact with the system. So there, an agile approach might be a more appropriate way to handle that digital part of your environment. And then, if I'm looking oh well, I've got to replace all the machinery I might need to think about how do I plan that out and deliver it. So then, a waterfall approach might be a good approach to bring in there. So when we start to think about that holistically, it's more about like, how do I see, what is the problem I'm trying to solve and how do I apply?

Dave: 11:05

it the right way. I think it really highlights, as you're describing that, Peter, that the need for specialists in more than one area. So in the example that you're using, you need somebody who understands lean and manufacturing and where that's going, and the bridge person who can then also say this isn't going to work as we move into the digital domain.

Peter: 11:28

We're going to need a different mindset.

Dave: 11:30

So I'm thinking of all of those PMP, agile coaches, if you like, but there are all of those individuals that have worked in multiple ways of working, multiple frameworks, like you know excellent project management, program delivery, and then, on the same side, they also have excellent agile delivery. Those are the individuals who are in demand demand because they now are fluent in multiple different ways of work. Would that be a fair reading of that?

Peter: 11:53

Yes, I would say so, and it's interesting as well looking at scale of portfolios across programs versus projects, versus thinking about how these different pieces interact and what sort of things you're looking at, and the complexity is very different at those different levels and different scales when you start to roll this out.

Dave: 12:17

I think it really brings. I just keep coming back to the peer-to-peer relationship there has to be. I can now imagine having that kind of cross-functional team where you've got different specialists and different ways of working coming together trying to say you know?

Dave: 12:33

I don't want my way of working to be used everywhere. I want my way of working to maximize the outcomes for the organization, the experience that I have and what I can bring to the table. So I'm going to bring other people to the table at different points, just like any cross-functional team working towards an outcome.

Peter: 12:49

Yeah, so how would you sum this up in three points for our listeners?

Dave: 12:55

I love the way you definitely I knew I should have been standing during this conversation Okay, well, here's one thing that's straight. I think both of us dived in immediately and said don't do hybrid. And I think there's a lot being written and there's a lot of ideas and direction out there that talks about hybrid. And we use that example of it being a compromise and compromise not being the best outcome for that way of working about that organization, best outcome for that way of working about that organization. So I think if we view hybrid as the least useful of the ways forward, then I think it just shifts the attention to, okay, a couple of things. One is how do we identify the problem space to identify the best methodology, the best thing that we can use to get that delivered? Number one and number two, recognizing that we're going to have dual systems, how do we make sure that interaction between those systems is a peer-to-peer? You know, not, while it can't be frictionless, being as low cost and straightforward to go backwards and forwards from one to the other as possible.

Peter: 14:00

Yeah, I think that's a good summary. I think the other piece that we I don't know if we touched on it, but the reason that you start to see that friction between them often comes from that misalignment expectations expectations of when things are going to happen and what it's going to take to get those things to happen. Very often there's that misalignment in expectations, especially if you've got, for example, a corporate EPMO and you've got a division that's operating using agile practices and they're coming in and saying, well, I want to know what percentage BERT is spending on this and you're like, well, we don't operate like that, yeah yeah, I think, and what I'm beginning to see, the best organizations are the ones where this I keep coming back to the peer-to-peer, but it isn't a hierarchical.

Dave: 14:54

We've been here longer. Therefore, you have to do what we say. It's exactly the way you put it, which is that's not how we operate. Let's talk about how we operate. Let's talk about how we operate and see what you need, and let me learn about how you're operating and see what we need and let's see how we can get that working smoothly, exactly well, well, thank you, dave.

Peter: 15:10

I think that was a good conversation, so, uh, I look forward to the next one. Till next time, thanks again. You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile the podcast where your hosts Peter Maddison and David Sharrock focus on the art and science of digital agile and DevOps at scale.