Are we killing the core of Agile in the pursuit of a recipe?

Agile has become a thing. Many companies decide to go the agile way. Some choose it for the right reasons, and some chose it because it has become as much of a buzzword as a way of working. Not many C-levels have been fired for choosing to go the agile way.

A magic silver bullet

Sadly, agile is sometimes seen as that magic silver bullet that will come into our company and “save us all”. Organizations I meet are sometimes looking for a solution. Something that can “fix” them. They are looking for that one recipe that will make all the bad stuff go away and make the future forever bright.

To implement agile in the organization, companies look to different agile frameworks and approaches to help them. Some frameworks tell you what to do and how to do it other try not to tell you what to do but instead tries to tell you how to act and behave.

On a scale from very prescriptive to very loose, you can find agile practices all over that range. But over the last years, we can see that the practices that are gaining the most traction tend to be more prescriptive.

But over the last years, we can see that the practices that are gaining the most traction tend to be more prescriptive.

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Scrum and SAFe are winning

If we look at the numbers from the State of Agile report, we can see that the Scrum framework has gained traction over the years. In the first version from 2007, 40% answered that Scrum was the framework they followed most closely. In 2022 that number is up to 87%. Compared to the other frameworks on that list (e.g., Kanban, ScrumBan, XP, and Lean Startup), Scrum is the most prescriptive of them.

If we look at the scaling frameworks, the story is much the same. SAFe is by far the most prescriptive of the scaling frameworks. And it has gone from 19% in 2014 to 53% in 2022.

The latter is an interesting case. If you just spend a few minutes searching the web, you will find that the vast majority of “famous agile people” are not fond of SAFe, to say the least. Some of them are also trying their best to highlight the major challenges SAFe brings to working agile. And you will have a REALLY hard time finding someone speaking fondly about SAFe (who is not a consultant trying to sell SAFe). But none the less SAFe is continuously gaining traction.

And you will have a REALLY hard time finding someone speaking fondly about SAFe (who is not a consultant trying to sell SAFe). But none the less SAFe is continuously gaining traction.

The quest for a recipe

So why are Scrum and SAFe winning the race for “Most chosen agile Framework”?

In my opinion it is because they both have one thing in common. They provide the organisation with a recipe. In Scrums case, it tells you that you need to figure out who should be your Scrum Master, your Product Owner and your Developers. Then it tells you exactly which events you should be doing, with whom and how.

SAFe goes several steps further on that scale. SAFe includes other frameworks to make sure that you are covered with some methodology no matter what challenge you might have.

Which brings me back to my previous statement that a lot of organizations are looking to “get fixed”. And to some extent, that is what Scrum tries to provide on a team level and what SAFe tries to provide on an organizational level.

Scrum and SAFe provide an easy to follow recipe that you can “just” go and do. Whereas some of the other frameworks and methodologies are more “you have to figure out what works for your company”.

I am not trying to make you chose something other than Scrum or SAFe. I just think it is interesting that, specifically, these two frameworks are gaining that much tracking. It could also just be that they have the largest marketing budget 😊

Have we failed?

I often experience that people make agile = Scrum and scaling agile = SAFe.

If that ends up being the result of agile, I personally think that we have failed. If we end up in a place where frameworks define agile, then we have failed to understand what agile is all about.

But on the other hand, I recognize that people and organisations are looking for recipes. Recipes feel safe (yes, the name SAFe is a marketing stroke of genius ). If you are unsure of how to progress it is nice to have something to look at, and just do what the recipe tells you to, so you do not totally screw up.

The challenge is that organisations just blindly follow the recipe and never figure out why they are doing it, and what the entire purpose is. Which leads to organisations that never gain the benefits of agile. We end up with organisations who just follow the motion, but do not know why they are doing it.

We must not forget that agile is about being brave and accepting that we cannot predict the future, and from there deciding on how we are going to work if we cannot predict the future. How can we do  experiments that brings us learning so that we can make better choices about the future direction? Ultimately, we want to create great products that we love, and our customers love.

And we must face the fact that we will never create something unique and awesome if we continue to follow a recipe.

And we must face the fact that we will never create something unique and awesome if we continue to follow a recipe.

We must be brave enough to add our own ingredients that fit with our products, our organisation, and the people in it. So be inspired by the recipes but have the courage to also make it your own while keeping the agile values at heart.