Why organizations are failing to be successful with Agile and AI

Most organizations don’t struggle with lack of practices, frameworks or tools. They struggle with lack of mindset and culture that relies too much on plans and is not compatible with nowadays complex and constantly changing world. They are still mentally in the previous century where we knew exactly what needs to be done and all what matters was how fast we can deliver that. They often have a lack of understanding of the fundamental difference between output and outcome. They are structured as machines, as manufacturing lines. And optimized for delivery. Output matters. Speed matters.

But in nowadays complex environment enhanced by AI, which can help you to create output super fast, it’s not about quicker delivery. You can have as many output as you want in almost no time. Delivery is not a bottleneck anymore. More than ever organizations need to change and adapt their structure to be more outcome oriented. They need to shift from just ‘doing’ the work with limited skills available and limited work mandate to ‘driving’ where you expand the skills and work mandate to be really end to end expanding and whole solution outcome oriented.

More than ever organizations need to reconnect to the purpose, to the impact they want to create in the world and re-focus from delivering more functionality to strategic thinking. To defining business oriented goals and measure if the functionality we are delivering is leading there. They need to shift from metrics focused on output like a velocity and burn-up charts to outcome oriented metrics like OKRs where you have a clearly defined business objective you need to achieve and set of key results with baselines, which can give you a sense if you’re moving towards achieving your goal or just making people busy delivering crap.

Scrum is designed that way. It never contained any estimation techniques. It never had a velocity in the framework, instead it was for defining clear outcome to be achieved every sprint – sprint goal, and clear measurable business outcomes to be achieved in several sprint timeframe – product goals.

So if you want to become ready for nowadays quick and dynamic world, if you really want to become ready for any AI and don’t just spend more money on delivering stuff that no one needs, you need to transform your organization first. You need to change your company culture. You need to change the people mindset. You need to become Agile/adaptive first, shift from output-oriented thinking to business outcome focus. It’s not a simple change. It never had been, but it’s highly rewarding. If you need some help, send us a message. For past twenty years, I’ve been helping organizations to be successful in nowadays world. There is no question if organizations need to change. The time is now.