How to Identify "Agile Masquerades"? What Alternatives Could We Offer Instead?

The session attendees will have the following three key learning outcomes/takeaways:

• The audience will walk away with better understanding of most commonly seen pitfalls and traps (experienced by others companies) that they could be also facing, when doing agile transformations “at scale”. The discussion will not be just about pitfalls, described in general terms. The audience will be presented with specific and vivid examples of anti-patterns/symptoms they have most likely seen but were not able to qualify as systemic symptoms. People will become increasingly aware of and less tolerant fake adoptions, agile masquerades/theaters. They will also understand potential negative downstream outcomes of agile “mask shows” on individuals (themselves) and whole organizations – something that is unlikely to be ignored.

• The audience will receive one additional but very important asset: ability to understand System dynamics and as well as develop interest in further experimenting with system modelling, when back at work.

• Certain types of individuals (organizational/agile coaches, scrum masters) will be able to leverage the received content to put to use immediately, by: (re)positioning themselves within employing companies/clients/prospects in a way that would add make them more valuable and respected.

Some of the most salient points that Gene plans to make:

• Are you relying on quality talent to assist you with your agile transformations?: a quick (~10 min) recap of Gene’s presentation in Phoenix, AZ about the most classic dysfunctions related to the coaching profession:

• Misunderstanding of agile coaching role – Why organizations get this part mostly wrong?
• Talent dilution, industry-wide – Why are there so many inexperienced agile coaches in the market?
• “Bad business“ – Why reliance on staffing firms and head-hunting agencies for agile talent procurement causes more harm than good?

• Fallacies of big solutions – Why Big Bangs and ‘all–at-once’ transformation attempts are ineffective?
• Centralized coaching towers – Why creating ‘Centers of Excellence’ and enforcing ‘best practices’ and ‘operational models’ leads to local optimization? Why placing such ‘org constructs’ inside ‘standard’ power structures (e.g. Architecture tower, PMO) further worsens the situation, while jeopardizing individual safety?
• Rebuilding vertical organizational towers horizontally – Why ‘flipping’ conventional functional areas of control (e.g. QA department, BA group, PMO) on their side and calling them ‘Communities of Practice (CoP)”/chapters/guilds, while preserving reporting lines and other conventional dynamics (e.g. still doing individual performance appraisals by community/chapter/guild, leads to negative outcomes) is the same, as “rearranging deck seats on Titanic”?

BIO

Gene Gendel is an experienced organizational design consultant, coach and trainer who spent 20 years of his career working, predominantly in NYC, with Fin-Tech, insurance, consulting and product companies. Gene has developed a huge network, of tens of thousands followers, many of whom will be attending the conference. Among other reasons, Gene’s working experience in NYC and his familiarity with local markets is the reason why his report at NYC-2020 gathering will be very relevant: there will be many local and global attendees that are aware of Gene’s work and would like to hear him summarize it. People will strongly benefit from Gene’s independent, holistic view on the industry and trends in the market place.

Gene will leverage the learning and feedback he received, after presenting on a relevant topic at SA Gathering in Austin of 2019: “How to Stop Deterioration of Agile Coaching Quality: Organizationally, Industrially?” http://www.keystepstosuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/sagsg-7.jpg
(Back then, his session attracted more attendees than the room capacity allowed)