Thank you. If you're ever a conference speaker and you get put in the governance slot, it's usually a sign that the conference organizers don't like you very much. But anyway, I don’t know if you heard, but this morning Disney released the new trailer for the upcoming Star Wars movie, Episode Eight. So, I had this moral dilemma—do I speak about governance, or do I speak about Star Wars? If you can roll the trailer…
Pretty cool, right? Now, for the Trump supporters among us—bigly video, fake news, failing New York Times. Oh, cheap shots? Get used to them if you’ve never heard me speak before.
Setting Up for Success
What I’d like to do today is set our group up for success and talk about some governance principles. How do you govern in an Agile or Lean manner? Let’s work through this. I'm a fact-based discussion kind of guy, so I’d like to start with some industry data.
Many of you might know me as one of those annoying people who run industry surveys and studies, and I tend to share all the data completely. What I’m about to show you will be shared sometime next week. We literally just stopped this survey a couple of days ago, and it was focused on governance.
Agile vs. Traditional Governance
One of the key questions we asked was: How are your Agile teams being governed? Is your organization taking a mostly Agile approach to governance, or is it using a traditional approach?
The challenge we see in large organizations—something we’ve heard from other speakers—is that control people, senior management, often struggle with the Agile and Lean messages. There’s this belief that “Agile is just another way of working,” and that governance can continue as usual. That’s completely false.
What we found in our study—again, I’ll share all the source data so you don’t need to trust me—was that Agile teams governed in a traditional way were being impeded. Governance efforts were perceived as heavyweight, decreasing productivity, reducing quality, wasting money, and demoralizing teams. These efforts weren’t focused on business value but on paperwork, quality gates, and bureaucracy.
On the other hand, organizations that governed their Agile teams in an Agile manner found governance to be lightweight and beneficial. It improved quality, ensured money was spent wisely, slightly improved morale (or at least didn’t decrease it, which is a win for governance), and focused on delivering business value.
So, my key message here: You need to govern Agile teams in an Agile manner. The control folks will have to change. Fair enough?
The Racing Car Analogy
How do we explain what’s happening in the Agile community? Agile originated from the Agile Manifesto, primarily in software development. Many organizations struggle with transformations because Agile software developers are focused on one thing—improving Agile teams. They are tuning their engines, making them faster and more efficient, but then dropping these awesome racing car engines into IT tractors.
Of course, we’re not winning the race. A Formula One race has never been won by a tractor.
To win, we don’t just need high-performing Agile teams—we need a high-performing IT department. But even then, having a racing car isn’t enough. Any idiot (including me) could buy a racing car tomorrow. But without a skilled driver, a pit crew, and a support team, we wouldn’t win the race.
So, we need an Agile or Lean enterprise, not just Agile software teams. We need the entire organization working in unison.
Coaching and Transformation
For Agile coaches and transformation leaders, we need to rethink things. We must look at the bigger picture.
We need:
- Agile Delivery: Agile software development that is disciplined, tailored, and provides teams with choices.
- An Agile IT Department: The entire IT function needs to work together seamlessly.
- A Lean Enterprise: A high-performing organization with proper governance and leadership.
As coaches, we must address all three levels simultaneously to succeed.
Key Governance Principles
1. Govern to Real Business Goals
Traditional governance often focuses on outdated metrics: staying on budget, meeting deadlines, following specs, and ensuring full staff utilization.
Instead, why not:
- Spend money wisely.
- Deliver solutions that meet real stakeholder needs.
- Focus on business value.
- Empower and motivate teams.
2. Teams Should Own Their Own Process
Teams should be allowed to choose their own process. But here’s the challenge—if teams don’t know their options, how can they make informed choices?
We need to make process decisions explicit, help teams understand trade-offs, and encourage thinking rather than blindly following coaches’ instructions.
3. Support Multiple Life Cycles
When you return to your organization, observe carefully. You’ll see different teams following different approaches:
- Scrum-like Agile teams
- Lean Kanban teams
- Continuous delivery teams
- Lean startup experimental teams
- Some teams still doing waterfall (very sad…)
Your organization must support diverse ways of working to remain efficient.
4. Optimize Flow, Not Artifact Creation
Too many governance processes focus on artifact creation—architecture reviews, requirements documents, project plans. Our study found that when Agile teams were forced to produce these artifacts, they often faked them—and governance never detected it.
So, if your governance strategy is based on artifact generation, you might not actually be governing anything.
5. Optimize the Whole
Lean teaches us to optimize the whole system, not just parts. Governance should be no different. We need to look beyond DevOps and focus on business agility.
Final Thoughts
The takeaway: You need to govern Agile teams in an Agile manner. If governance teams resist change, they risk becoming bureaucratic bottlenecks. And if Agile teams are forced to produce fake governance artifacts, then governance isn’t actually happening.
So, ask yourselves: are you helping, or are you just adding bureaucracy?
Thank you very much. Let’s continue with the next speaker.