Agile is incomplete. We need to augment it to create the “whole product”. But what is it?
There are many ideas: transformation approach, culture, leadership, but something is still missing.
Whole Agile
Whole Agile is a holistic way to see the functioning of the entire organization.
In order to fully unleash the potential of workers we need to augment Agile with Valuing People and rewire the Organizational Model.
Valuing People is about building a place where the whole person is welcome so they are fully engaged in work. A place where there is safety, trust and authentic connection.
Organizational Model refers to the approaches we use to run organizations: organizational structure, planning & control, roles & titles, compensation, performance management, information access, leadership and power. These need to shift for us to reinvent our organizations to unleash people’s capabilities.
This is essentially what I have been doing the last few years. Now I have a good name for it. I will be writing more about Whole Agile in the coming weeks but in the meantime, here is a video summary and slides.
Video Summary
Slides
Why “Whole Agile”?
An obvious question is: Why do we need something more than Agile? Why make up a new name?
One answer is that Agile is great at a team level but provides no guidance at an organizational level. We need to replace burdensome organizational processes and with lightweight ones that foster self-organization and engagement.
The most important reason for selecting a name is that we want to create a movement within the Agile community. Not everyone will be interested in building whole organizations and that’s OK.
Here are some alternative names:
- Holistic Agile
- Conscious Agile
- Evolve Agile
- Beyond Agile
- AgileAsItWasMeantToBe
Online survey results with comments on names. You can add to the survey as well.
Acknowledgements
First, I would like to thank my dear friend and colleague Olaf Lewitz who has been deeply involved in developing this. Other key contributors include: Melanie Meinen and Laura Powers. Thanks also to those who responded to my online survey: Clint, Jeff K, Fanny, Olivier Gourment, Shyam Kumar, Geir, Peter Trudelle, Frank Olsen, Alistair McKinnell, Justin Reyna.
