Let's be real. We've all read the books about perfect value streams and continuous flow. We've heard the conference talks about ideal agile transformations. But the real world? It's messy.
Most organisations aren't born agile. They're complex ecosystems with established governance, budget cycles, and deeply ingrained ways of working. And that's okay.
My experience has taught me that more companies operate in traditional frameworks than not. This isn't a failure—it's just reality. If you're in a position to influence change, absolutely explore value stream alignment. But if you're not, or you need to get things done now, you need a different strategy.
Jonathan Smart talks about being "agile in the middle" – a powerful description of teams trapped between iterative development and heavyweight governance. Imagine software teams trying to innovate while surrounded by lengthy analysis phases and heavily gated production processes.
The key isn't to wage war against existing structures. It's to create translation mechanisms that help different parts of the organisation understand each other.
In one of my most successful programs, we faced a complex challenge: launching a technical product involving hardware, software, multi-channel sales, and significant media campaigns. Traditional program management met iterative software delivery. How did we make it work?
The typical scene: A program manager sees agile teams as non-committal, while the agile teams see management as rigidly controlling. Both perspectives have some truth to them.
We solved this through deliberate, collaborative framework design:
Regular release planning that provided sufficient detail for everyone
Transparent, real-time information sharing
Continuous replanning that actually increased management confidence
Creating a common language that bridged methodological differences
Traditional program management loves named resources (ahem, that’s people buddy) and fixed deliverables. Agile teams prefer flexibility and just-in-time allocation. This creates friction.
Imagine a program manager's confusion: "You can't tell me exactly who will work on what? And it might take 3-4 sprints? What kind of planning is this?"
The solution isn't to force one model onto another, but to create a collaborative approach that respects both perspectives.
Transformation isn't about wholesale replacement. It's about strategic adaptation:
Recognise existing organisational constraints
Build translation mechanisms between methodologies
Prioritise collaborative understanding
Maintain flexibility and continuous learning
Your goal isn't to revolutionise overnight. It’s primarily to deliver value to your customer and organisation. And that means trying to make meaningful progress while respecting the current ecosystem.
In our program, what started as mutual frustration transformed into genuine collaboration. The program manager's perception shifted from seeing agile teams as unreliable to viewing them as adaptive and responsive.
The result? A successful product launch with early risk identification and informed scope trade-offs.
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