Stages of Agile Maturity
Introduction
There are distinct sets of behaviours that strengthen as a team becomes more agile. While their growth in these behaviours is not linear, it does follow a predictable pattern of development and team evolution.
Stage One: EFFICIENT
Agile IQ: 0-48
Delivery depends on talented people, but because skills are embedded in specific individuals, delivery isn’t yet scalable and success isn’t repeatable. A team at this stage of its agile journey is typically either just learning how to be agile, or hasn’t firmly committed to changing the way that they work. Choosing a framework and just doing the basics right is key to evolving to the next level.
Archetypal behaviours:
- Management direction and task delegation.
- Ad-hoc or waterfall practices.
- Optimisation for ultilisation.
Focus for growth:
- Managers must establish and promote guardrails for self-organisation.
- Transparency of work.
Stage Two: Adaptable
Agile IQ: 49-92
Teams at this level of their learning journey are focused on mastering the basics. Combined with self-organisation, these two key areas are vital to seeing improved throughput, lower costs and reduced delivery risk.
Archetypal behaviours:
- Focus on getting the basics of agile right.
- Alignment to industry standard roles and practices.
- Keeping things simple (and not overcomplicating agile practices).
Focus for growth:
- Master the basics.
- Self-organisation.
- Delivery within guardrails.
- Consistency of agile practice and roles across teams, this includes tool usage.
- Connecting team backlogs to the organisation.
Stage Three: Responsive
Agile IQ: 93-130
Teams at this level of maturity should start showing higher levels of productivity, transparency and quality. They typically advance to even higher levels of effectiveness when they learning advanced patterns and practices such as Design Thinking, DevOps, and Lean UX.
Predictability of quality and delivery will improve when the team and its Product Owner shift focus to creating a sustainable pace. Sustainable pace improves predictability and reduces team burn-out and fatigue. Encourage the team to find its rhythm and establish a state of flow supported by metrics.
Archetypal behaviours:
- Delivery with empiricism ensures repeatability and scalability.
- Customer-first mindset.
- Delivery of value over “requirements”.
Focus for growth:
- Addition of advanced practices such as Design Thinking, DevOps, Kanban, Lean UX.
- Moving to agile product management from agile “project” management.
Stage Four: REsilient
Agile IQ: 131-165
Stage Four teams are high performers. They should regularly show consistent high throughput at a high level of quality and sustainable pace. It shouldn’t be unusual for these teams to double their throughput when the type of work is consistent over a few months.
Archetypal behaviours:
- Optimising delivery through Lean practices.
- Agile OKRs and Evidence Based Management.
Focus for growth:
- Flow metrics.
- Understanding, identifying and removing waste.
- Optimising throughput and quality.
Stage Five: Composable
Agile IQ: 166+
Stage Five teams are agile leaders. They look beyond their own team to support others to be agile and contribute to the organisation’s ways of working to improve delivery and quality. They lead by example.
Archetypal behaviours:
- Investment in continuous improvement.
- Systems Thinking.
- Leading by example.
- Helping other teams learn evolve and grow.
Focus for growth:
- Agile leadership.
Getting faster to market with agile
How do you get faster to market?
Agile has a reputation for helping speed up delivery. How do you do twice as much in half the time without sacrificing quality?
Building Agile Behaviours and Mindset
Four key behaviours are paramount to building an agile enterprise: self organisation, agile values, continuous learning culture, and sprinting.
As these behaviours become stronger, enterprise agile outcomes grow, including lower costs and faster time to deliver, while maintaining high quality standards.
Avoiding common mistakes with agile roles
Agile roles are distinct from project management roles and responsibilities. They focus on value, long-lived teams, and specialist roles like Scrum Masters to help build effective agile teams.
Creating guardrails for self-management
Agile roles are distinct from project management roles and responsibilities. They focus on value, long-lived teams, and specialist roles like Scrum Masters to help build effective agile teams.
