Stages of Agile Maturity

Delivery depends on talented people, but because skills are embedded on specific individuals, delivery isn’t 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 seen in this stage:

• Management direction and task delegation.
• Ad-hoc or waterfall practices.
• Optimisation for utilisation.

Focus for growth:

• Managers must establish and promote guardrails for self-organisation.
• Transparency of work.

What do avoid:

• Don’t mistake self-organising teams for autonomous teams. Set the minimum set of rules, practices and roles to work within and let the team manage themselves to deliver within those boundaries.