Agile Trends 2020: Individuals
Every year, we see all kinds of people and organizations from boundless industries and verticals post the top innovations in their specific areas of expertise. While I value these writings, they always seem to be focused on pushing a specific product line or driving people toward their services.
Individuals
Individuals are obviously the core of our organizations and communities. We will see changes in several key areas this year because the individuals and team members are on the front line of change. What is driving these changes? First, there is a stronger push and pull by senior leadership in agility. More and more CIOs, CTOs, SVPs, etc., are fully bought in and have done a better job building guiding coalitions at the C-level. This brings the need to push through other impediments and empower more agilists within the organization itself. Second, we have crossed the chasm in agile coaching meaning I think we are seeing some oversaturation of people who claim to be agile coaches. Third, people change. Sounds overly simplistic, but the fact is that most of the time organizations respond to people changing, not the other way around. That all being said, here we go on the top three changes coming to individuals in agility for 2020.
Diversity of Agile Coaches
What I don't mean by this is diversity by age, national origin, or the like, but rather a moving away from the "lone ranger" agile coach that is a know-all, be-all professional. Let's face it, we will be "eating our own cooking this year" as the landscape of organizations continues to grow in complexity and we as agile coaches have to focus in on areas of expertise. This will be a year where we will need to learn "mastery" and teamwork if we are going to succeed at moving the needle at our organizations and within our communities.
Continued growth and drive of agility through non-agile Coaches
This prediction might upend our community, but it needs to happen. We have not only been the light bearers for agility, but we have become the only folks who know about agility (or at least that is many of our communities' attitudes). For our organizations to be successful, more development leads, software engineers, HR specialists, UX/UI designers, and such need to and will become more drivers of agility, DevOps, and other lean practices. Because this is birthed out of doing, the passion, drive, and ability to affect change will be high and will impact our organizations more effectively. Agile coaches have the ability to coach organizations not to need them solely but this takes courage. In 2020, I believe that many will see the light that they cannot carry the burden of agility on their own. There are no more "lone rangers."
Middle Management's time for decision
When we start talking about roles, some folks get defensive. In this case, we are talking about a needed wake-up call for those whose sole job is to check the job of the people who report to them or define the work of their team members. As agility stops being an "IT thing" and continues to grow into a whole-organization way of working (more on this later), we will see more leaders question the work of these middle managers. Even at large Fortune 50 organizations, the idea and concept of someone watching over team members is becoming a thing of the past. If you are one of those folks, what does 2020 hold for you? Some of you are really good at the jobs you tell others to do and can get back into that! Drive for changes to the way you are incentivized!