Last updated on August 27, 2020 | Management And Leadership

5 Reasons Why Agile Does Not Work In Germany And What To Do

by Luís Gonçalves

5 Reasons Why Agile Does Not Work In Germany

I don’t intend to offend anyone who has a different opinion from me, but I do want to share my experience and explain to you Why Agile does not Work in Germany.

Some of you may disagree and think that I’m generalizing as a whole, but nevertheless let me share my experience with you.

Do you want to do an Agile Transformation but you do not know where to start? This roadmap will help you! The Agile Transformation Roadmap was created based in several years of Agile transformations operated in Europe!

DOWNLOAD THE ROADMAP

I’ve lived in Germany for about 9 years (this was written in 2017), worked, travelled and lived in several different countries so I know the differences. Like everywhere else, culture, mindset and even history plays an important part in the work environment of Germany.

However, it is time for change and Germany seems to be finding it difficult to adapt. The following reasons are my personal opinion on why I think the Agile development won’t be fully implemented into Germany within the next few years.

1) HIERARCHY IS TOO ADAMANT FOR AGILE TO BE UTILIZED PROPERLY

I am Portuguese and it’s been many years since I left Portugal. After leaving, one of the first few countries I lived in was Finland.

In Finland as compared to Germany, companies and businesses have very flat hierarchies and simple work processes. Everyone is empowered, receives reports and plays a vital part in every role.

To me, being a leader by giving direction and empowering others is far more important than managing or controlling them. My experience has shown me that having managers in scrum teams could be destructive!

As the layers of managers increase in an organization, the political aspects and number of work processes increase as well. Due to the increased hierarchy in Germany, not many have the courage to say no to their bosses or managers. Only few can make decisions on their own.

I’ve met many colleagues in Germany who show great potential. Unfortunately due to hierarchy systems and culture they are unable to flourish.

2) THE SOCIETY IS STRUCTURED IN SILOS

I believe Taylorism is present in the German society. Taylorism is a factory management system developed in the late 19th Century for the manufacturing industry. Manufacturing is a traditional industry where people work in functional departments with silos in between. Communication is not their strength.

Due to Taylorism, the control becomes centralized and organization of production is split into different departments. Work becomes task specific and menial as workers are turned into quasi machines.

In the education system of Germany, children are taught of this process when they are young. They are taught to function as individual silos and as they grow up, their mindset gets harder to change.

Most companies that I know of in Germany are matrix organizations which I believe are agile resistant. Matrix organizations create huge internal political problems. You can read more about matrix organizations here.

Unfortunately, the silo mindset is present everywhere. I’ve experienced working in a team where each team member reports to a different manager. It is also common to have front and backend developers instead of single full-stack developers.

3) INFINITE AMOUNT OF PLANNING

In Germany, a lot of companies think that they have agile systems in place, but the reality is they don’t. These companies work with long detailed processes, which feature processes within processes. This is a waterfall system not an agile one.

You will often hear this saying among planners and managers in German companies: “We need to give lots of time to planning to make sure that everything is perfect!”

This is part of the German work culture. They believe that planning in detail will lead to having everything work out as planned. Unfortunately in today’s society, it no longer is this way.

4) EVERYTHING MUST BE PERFECT

Having a perfectionist culture isn’t a bad thing, which is one of the best aspects that the Germans have which made them powerful. However in terms of Agile Software Development, this is a big problem. Companies spend too much time looking for a perfect solution.

The main point of going Agile is to do something small, simple and have it shipped to your client first, then get their feedback and improve on it. The idea is to do things in small increments and gather quick feedback for improvements. This is seldom seen in Germany where everything must be perfect before hitting the market.

Germans are afraid of failure as failure is seen as a disgrace in their country. This leads to them being afraid of releasing something subpar into the market and failing.

Most of us know “FAIL” as “First Attempt In Learning”. However this mindset isn’t present in Germans which is one of the biggest obstacle in the Agile system. They fail to realize that success and innovation starts from the learning of failures.

5) TRADITIONAL SOCIETY

Although I appreciate the quality of life that Germany offers, there is one big existing problem that has been ignored: a very traditional society.

In Finland, processes in life are simple, fast and easy. When you move or leave the country, it takes a day to organize the paperwork but in Germany, it takes 3 months!

Although there is a difference in the size and population of both countries, it isn’t an excuse. Changes should be made in small incremental amounts and the reason why these changes are not seen in Germany is due to the traditional culture that they have.

When I ask around why processes are so tedious and why there is no change, the replies I get are: “This is how we work here, things are great and we don’t need change!”

At work, the common replies you get are: “We always did it like that and it has worked for years. There is no need for change.”

In my honest opinion, the Agile process cannot be taken seriously in a society that refuses change, because they believe things are going well.

So What Needs To Be Done?

After reading my arguments, you may disagree and think I’m a fool. But like I said, I appreciate living in Germany. Germany gives fantastic living conditions for educated people but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Being a management consultant, my job is to help companies improve and reinvent themselves. I have expressed my opinions and communicated my experiences that hinder the huge potential that German companies have.

As these aspects are hard to change, in my opinion, Germany is far from being a leader of the Agile system. However on the other hand, I know of many brilliant German Agile coaches who did wonderful jobs.

My colleagues and I were also able to successfully transform organizations by adopting the Agile system.

Hire consulting firms or consultants who really know what they do.

Nowadays there is a great demand for this type of service, making this area very attractive for any consultant, unfortunately, you will find several companies offering you consultants without any experience, especially the big management consulting companies that We all know who they are.

There are many old school project managers who fall into this category. They go through an Agile certification course and sell themselves as the perfect Agile consultant.

Another problem for the overwhelming majority of companies and consultants in this area is that they do not have a holistic approach. They usually sell some training and workshops but don’t have a holistic approach so the impact will be very small. In summary, be careful who you hire to help you with your Agile Implementation.

As a leader, you need to understand who would be a good consultant to help you with your implementation.

The Leadership team must spend 1 to 2 days in training to understand Agile and its impacts

Many executive managers believe the Agile transformation does not impact their job. This is far from reality – Your leadership style changes drastically and it will not be easy.

It will be difficult for you. But after all if you’re a very successful person, you will understand that your style of leadership has brought you to where you are now. You will also understand that times and society has changed and being able to adapt is what made you successful, not resistant to change.

Society is not the only problem here, I’m sure you’ve heard about the millennial generation. They are a very different breed of humans from the previous generations. They are much harder to lead and they need to be managed in a completely different way.

There are a lot to be understood when you go Agile. Make sure that you choose the right consultant and give them a reasonable amount of time to implement a system which fits your organization. This brings me to my next point.

Create a team of early adopters who are interested in really changing the company

This is one of the most common mistakes I see when companies try to make big transformations!

They always forget to create an early adopter team to help change! This team is crucial as it is made up of several people from the organization, meaning there are people from all levels of the company, this is quite important as these people will be responsible for helping with the change but most of all will influence several people in various layers of the company.

Remember that all people will resist change if they are not involved, with this approach you are integrating multiple people at all levels who will do everything to make change successful.

A very common mistake companies make is to create a department that is part of leading change, that’s a fatal mistake, don’t do that, bring people from different departments together and create a cross-functional team that is committed to making the transformation happen.

Make sure everyone gets training

The overwhelming majority of companies make a crucial mistake: they expect transformation with little or no training from the people involved in the transformation.

It’s normal to give Scrum Masters and Product Owners some practice and that’s all done. If you really want to succeed with such changes make sure that everyone who is affected by the change gets training.

Make sure everyone who acts as Scrum Masters gets the proper training. Provide training to Product Owners, not just the basics of the Scrum Alliance or Scrum.org, but something more like Lean Product Management.

If you can’t find people with the right Scrum Master profile, consider a solution like Scrum Team Coach, a 6-month package that hires an External Scrum Master to help you transition.

During the transition time, ensure that Scrum Masters are supported by programs such as the Scrum Master Mentoring Program or the Lean Product Management Coaching Program.

And lastly and 99% of forgotten cases, make sure all developers and development teams have the same support, overwhelmingly most companies forget this and as a result, there will be a lot of people who don’t believe in Agile because nobody ever got along. to explain to them the benefits.

Treat everything as an Experiment

Instead of creating long-term plans, there are two things that you should do. Firstly, establish a culture or mindset in your company where everything done is an experiment.

Innovation comes from mistakes. If you don’t give people the freedom to experiment and make mistakes, it will be harder for you to drive innovation in your company.

Jason Little developed a training called “Lean Change Management” that is used to enable changes within the organization. It is a method that uses lots of experimentation to drive changes. If you transition into Agile, I recommend you and everyone responsible for the transition to undergo this training.

Now, this is what you should do…

Executives have to change the organization

In my experience, very few organizations come to this part, but in my opinion, this is the most important part.

The overwhelming majority of executives think this kind of transformation can be delegated but unfortunately, they could not be more mistaken. This part is so important that it led me to write a book just dedicated to how to build a digital product organization, if you are interested you can buy the book from AMAZON.

When Agile is implemented at the bottom of the enterprise, there are 5 fundamental pillars that executives have to implement.

Implement a strategic alignment framework like OKRs (More info on blog: OKR Framework)
Design an organization based on Value Streams and not “Matrix Organization” (More info on the blog: “Matrix Organizational Structure“)
Draw a coalition between executives and people at the bottom of the company (More info on blog: Organisational Impediments)
Implement Communities Of Practice Inside and Outside the Enterprise (More information on the Communities Of Practice blog)
Designing a company where innovation is part of the company’s DNA (More info on blog: Google Design Sprint)

Summary

We help companies understand the factors mentioned here which will impact the implementation of Agile.

It is our duty to guide the executive managers in understanding the consequences of going Agile and the impact it will have on their daily work and within their organizations.

To aid my clients’ easier understanding, I created Organisational Mastery See the framework below.

I use this framework with companies with a staff count of up to 500. We are able to achieve good results with a company of this size. If you’re an executive manager of a similar sized company, I am able to assist you with the implementation of Agile.

I hope you enjoyed reading the article. Sometimes it isn’t easy to talk about problems and I certainly hope you as a reader, do not take any offence from this. I hope that this will instead assist you on your journey of achieving an efficient and highly performing organization.