Reference no: EM133189198

How would you respond to the bottom part. not the question 

The Unbalanced Company that the "agile" approach for businesses/organizations experienced growth in response due to the limitations and bad reputation that traditional bureaucracies provide.

I think that the bad reputation that the bureaucracies get is probably 75% of the motivating factor. I think the deeper growth came from a combination of the fact that waterfall (while appropriate for some projects) severely limits your team's ability to capture the best project. In a waterfall project, the scope is agreed upon, and each team is responsible for their own segmented work that is completed independently in a finish-to-start style methodology. This means that in many cases, I have to wait until Im handed off a partially built deliverable from another team or member that Im then responsible for building upon and passing off to the next. I know what you are thinking, it works for assembly lines, and in theory, it should work equally as good to anything. The problem is at the end you have a quality check and a scope agreement and pass of the deliverable to the customer (internal or external) and its done. Any changes that occur to that deliverable have to go through a rigorous and often painful integrated change control process.

By contrast, agile allows the team to start building out a deliverable in a cross matrix-style fashion, which by its defining nature assembles a project team from each area that has a stake in the end product or has to deal with the stakeholders it affects. The process starts quickly with a vision or a proposed idea to enhance a project and collects feedback from all involved. The work then gets broken down into chunks that are completed in a defined time period (sprint, phase, etc). Once the work is completed for the sprint and the user stories are finished, the deliverable is then evaluated by the team members and compared against the outcome that's wanted is. This allows for changes that can be integrated right into the project as its happening. No one has to wait until work is completed before the project is handed off to their team. Each member representing the team has direct input and feedback on the products. This produces a better end product with more input to hopefully satisfy the customer in the end (again, internal or external).

To me its this ability to begin project work and complete it with input from the flat cross matrix organization that has allowed Agile to become so popular. The point of agile is that there still needs to be accountability held (bureaucracies) within the organization and the team, but the team has to be able to have the latitude to do the work that needs to be done without being micromanaged. If you have the right team members in the right places, allow them to do the work. You have them there for a reason. Check-in at milestones and let the deliverable mature.