Agile Maturity Levels
What level is your team or organization operating at?
When it comes to Agile, there are maturity levels that seem to really determine whether a team or organization has an Agile mindset. I think of those maturity levels based on what the team or organization thinks Agile is and how they use the Agile mindset to make decisions within their team or projects.
Level 1#
"We are doing Agile because we have standup every day, a sprint, and we have a retro at least once a month because that's what a coach or the Scrum framework told us we should do."
This is where most teams start and stay for way too long. Anybody who has said they have tried Agile and hate it likely only experienced a team like a Level 1 team or organization. A Level 1 team questions why they need so many meetings, gets no real value out of retrospective meetings, thinks story points are directly related to time, and assigns work to individuals in their sprint planning meetings.
Level 2#
"We use Agile practices and principles because they help us build new features for our customers, stay organized with the work that we have coming up, allow us to improve our team metrics, and communicate well among team members."
Teams that are at Level 2 are able to move quickly with the work they deliver. They are completing their Sprint events efficiently, focusing on improvement, having Sprint demos with customers actually in the meeting, and utilizing retrospective meetings to focus on improving several different topics at once. Teams that reach this level put a lot of focus on metrics and usually make for very good teams to be a part of as they are able to make "doing" Agile look and feel good.
The Scrum framework and other frameworks like SAFe only exist because adopting an Agile mindset can be difficult, especially in organizations that want an Agile mindset but are unwilling to change their leadership hierarchy. The Scrum framework was created primarily to provide teams and organizations with practices and methods that will elicit "doing" Agile or at least going through the motions. The expectation is that by "doing" Agile long enough, the team or organization will start to develop an Agile mindset. This is normally still a very difficult thing to accomplish without the right type of coaching and C-level executives in an organization already having an excellent Agile mindset. Frankly, most teams don't succeed in getting to Level 3 because organizational leadership doesn't know that Level 3 exists. They think that Level 2 is the level they want to achieve.
Level 3#
"We are Agile because we are able to deliver value quickly and consistently to our customers, get constant direct feedback from our customers, respond to change at any point, and provide solutions with technical excellence and simplicity."
The biggest difference between Level 2 and Level 3 is that when teams reach Level 3, they are no longer "doing" Agile but instead are being Agile. There is a big gap between Level 2 and Level 3. Most teams never truly reach Level 3 and when they do exist they are rare and hard to find in the wild. These teams are made up of individuals that all have excellent Agile mindsets. They don't care about adhering to the Scrum framework or anything else related to it. They don't point their user stories. They don't have sprints, retrospective meetings, or put much focus on team metrics. The reason is that they don't have to or really need to.
Level 3 teams are working with their customers almost every day and constantly getting feedback from them. These teams are delivering value often and continuously. Any changing requirements are addressed immediately and the team is able to discuss them quickly and move forward without any formal meeting being scheduled. This team trusts each other to deliver high-quality solutions and are communicating constantly with each other. Continuous improvement is such a part of the team's DNA that if somebody on the team realizes that something needs to improve, they say so immediately, gather the team together, make a decision quickly, and move forward.
Any teams or organizations that reach Level 3 are the only ones that can and should claim that they are Agile. Everybody else should strive for getting to Level 3 as fast as they can otherwise they will never really be Agile or realize the true benefits of the Agile principles and values described in the Agile Manifesto.