Suggested Leadership Actions

Inspect

• What is your particular business’s need for flexibility vs. predictability?

• Does your business need strict predictability, or will looser predictability suffice?

• Do your teams understand that the goal of Agile development is to support the needs of the business and that sometimes the business needs predictability?

• Consider the practice of treating epics as budgets. How would that approach work on your teams?

• Assess each of the projects in your portfolio according to the Cynefin framework. Are your teams being asked to estimate work that is inherently Complex?

Adapt

• Talk with your teams about your business’s need for predictability. Explain why it’s important to your business (if it is important).

• For each Complex project, assess whether the project can be converted to Complicated. For those that remain Complex, shift your focus from prediction to exploration.

• Ask your teams to refine their use of Agile practices to better support your business’s need for predictability, including treating epics as budgets