In Agile, success isn’t guaranteed. Transformations often face roadblocks like leadership misalignment, technical debt, or burnout. These issues can stall progress and demoralize teams. But failure can also be a chance to grow. We’re seeking solution-focused talks that address these challenges directly and provide actionable insights for Agile teams.
The topics listed below represent common struggles that Agile teams face during their transformation journeys. We’re looking for submissions that do more than just highlight the problem—we want talks that offer potential solutions, frameworks for improvement, or strategies to start making progress. While we understand that not every solution fits every team, your session should help guide attendees toward finding a path forward that suits their unique situations.
As a speaker at this virtual event, you’ll gain exposure to Agile Alliance’s highly targeted, global audience of Agile professionals, coaches, and leaders. This is a great opportunity to showcase your expertise, build your reputation in the Agile community, and contribute to meaningful discussions around Agile transformation challenges. While this is an unpaid opportunity, the exposure and networking possibilities with a vibrant community of Agile enthusiasts are invaluable.
Problem: Developers have limited or no say over product backlog priorities, leading to frustration and poor-quality releases.
Impact: Teams feel disempowered, resulting in disengagement, lower morale, and rushed work that compromises product quality.
Problem: Scrum Masters often receive insufficient training (e.g., “two-day courses” as one commenter put it) that doesn’t prepare them to be effective leaders.
Impact: This leads to weak leadership and poor facilitation, making it harder for teams to achieve their full potential and resolve conflicts.
Problem: Agile teams often lack strong leadership, with Scrum Masters or managers failing to guide the team effectively or balance autonomy with accountability.
Impact: Without clear guidance, teams struggle to stay on track, resolve conflicts, or maintain high performance over time.
Problem: Without formal hierarchy or clear responsibility, Agile teams may struggle to address performance issues or improve the skills of weaker team members.
Impact: This leads to uneven performance across the team, with higher performers taking on more work and weaker members not receiving the guidance needed to improve.
Problem: Agile’s fast-paced, iterative nature often leads to team burnout, as there is constant pressure to deliver at high velocity with little time for recovery or reflection.
Impact: This results in lower morale, reduced productivity, and higher turnover as teams are unable to sustain long-term delivery.
Problem: Teams move quickly in sprints without proactive risk management, often failing to foresee and address potential risks until it’s too late.
Impact: Projects suffer from unexpected delays, budget overruns, and unaddressed risks that could have been mitigated with proper planning.
Problem: Agile teams often lack broader organizational support, with misaligned goals, poor management backing, and disengaged stakeholders.
Impact: Agile fails to thrive without top-down support, causing teams to lose momentum or face roadblocks from other departments.
Problem: Teams adopt Agile practices superficially (e.g., standups and sprints) without fully embracing the core values of Agile (e.g., customer collaboration, continuous improvement).
Impact: Agile becomes “Agile in name only,” with teams following processes but failing to reap the full benefits of Agile transformation.
Problem: Organizations adopt Agile processes but fail to change their culture, leading to the appearance of Agile without its principles.
Impact: Agile becomes a rebranding of old practices, leading to frustration and failure to achieve the expected benefits of adaptability and empowerment.
Problem: Agile teams fail to communicate with internal stakeholders (such as IT, QA, or validation teams) about dependencies or upcoming needs.
Impact: This creates bottlenecks and delays, as necessary resources are unavailable when needed, slowing down the entire Agile process.
Problem: Agile processes, such as Kaizen or retrospectives, are used without proper accountability for decisions or outcomes.
Impact: Bad ideas or poor decisions are repeated, and teams don’t learn from past mistakes, undermining the continuous improvement goal of Agile.
Problem: Teams lack built-in advocacy for technical practices like refactoring, testing, or technical debt management.
Impact: This leads to the accumulation of technical debt, resulting in lower-quality code, bugs, and future rework that reduces long-term Agility.
Problem: Agile teams often prioritize speed over sustainability, leading to the accumulation of technical debt that eventually hampers progress.
Impact: Technical debt builds up, leading to more bugs, slower development, and increased long-term maintenance costs.
Problem: Teams working with legacy systems face difficulties implementing Agile, as outdated technologies slow down development cycles and make it hard to deliver quickly.
Impact: Legacy systems create bottlenecks and prevent teams from delivering value iteratively, leading to frustration and stalled progress.
Problem: Agile teams often face difficulties integrating development and operations, leading to bottlenecks in deployment and delivery.
Impact: This disconnect between Agile development and operations can result in slower releases, increased bugs, and less efficient delivery.
Problem: Teams in regulated industries often find it difficult to balance Agile’s flexibility with the need for documentation and adherence to compliance standards.
Impact: Compliance requirements slow down Agile processes, making it harder to maintain both regulatory standards and Agile speed.
Problem: Agile struggles to scale effectively in larger organizations, leading to difficulties coordinating efforts across multiple teams and departments.
Impact: Misalignment and slow decision-making lead to bottlenecks and reduced productivity across the organization.
Problem: Teams face challenges in coordinating work across different functional areas (e.g., development, testing, operations), leading to delays and miscommunication.
Impact: Cross-functional dependencies create bottlenecks and cause friction between teams, reducing productivity and slowing down delivery.
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All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy
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