In my last blog post, Asking the Question: Why is Agile Failing Us? Part 1, I set the stage for the presentation I recently gave at the TriAgile Conference in Raleigh, NC. Given this highly charged topic that I had selected, the day of the conference dawned and with trepidation in my heart, I prepared for the event.  Picking up my name badge at the entry way had me wondering if I was hexed already, since I was listed as ‘Rob Annis Rob Annis,’ perhaps so that I could easily be identified for the pitchfork-carrying crowd as it hunted me down afterwards.

I was one of the very fortunate people invited to speak at the recent TriAgile 2016 Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was a great honor and a privilege for me and not one that I had undertaken lightly. Indeed, I had spent a lot of time pontificating over what topic I should speak about; should I delve into the right way to do stand-ups? Or focus on the difference between progress and status updates? Maybe give a master class on story pointing? All of these and many more appealed, but one topic kept coming back to my mind – if so many of us have shifted towards an Agile way of working, why is Agile not the de facto model for projects?

We frequently talk about cultural and organizational transformation since these are relatively common topics in the Agile sphere. The reason for this is that we accept that Agile thinking is a very different way of working in comparison to more traditional approaches such as Waterfall, Six Sigma etc.  If we continue to think and work in the same, older way when we are trying to work in an Agile manner, people and their organizations will likely fall back into their old ways of working. Indeed, why would they not? A tiger does not change its stripes readily.