How Do You Approach Agile Project Management in Real Teams?

In most companies, "Agile Project Management" is a bridge between the old and the new. It often means traditional control with a touch of agility. But project management is about prediction and control. Agility is about learning and adaptation. Can both coexist for long without conflict?

Take a look at the Scrum Guide and notice how many times "Product" and "Project" are mentioned. Scrum certainly has an affinity towards Products, that's why there isn't Project Owner, Project Goal, and Project Backlog. It manages uncertainty through clear accountabilities: the Product Owner focuses on value, Developers on quality and delivery, and the Scrum Master on enabling the system and the team to be effective. When teams truly work empirically, there is little left to "manage" in the project sense.

Tools only help if they stay invisible. A whiteboard can be more agile than the most advanced software if it supports real conversations. Are your tools serving the team, or is the team serving the tool?

Mixing Waterfall and Agile happens when the organization still thinks in milestones instead of outcomes. The top plans, the teams adapt, and both sides quietly frustrate each other. Its a Fish with Feathers than can neither swim or fly.

Scrum is not Agile Project Management. It is a framework for product development and discovery. Once you shift from managing tasks to delivering outcomes, the project mindset begins to dissolve.

• But project management is about prediction and control.

I partially disagree with this statement. This statement clearly applies to the traditional approach to project management. But not necessarily.

If we look at the definition of a project:

• A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

The main difference between a project and a product is the time limitation. 
Uncertainties can also arise in a project, and usually do. Goals also emerge during the project's lifetime (hopefully through learning). 
Projects can be managed in an agile way with clear responsibilities, iterations and bottom-up intelligence. Examples include relocating a large company or integrating existing products into a new system following a company takeover. Often, tasks are carried out on behalf of a customer, who then maintains the outcome once the current goal has been achieved.

These time-limited tasks can be carried out by an agile team which is then disbanded or moves on to a new project.

However, I fully agree with Chris on this point

• In most companies, "Agile Project Management" is a bridge between the old and the new. It often means traditional control with a touch of agility.

The term 'agile project management' is mostly used because organisations want the 'agile' label without making any fundamental changes. They often try to achieve this by naming a typical product development process a 'project'.

Trent, what is your question? 
Is it about project management that is truly agile, or project management that is only named agile?
The real-world setup will be completely different.

The most important project is the Sprint, because that is the project which allows empiricism to be established and maintained. That isn't what most companies mean by "project" of course. To them a project is a much bigger leap-of-faith. Empiricism gives organizations their connection to the real world. Yet in the real world organizations favor prediction and certainty, however fake it might be.

This is the irony which Scrum professionals deal with every day. There are many hills you can die on in Scrum, and some of them are worth it, but I'd suggest that the project word isn't one of them. My advice is to be agnostic about projects. Let others talk about them. We will talk about Sprints, valuable products, and quality.

Hey @Chris Belknap

Really appreciate the way you framed that. The idea that many teams sit in a space between prediction and adaptation hits home. I have seen that same tension where leadership still wants precise forecasting while delivery teams want room to learn and adjust. Both sides end up tugging in different directions.

Your point about tools staying invisible is also spot on. When the tool starts demanding attention instead of supporting the work, you can feel the energy shift. In my experience the better setups are the ones where the platform simply makes things visible and reduces noise rather than shaping the process too tightly. That is usually when both the organisation and the team can breathe.

The part that interests me most is the shift you mentioned from managing tasks to delivering outcomes. I have seen a few teams try to make that transition and the real challenge was keeping stakeholders confident without sliding back into old control habits.

How do you usually help teams maintain that outcome focus while still giving stakeholders enough clarity to feel secure in the direction of the product?

Hey Benedikt Aufermann

I really appreciate how you expanded on that idea. You brought in a level of clarity that is often missing when people talk about projects and agile work. The distinction you made about time limited initiatives still being able to use iterations and learning really matches what I have seen on a few teams as well. A project can be temporary and still benefit from agile principles while the team is together.

The part you mentioned about organisations using the word agile without changing the underlying mindset also feels very true. I have watched teams go through that where the ceremonies get added but the decision making and expectations stay fully traditional. It looks like agility from the outside but nothing really feels different for the people doing the work.

To your question about what I was asking earlier. I am trying to understand how people here see the difference between genuinely agile project management and project management that is only named agile. The lived experience on teams can be very different from the theory and I am curious how others make sense of that gap in their own environments.

Hey Ian Mitchell

I really like the way you framed the Sprint as the real project. That perspective cuts through a lot of the confusion around what organisations call a project and what Scrum actually treats as meaningful work. When you look at the Sprint as the place where empiricism happens, the whole conversation shifts away from big predictions and back toward learning and value.

The point about organisations wanting certainty even when it is an illusion is something I have seen a lot too. That pressure often pulls teams back toward heavy planning even when everyone knows the plan will not survive contact with reality.

Your advice on being agnostic about the project word makes sense. It keeps the focus where Scrum places it anyway. Clear Sprints, valuable products, and quality outcomes. When teams anchor themselves in those practices the need for traditional project thinking starts to fall away on its own.

Curious if you have seen any practical ways teams help stakeholders make that shift from certainty seeking to outcome thinking without causing too much friction.

Curious if you have seen any practical ways teams help stakeholders make that shift from certainty seeking to outcome thinking without causing too much friction.

A certain humility is needed in that these are not our organizations to change. We don't own them. Sponsorship must be obtained, in which enough of a sense of urgency is created for change to become more important than the day job, and organizational gravity is thereby overcome.

How do you usually help teams maintain that outcome focus while still giving stakeholders enough clarity to feel secure in the direction of the product?

You might anchor teams on a real Product Goal and then use Evidence Based Management to make the work transparent in a way that builds confidence instead of control. A Product Goal provides a shared direction that does not change every Sprint. EBM gives a simple structure for showing progress in terms of outcomes rather than tasks. Each review becomes a check on what is improving, what is not, and what the team has learned that should shape the next bet. That usually gives stakeholders a clearer sense of trajectory than any predictive plan.

Progress toward the Product Goal can be inspected at the Sprint Review. Asking open questions about whether the Sprint Goal was achieved and whether it moved the product closer to the Product Goal strengthens alignment and reduces anxiety.

The team stays outcome focused because each Sprint ties back to the Product Goal and the evidence showing whether the direction is improving. Stakeholders feel secure because the product is becoming more visible and understandable, not because the team is producing more documentation.

Hey Ian Mitchell

That is a really grounding way to put it. I think a lot of us fall into the trap of feeling responsible for changing the entire organisation when in reality we only influence small parts of it. Your point about humility is important because without sponsorship the team ends up pushing uphill against structures that are not ready for change.

The idea of creating enough urgency for change to matter more than the comfort of the day job makes a lot of sense too. I have seen teams try to introduce new ways of working without that urgency and everything slowly drifts back to what feels familiar. When leadership actually feels the need for outcomes instead of predictability the shift becomes much smoother.

In your experience what usually sparks that sense of urgency for sponsors. Is it market pressure, internal frustration, or something else entirely.

Hey Chris Belknap

I really like how you connected the Product Goal with Evidence Based Management. That combination makes the path forward feel a lot less abstract for stakeholders while still letting the team work with discovery and learning. When everything comes back to a steady Product Goal it removes that scramble where people expect a new plan every week.

The way you described Reviews also clicked for me. When the conversation shifts from tasks to what actually improved and what was learned it does a lot to lower the pressure on teams. I have seen Reviews become much healthier once the focus moves from reporting to understanding. Stakeholders end up feeling closer to the product rather than just inspecting output.

Your point about visibility replacing documentation went straight to the heart of it. When people can see the direction clearly, even if the details are still forming, the need for heavy prediction starts to fall away.

In your experience what helps teams practice this consistently. I have seen some teams adopt the idea but slip back into task reporting when things get stressful.

In your experience what usually sparks that sense of urgency for sponsors. Is it market pressure, internal frustration, or something else entirely.

Usually the sense of urgency isn't sparked, it takes an emergency to do it.

That's when the higher-ups might go into their so-called "war rooms" or "situation rooms", for example, and try to establish some sort of control. Reporting structures and delegation temporarily go out the window in favor of direct communication and feedback, and a degree of empiricism might be briefly achieved.

Another irony: once things stabilize they revert to the deep hierarchy and glacial protocols which got them into a hole in the first place.

Hey Ian Mitchell

The way you explained that cycle really stayed with me. It is interesting how an emergency instantly creates conditions that many teams spend months trying to achieve. Direct communication. Clear focus. Fast feedback. Less noise. Everyone finally paying attention to what is actually happening instead of what the plan said would happen.

What strikes me is that the behaviour in those moments is usually more empirical than anything that happens during calm periods. People inspect the situation constantly and adapt without hesitation. It shows that the capability is already there. It only needs the right environment to surface.

I keep thinking there has to be a way for organisations to recognise that pattern. If the behaviours that appear during a crisis are the ones that actually work, then maybe those behaviours could be encouraged long before an emergency forces them out.

Have you ever seen leaders acknowledge that and try to build a culture where that level of clarity and communication becomes normal rather than reactive.

Have you ever seen leaders acknowledge that and try to build a culture where that level of clarity and communication becomes normal rather than reactive.

What you are describing is professional agile leadership, and although it exists it is rarer than you might hope for. Most "leaders" are interesting in building their own careers rather than a culture, and to that extent are perhaps managers and not leaders at all. There is a reluctance to address systemic risk, and a wish to resort to empiricism only in the emergencies, let things shake out and then get back to "normal".

Some actually try to buy cultural change in. A big and glacial corporate might buy a start-up for example, in the hope that agile DNA will somehow then be injected into the larger company. Usually the opposite happens, and the culture of the behemoth swamps and kills that of the innovators.

I’m curious how you see agile project management vs scrum in your work. Do you treat them as the same, or do you use Scrum as just one part of your broader agile methodology project management approach?

Just want to make a comment on this point. My personal opinion is that the scrum is the focal point for achieving the short term goals committed to in the sprint. I see project management as a longer view point for achieving goals that can only be achieved by coordinating a range of stakeholders that are not necessarily involved in the scrums. In addition projects tend to involve deadlines. So in short, I see scrums as just one part of my broader project managment approach. 

An example. Let's say there is a new financial auditing requirement imposed on some financial institute. This has been passed by law and the company can only operate if they are compliant by some date, lets say 1st of July 2026. In order to achieve this, there needs to changes made the accounting system, the billing system, processes need to be added to the compliance department, a trial audit has to be organized, new reports have to be generated. In addition, internal changes to the software needs to take place, which could result in logging expanding enormously, so solutions have to be found to performance issues resulting from the changes. 

Because all this has to be coordinated across departments, and the deadline is immovable, it needs to be managed as a project. You need a project plan that highlights dependencies and visualizes timelines. And more importantly you need someone chasing people around and making sure the work gets done in a timely manner and who reports/escalates the status of the project to higher management. This person is namely a project leader. 

Part of the project leader's job is to ensure that his requirements are entered into the backlog with the required priority. Through whatever reporting strategy is used, the project leader has to get a picture of how his requirements are coming along, so that if necessary, they can adjust the priority of the tasks. This is the interaction with the scrum. I do not see it as viable, to insist that the scrum should be expanded to have a representative of everyone involved in the project e.g. compliance department, mock auditor or hardware acquisition staff for this temporary project-orientated goal. It's a waste of people's times. The project leader should be interacting with these other stakeholders on some other non-scrum level, to make sure they get their stuff done on time. 

That all said, in my current place of employ, project leaders have been all but shelved, and there is the hope that scrums will manage everything somehow and ALWAYS have a timely handoff to the next stakeholder, who will know exactly what to do with the scrum's outcome. As to be expected, this doesn't work, because the ownership of some task is not clear and the task falls between the cracks. And because there is no project leader pushing people to get things done in a coordinated fashion, uncoordinated results happen or even worse nothing gets done with catastrophic results. 

In short, project leadership and scrums are two pieces of the puzzle and are not mutually exclusive items. Nor are they mutually inclusive. You can run scrums without project leaders, and you can have project leaders without scrums. It all depends on the nature of the requirements you have, and whether a central organizing figure is necessary to achieve the results in a timely manner. 

Hey Ian Mitchell

That is a very honest way to frame it. Professional agile leadership is rare and when you see it, it almost feels unusual compared to the more common pattern of career focused management. I have noticed the same reluctance to engage with systemic risk. It is easier for many leaders to keep the machinery running as it always has, even if that machinery is the very thing slowing down delivery and learning.

Your point about buying culture is something I have also witnessed. Large organisations often hope that acquiring a small innovative team will magically shift the whole system. But as you said, the gravity of the larger company usually pulls everything back to the old patterns. The speed, curiosity, and openness that existed in the smaller group gets absorbed and eventually silenced.

It makes me wonder what the starting conditions need to be for real cultural change to take hold. If it cannot simply be bought and cannot emerge only during emergencies, then maybe the shift happens in small pockets where leaders are genuinely willing to let go of control and focus on creating an environment where empiricism can survive.

Have you ever seen a situation where a small pocket of genuine agile leadership managed to influence the wider organisation over time rather than being swallowed by it.

Hey DJ MIC, that is a really clear explanation and I appreciate how you connected the practical side of project leadership with the shorter term rhythm of Scrum. The example you gave about meeting a new financial auditing requirement makes the distinction very real. When you have a fixed date, multiple departments, external stakeholders, and unpredictable knock on effects, it becomes obvious that someone needs to hold the larger picture and keep everything aligned.

I agree that trying to force all of that into Scrum events or trying to turn the Scrum Team into a stand in for every stakeholder involved would create more waste than clarity. The idea that a central coordinating figure is sometimes needed for time bound work feels completely reasonable. Scrum can help with transparency and delivery on the development side, but it does not replace the sort of cross departmental coordination you described.

Your point about ownership falling through the cracks when project leadership is removed also reflects what I have seen. Scrum works very well when the work fits the product and team boundaries. But when the environment needs someone to handle relationships, deadlines, approvals, and dependencies that reach outside those boundaries, removing that role without redesigning the system leaves gaps everywhere.

I like the way you framed it at the end. Scrum and project leadership are tools that can work together or separately depending on the nature of the requirement. It is less about choosing one or the other and more about understanding what kind of problem you are trying to solve.

Have you ever seen a situation where a small pocket of genuine agile leadership managed to influence the wider organisation over time rather than being swallowed by it.

Over time, yes. Small pockets down to the individual Scrum Master can and do promote local optimizations, and indeed it is reasonable to begin a transformation with one team. These can expose constraints at an organizational level and then help to develop a wider train of thought. 

If that fails to promote the requisite sense of urgency for systemic change in Sprint timescales, you might see the transformation needle move in a large corporate in ten to fifteen years. Yet those optimizations are still worth doing.

Hey Ian Mitchell

That timeline sounds very realistic and honestly quite eye opening. It is encouraging to know that even small pockets of genuine agile leadership can create local improvements that matter, even if the wider system takes years to absorb them. I have seen small teams make real progress in how they inspect, adapt, and communicate, but the impact often feels limited when the larger organisation moves slowly.

What you said about constraints becoming visible when one team starts working empirically is something I have noticed as well. When a team begins to operate with clarity and transparency, the bottlenecks in the surrounding system become impossible to ignore. Sometimes that alone starts conversations that would never have happened otherwise. Even if the change is slow, those early signals still have value.

Your point about transformations taking ten or fifteen years in big companies also feels true. Culture does not flip just because a framework is adopted. But the fact that small optimizations are still worth doing gives a lot of hope. They create better conditions for the team today and plant seeds that might grow later when the organisation finally feels that deeper urgency.

Have you found any particular patterns that help those small pockets stay resilient over long periods, especially when the wider environment is still anchored in older habits?

Have you found any particular patterns that help those small pockets stay resilient over long periods, especially when the wider environment is still anchored in older habits?

Yes, and I have enumerated some of them on www.agilepatterns.org in support of a focused transformational framework.

Ian Mitchell

Reading through the patterns and your comments made me think about something a little more practical. When teams begin making these small improvements you mentioned, especially the ones that expose constraints or bring more clarity, what have you seen them use to keep that visibility steady.

In my experience the moment a team starts working empirically, they need some shared way to make progress and risks visible across the wider group. Otherwise, the learning stays local and the rest of the organisation never sees the signals that matter.

I am curious how teams you have worked with handle that kind of visibility. Do they rely mostly on conversations and reviews, or do they also use certain systems to support the flow of information across departments while keeping the team autonomous?

Usually the wider group has neither time nor incentive to act, precisely because change is currently less important than the day job. Hence sponsorship and a communicated sense of urgency becomes important.

The best thing to do is to build transparency over constraints, with a clear focus on those which impede having a Done increment. Exposing and socializing a "Deficit for Release" can be useful. The deficit exposes those things which ought to be in a Definition of Done, but which currently are not for whatever reason, and from which technical debt is being accumulated. The price of that debt may then trigger awareness if not action by leadership. 

Of course, the best catalyst for change is sponsorship and getting through to the management bubble. In practice, achieving this is as much a matter of soft skills as it is anything else.

Ian Mitchell

Your point about transparency becoming meaningful only when it leads to better conversations really connects with what I have seen. It also makes me wonder how teams keep that level of visibility steady in practice. Once constraints and deficits start surfacing, the information can grow fast and it becomes hard to maintain clarity without some kind of structure or shared system.

In some teams I have worked with, conversations alone were not enough because different departments or leaders were not present during every discussion. The signals got lost or diluted. Other teams relied on simple whiteboards or shared documents and that worked for a while but the moment several streams of work or several releases were happening at the same time, the need for something more structured became obvious.

I am curious what you have seen work in this space. When teams want to keep empiricism strong and make these constraints visible beyond the team room, what kind of systems or practices help them keep everything aligned without slipping back into heavy control.

My advice is to be very careful about putting in place that structure or shared system. It will typically make sense once sponsorship for change is there, but can be dangerous if attempted beforehand. The issue is that the wider organization, including management, are likely to regard it as a solution. They are less likely to see it as giving transparency over problems which need to be dealt with urgently.

A simple team board is enough to illustrate the point. For the team itself it can be helpful. But once a task board is in place, such as an electronic one with reporting capabilities, an organizational assumption is often made that agile practice has now happened (c.f. "we've got Jira, we're agile"). The fact it is giving transparency over how agility is broken is not recognized. Scale that up with other systems and you just scale up the problem. This is understandable, given that management are used to structured and shared project management systems which show how value delivery is continually being deferred.

The best thing to do is to put the focus on having at least on Done, integrated increment every Sprint. Let the increment or its absence speak for itself. Don't use props. Highlight the deficit for release, the price of accumulating technical debt, and the cost of missed opportunities to run Sprint experiments and engage in validated learning. Empiricism first. Structure and shared systems later.

Ian Mitchell

That is a clear and sensible warning and I fully agree with the caution. Too often I have seen tooling introduced as if it is the change rather than a way to make problems visible. When management sees a shiny board and assumes everything is fixed the underlying issues stay hidden and the organisation can even become more confident in the wrong direction.

I like your emphasis on at least one Done integrated increment every Sprint. Letting the increment speak is a powerful corrective to vanity metrics and superficial signals. Highlighting the deficit for release and the cost of technical debt gives leadership a tangible way to feel the pain rather than just read a report.

If you do not mind, I am curious about two practical things. First, what small signals have you used that suggest sponsorship and readiness are emerging rather than being absent. Second, when teams do move to introduce a bit more structure or an electronic board, what guard rails have you seen work to stop management from mistaking the tool for the change.

Thanks again for the clear thinking on this.

The Scrum Values of Commitment, Focus, Respect, Openness, and Courage have to be in an organization's DNA for any of it to gain traction. At first little progress might be made. Yet if all that has been achieved after six months or a year is a little bit of openness, where management are saying "We thought we were agile. We thought we were doing Scrum, but now we realize we aren't" then that is a major win. We have a "guard rail" in so far as they realize the tool is not the change. They see the gap between where they are now and what Scrum means. Now I can extend a hand over that gap and help people  to cross if they want to.

Hey Ian

I really appreciate the way you framed that. The idea that even a small increase in openness after many months can signal a genuine shift is something I think many teams overlook. People often expect transformation to look dramatic, but sometimes the first real win is simply getting leaders to admit that what they thought was Scrum is not actually Scrum at all. That recognition alone can change the entire trajectory.

I also like how you tied the Scrum Values back to organisational DNA. Without commitment, respect, openness, focus, and courage already taking root, any attempt at change ends up feeling like a surface-level adjustment. When people begin to see the gap clearly and no longer confuse tools or ceremonies with real agility, the conversation becomes much more honest. At that point, your hand over the gap has something solid to connect with.

It makes me think about how valuable that early awareness is when teams eventually start looking for ways to support transparency or coordination. If the mindset is not there, any system becomes a prop. But once people truly see the gap, the same system can become a way to support empiricism rather than replace it.

Have you found that once this awareness emerges, people become more curious about how to sustain transparency, or do they still need a lot of guidance to avoid slipping back into old habits?

Awareness is not the same thing as a call to action. Remember that the "old habits" are what good looks like in the organization right now, and most importantly these practices reflect how employees are currently measured. Hence they become driven by project management stage gates, push-based deadlines, and compliance with hierarchical reporting structures for example.

If these measurements change then people might be inclined to actually change their habits. Until then they are being actively disincentivized from doing so. Incentivizing measurements may include the quantification and mitigation of technical debt, improved innovation rates, predictability, shorter time to market, time to pivot or reduced lead times, for example. Again, changing these things requires sponsorship.

Ian Mitchell

That distinction between awareness and a call to action is really important. You are right that the habits people fall back on are not simply personal preferences. They are shaped by how they are measured and how success is defined in the organisation. If someone is rewarded for hitting push based deadlines or meeting stage gate expectations, then even with the best intentions they will feel pulled back toward those patterns.

Your point about incentives is powerful. I have seen teams talk about agility for months, but the moment they are measured on predictability or adherence to a plan, all the behaviour quietly reverts. On the other hand, when leaders start paying attention to things like reduced lead time, lower technical debt, or faster ability to pivot, the entire energy of the environment shifts. People begin to focus on outcomes because they can finally see that outcomes matter.

I like how you connected this back to sponsorship again. These measurement changes cannot happen from the team outward. They require someone with authority to redefine what good looks like. Without that, even the most motivated teams end up trapped between what they know works and what the organisation pushes them to do.

From your experience, what helps leaders understand that adjusting measurements is not about losing control, but about gaining a clearer picture of how value actually flows.

It is useful to engage a PMO or equivalent body as an integral part of obtaining sponsorship. Senior leadership typically interface through such a tier and use it for matters of control and compliance. The requisite sense of urgency, where change becomes more important than the day job, must therefore be communicated through them.

The key to PMO engagement often lies in convincing them that they are not being made redundant as part of an agile transformation, but are actually needed more than ever to help systematize these new measures and terms of reference. This is more true than most in an organization, including them, are inclined to believe.

Ian Mitchell

That is a really important point about the PMO. I have noticed the same pattern where senior leaders rely heavily on that tier for clarity and control, so any meaningful change really does need to flow through them. When the PMO is left out, the transformation tends to stall because the group responsible for connecting strategy and execution is not aligned with the new way of thinking.

I also appreciate the way you framed their role during an agile shift. Many PMO members assume that agility will make their work irrelevant, when in reality they can become central to helping the organisation understand new measures like flow, lead time, or the cost of technical debt. They can give those signals structure in a way that leadership trusts.

What you said about systematizing these new reference points is interesting too. I have seen teams try to maintain transparency entirely through conversation and reviews, but once multiple product groups or multiple streams of work are happening at the same time, it becomes difficult for the PMO to maintain a consistent picture without some kind of shared environment.

Have you seen situations where the PMO played a constructive role in creating that shared view of progress and constraints, while still keeping empiricism at the center rather than slipping back into heavy oversight.

Have you seen situations where the PMO played a constructive role in creating that shared view of progress and constraints, while still keeping empiricism at the center rather than slipping back into heavy oversight.

Yes, when the PMO includes agile coaches and is used as a Transformation Rollout Team. They would work from a Transformation Backlog which focuses empirical change on targeted parts of the organization. It's important not to scale precociously. They might start with one Scrum Team, and then expand the transformation into a Scrum Studio, for example. I have various downloads and resources which may be of help.

Ian Mitchell

Thanks for sharing those resources. The way you describe the Transformation Rollout Team and the Transformation Backlog really ties together many of the themes we have been discussing. Treating transformation itself as empirical work rather than a big upfront program makes a lot of sense, especially the emphasis on not scaling too early. Starting with one Scrum Team and expanding only when learning supports it feels both disciplined and humane.

I also like how this framing gives the PMO a clear and meaningful role. Positioning them as stewards of the transformation rather than enforcers of control changes the conversation completely. It gives leadership a way to engage with change through evidence and learning rather than mandates.

What stood out to me most is how intentional the rollout is. The backlog approach makes it explicit that change has priorities, dependencies, and risks just like product work. That seems far more honest than pretending transformation happens all at once.

In your experience, what usually signals that an organisation is ready to move from a single team or studio to a broader rollout without losing the empirical focus that made the early work successful.

Perhaps the best "signal" is when senior leadership comes to you. They are pitching the organizational need for agility to you, rather than expecting you to sell it to them. This suggests an understanding that deep and systemic change requires their active engagement.

Remember that there is an inequality to be overcome:

 D x V x F > R

where

   D is the Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo;

   V is a clear, compelling, believable Vision;

   F is the First and reinforcing steps;

   R is resistance to the change.

On the whole, it is better to recognize a critical tipping point rather than a signal.

Ian Mitchell

That distinction between a signal and a tipping point is helpful. A signal can be observed and interpreted in many ways, but a tipping point implies that enough forces have aligned that movement becomes inevitable rather than optional. When senior leadership initiates the conversation, it suggests that dissatisfaction, vision, and willingness to act are already present to a meaningful degree.

I also find the inequality useful because it highlights why isolated efforts struggle. Dissatisfaction without vision leads to cynicism. Vision without first steps feels theoretical. First steps without reinforcement fade quickly. Resistance fills the gap whenever one of those elements is weak.

Seen this way, waiting for a tipping point is less passive than it sounds. It is about recognising when conditions exist for change to be sustained rather than imposed. That feels more consistent with empiricism than trying to manufacture urgency prematurely.

In your experience, what most often tips the balance in favour of leadership engagement. Is it accumulated internal friction, external pressure, or the gradual visibility of systemic constraints.

Management typically operate in a political environment, not a technical one, and so their engagement is usually determined by political factors. Agility is not usually sponsored by itself but as part of a wider package of change in accountability and governance (ESG for example). Much depends upon how an organization is structured.

• Leadership in a publicly traded company are sensitive to stock price and share holder opinion, and hence the critical forces include fear of being out-innovated by competitors and the greed of missed opportunity. A balance may be tipped by activist shareholders who think of agility as a catalyst and who are not going to be satisfied by mere lip service to principles.
• Companies that are held privately may achieve a tipping point by having a visionary board member, and public ones may favor de-listing in order to drive the vision of change through.
• Public sector bodies are less sensitive to economic forces and matters become even more political. Change is notoriously difficult even when tipping points appear to be reached. 

Ian Mitchell

That perspective feels very grounded in reality. Framing management engagement as political rather than technical explains a lot of what we see in practice. Agility on its own rarely becomes compelling unless it connects to broader shifts in governance, accountability, or external narratives that leadership already cares about.

Your contrast between public and private organizations is especially interesting. In publicly traded companies the forces you mentioned are very visible. Fear of being outpaced and the pull of unrealized opportunity seem to be far more motivating than any internal argument about better ways of working. When that pressure is amplified by shareholders, agility becomes less of a preference and more of a strategic necessity.

The point about private companies and visionary board members also resonates. When there is less exposure to market optics, change can move faster but only if someone at the top is willing to absorb the risk. And in the public sector the political nature of change seems to overwhelm even clear evidence that things are not working. The absence of economic feedback loops makes empiricism harder to sustain.

It reinforces the idea that agile change is always contextual. The forces that create a tipping point differ widely depending on structure, incentives, and accountability. From what you have seen, are there any early indicators that suggest those political forces are beginning to align, even before leadership explicitly comes forward.

The early indicator I look for is a growing awareness that people are not in control of workflow policies. The accountabilities they perhaps ought to have cannot realistically be met. There is usually a lot of denial about this and the can may be kicked down the road for a long while.

For example, an organization might balk at the deep change required for Scrum, and management try to settle for a Kanban implementation instead. The intention is to lean out existing workflows, however inefficient they may be, and then improve them incrementally through VSM and Kaizen bursts. An attempt is made to set up Kanban boards across pseudo-teams but the expected magic doesn't happen. The policies might be quite explicit, but the "teams" don't own them and their commitment points remain a pipe dream. At best, they have an information radiator over how the imagined system is broken. This is another illustration of the tool being confused with the change.