Agile DNA

I believe that the biggest issue with many traditional organizations seeking to use Scrum on programs big or small is that they want to do Scrum or transition to Scrum—the emphasis mistakenly on doing Agile instead of being Agile. Big difference. While Toyota invites its competitors to learn the Toyota Production System (TPS), TPS is not really in the other car manufacturers' DNA. That is, they can learn the practices, how to do Kanban, kaizen, and so on, but if continuous improvement and human first/product second mind-sets are not in the mix, they won't be as successful. The same for agile. Two companies can do exactly the same Agile practices, but the one that gets the mind-set and the values will be more successful.

Likewise, if we look at the most successful tech companies as of the writing of this book—Apple, Google, Adobe, and others—they are regularly cited by employees as having collaborative environments, small teams, work-life balance, open environments, and the like...