We were in a training class the other day, talking about why agile flounders when you remove projects as the vehicle for change but don’t replace them with something else that connects strategy to execution.
This is a real gap. It struck me that strategy is optional in waterfall delivery. It’s required in agile.
In traditional delivery, once the business case is made, scope is clear, requirements are captured, and design is done, the project can be delivered successfully regardless of whether there ever was a strategy. The plan does that job instead. Nobody downstream needs to believe the story; they just need to follow the plan.
Agile removes most of that upfront planning and replaces it with continuous, distributed decision-making. That only works if the story is shared, because now everyone is making calls that used to belong to those involved in upfront planning.
A clear, coherent and communicated strategy isn’t a nice-to-have in agile. It’s what makes delegated decision-making possible. When you look at that faltering team, are they struggling with execution, or are they disconnected from the story?