Agile isn’t supposed to be a state of permanent urgency. For many organizations, however, this proves to be the case. They undergo a relentless cycle of sprints, reviews, and backlog cleaning sessions that generate motion but don’t maintain any sort of long-term progress. Deliverables are shipped, processes are iterated upon, and the organization stays stagnant.

Now, this is a real problem, especially if you’re looking to maintain any semblance of relevance. Continuous improvement practitioners are likely all too familiar with the sort of paradoxical thinking that most Agile adherents espouse. At its core, Agile is ideal for solving discrete, well-defined problems with ease. It struggles, by design mind you, to address the institutional and cultural conditions that lead to these problems coming up time and time again.

So, how do you bridge the gap? Agile isn’t built with a systematic framework in mind, at least where long-term strategic intent is concerned. That’s where you’ll want to integrate principles from things like Lean and Six Sigma, which help to complement the Agile way of working.

Why Agile Alone Doesn’t Cut It

Agile has gained considerable ground in non-software contexts. This is completely understandable, as the methodology itself provides a solid foundation. Its processes and production cadence encourage ownership, while delivering working solutions is far more appealing than endless reams of red tape for improvement teams.

Agile operates under a few core conceits, namely that requirements are uncertain and discovered through the use of rapid iteration. Outside of software development, this proves to be something of a liability, at least where long-term strategy is concerned. Uncertainty in backlog management is a given, but that same sort of uncertainty applied to something like a five-year business strategy is a problem.

The methodology shines when looking to resolve operational uncertainties, but it isn’t geared towards reducing them. Agile lacks the sort of tools you might expect for long-term strategy. There aren’t concepts like Voice of the Customer, process capability data, and change management frameworks. Root causes aren’t deeply analyzed simply because Agile is geared toward solving problems through iteration rather than addressing deep-seated issues.

Mapping the Integration

Hybridizing your approach is more natural than you might think, at least if long-term strategy is the overall goal. Lean Six Sigma and Agile are empirical by design, demanding data, testing assumptions, and incorporating feedback to navigate problems. Both iterate, as either methodology understands that a problem isn’t solved with a single pass.

A roadmap like DMAIC is designed for processes explicitly, and looks to identify sources of variation and ultimately eliminate them. A successfully conducted DMAIC project doesn’t just fix a problem. It creates a new baseline for future iterations to build upon.

Lean Six Sigma and Agile are best integrated at the Improve phase of DMAIC. This is where you’re putting rubber to the road: designing solutions, prototyping, and implementing them where possible. These sorts of tasks are best served by something like Agile, which looks to execute sprints to rapidly prototype solutions, gather feedback, and refine things before everything ships.

You aren’t missing anything from either methodology with a hybridized approach. It maintains the statistical rigor and data-driven focus of Lean Six Sigma while giving room for Agile to function as intended. More importantly, by making use of tools and frameworks like DMAIC, you’re doing the foundational work that will serve your organization’s long-term strategy.

Strategic Alignment

Now, despite what I just said, keep in mind that a hybridized approach can produce improvements that don’t fully adhere to your long-term strategy. A team might reduce defect rates substantially, while another works on streamlining the onboarding process. Both teams have accomplished, strong, local objectives, but neither have moved the organization closer to whatever goals have been defined for its three or five-year targets.

That’s where Hoshin Kanri comes in, a strategic planning methodology, that cascades objectives in a structured catchball process. Every single improvement is traced toward organizational priority. Improvement teams aren’t set loose with the core objective of reducing defects, but building toward achieving specified X-matrix metrics linked to breakthrough objectives.

Agile sprints executed with Hoshin Kanri objectives in mind aren’t just local optimizations but measurable progress against a defined metric. This applies when looking at looks like DMAIC as well. The practicality of this sort of approach is relatively easy to grasp. Every year sees a review where leadership proposes breakthrough objectives, with differing priorities assigned annually.

The proof is in the pudding, as the saying goes, because this nested planning architecture allows each methodology to execute in its comfort zone. Hoshin Kanri sets the long-term strategic goals, Lean Six Sigma focuses on delivering upon these metrics, and Agile sprints occur during the daily work toward those goals.

Common Failure Modes and How to Prevent Them

You’ll come across some rather common failure modes for your hybrid approach, and that’s to be expected. Knowing how to navigate these ably and address them is crucial to any sort of long-term success.

Velocity

For starters, you don’t want to focus on velocity as a vanity metric. Organizations that have adopted Agile in the past often point to the number of backlog items completed during a sprint. This is fine in a vacuum, but if it isn’t serving long-term strategy, it is neglecting organizational health. The question you should ask is whether this sort of work gets meaningful results to hit any sort of milestones for your X-matrix metrics.

If the answer is unclear, the backlog needs some revising before you start your next sprint.

Control Plans

Any long-term practitioners of Lean Six Sigma know that the Control phase of any DMAIC project is chronically under-funded. Teams invest heavily in the other phases, but neglect the implementation and rush things through. When making use of Agile, this only exacerbates the problem, as the pressure to move onto the next sprint creates organizational impatience.

Control activities should be planned with dedicated capacity, not declared as work that happens after the close of any improvement project.

Measure Phase

One of the more common misgivings in a Lean Six Sigma/Agile hybrid is taking too much time to move through the Measure phase of DMAIC. Teams want to move directly from the problem statement to remediation. This is admirable, but taking shortcuts has a price that gets paid down the line. Solutions without an express understanding of the process capability are addressing symptoms rather than root causes.

Such improvements aren’t durable, nor lasting. A compressed Measure phase is acceptable, but an absent one isn’t.

Misaligned Governance

Typically, DMAIC projects report to a sponsor. Agile teams report to the product owner or the scrum master. You will have conflicts over the overall ownership and governance of your processes because the roles for sponsors and product owners are hazy enough to be mistaken. This throws the entirety of your improvement cycle into a bit of a quagmire. Work stalls because there isn’t a clear chain of ownership.

The less glamorous solution is to establish clear decision rights from the very start. You’ll want to define who owns the charter, who owns the backlog, and everything else in between to ensure that no conflicts arise as you work toward long-term strategy and execute sprint-level tasks.

Conclusion

Competitive organizations are able to reap the benefits from continuous improvement, not necessarily over who maintains the most velocity while completing sprints. Successful hybrid approaches understand that the best means of implementing the methodologies we’ve covered is to allow them to play to their individual strengths.

You aren’t compromising while practicing these methodologies. In truth, this is a means of achieving methodological maturity. Agile gains a strategic anchor, Lean Six Sigma is able to build upon iterative execution, and Hoshin Kanri capitalizes on operational discipline to see those long-term strategic goals achieved.

With the right touch, you’re delivering measured, sustained results. The overall goal isn’t to deliver fixes without vision. Your overall aim, year after year, should be to build an organization that lasts, competes, and ultimately delivers upon the metrics you’ve defined.