Four common pitfalls we’ve seen - and how we helped a client overcome them to unlock real agility.

Agile promises adaptability, speed, and a relentless focus on value. But in practice, many organizations end up entangled in bureaucracy, slow delivery, and mounting frustration. We’ve seen this firsthand at Kopenhagen Konsulting. Across industries and clients, we keep encountering the same four patterns that quietly - but powerfully - undermine agile transformations.

These pitfalls may seem obvious, but they’re real - and we’ve seen them repeatedly in client engagements. We’ll show how, in one specific case, we helped an organization break free and unlock true business agility.

1. The illusion of iteration: fixed cycles undermining flexibility

Organizations often adopt fixed iterations - be it two-week sprints or quarterly product increments (PIs) - with the intent of fostering agility. However, these rigid cycles can become inflexible stage gates, limiting responsiveness to change. When capacity, scope, and timelines are all fixed, teams find themselves constrained, unable to adapt to evolving priorities.

This approach often leads to work being deferred to future cycles, delaying value delivery and stifling innovation. Instead of enabling agility, fixed iterations can inadvertently recreate the rigidity of traditional project management within an agile facade.

The lesson: timeboxed iterations are a means, not an end - agility requires the freedom to re-route work as needs change, even if that means breaking out of the sprint structure.

What we did
‍We helped one client move away from a heavyweight SAFe Scrum setup to a leaner, Kanban-based SAFe flow. We introduced practical, day-to-day improvements using SAFe Team Kanban, while strengthening Value Stream Management through core ITSM principles. Simple ideas but challenging to master in practice. [See also: ITSM – old wine, new bottles]

To put it into perspective: 42% of tasks were stuck in backlog, it would have taken 9 years to finish all tasks, and requests were taking over a year on average just to be rejected. These numbers helped leadership recognize the urgency for change and gave our work a tangible starting point for improvement. By streamlining workflows, visualizing constraints, and enabling rapid feedback, the client broke this cycle and began delivering value faster and with greater confidence.  
The focus shifted from over-planning to continuous delivery, resulting in leaner throughput, faster customer feedback, and quicker value realization.  

Supporting insight
Research by BCG found that many companies under an “illusion of agility” fail to implement truly iterative governance or reprioritization cycles. In contrast, high-performing agile companies regularly re-evaluate and adjust their work in real time.

2. All the gear, no idea: roles and transparency without mindset

Agile often fails when it's treated as a checklist of roles, tools, and ceremonies, but without a shift in mindset. Companies introduce a flurry of agile ceremonies, tools, and defined roles, full transparency boards, product owners, scrum masters - yet continue to behave in old ways.

So why did agile makes sense in the first place? What pain points are we trying to mitigate?

Simply calling daily meetings or renaming project managers to “scrum masters” doesn’t make an organization agile. McKinsey observes that many firms fixate on structural elements (tribes, squads, chapters) but struggle with the cultural shift. In fact, cultural challenges are “more than twice as common” as any other top agile obstacle. Without a genuine change in mindset and behaviours - trust, empowerment, collaboration, learning from failure - all the visible transparency and new titles will fall flat. It’s no surprise that culture is cited as the number one barrier in agile transformations.  

What we did
We worked with leadership to shift focus from rituals to outcomes. Instead of asking, “Are we doing agile?” we asked, “Are we solving the right problems and are we doing it quickly and collaboratively?” We focused on the actual business need for agility - and how it aligned with strategic goals. Then, we worked across the organization to make that alignment clear: ensuring leadership buy-in, shared incentives, and a common cadence across departments. Everyone began speaking the same language.

Supporting insight
‍McKinsey highlights that cultural challenges are more than twice as likely as structural ones to derail agile transformations. Without behavioural change, structures and tools simply reinforce the status quo.

3. Feature factory syndrome: ignoring product debt

In the pursuit of innovation, many companies focus on delivering new features fast - without questioning whether those features matter. We’ve seen product teams caught in “the innovation race,” obsessed with staying on trend. But underneath the glossy UX, the engine is outdated. Technical and product debt pile up. User problems go unsolved.

There’s also pressure from leadership: “Everyone’s talking about AI - why aren’t we doing AI?” So, teams rush to bolt on the latest tech, while foundational issues are left unresolved.

It looks like a Ferrari, but still runs like a '95 Opel

What we did
We helped our client refocus how they planned and prioritized work. By using data-driven insights into what was actually being delivered - service requests, bugs, improvements, etc. - we could pinpoint where time and energy were going. This helped reprioritize product debt and keep the backlog current and actionable. It also brought transparency to delivery feasibility and costs, which was essential for engaging both finance and PMO.

Supporting insight
‍Studies show that many delivered features are rarely or never used. BCG emphasizes that successful agile teams focus as much on what not to do - cutting non-essential work and reducing product debt - as on what gets built.

4. Beyond frameworks: simple flow driven by purpose

One of the most common pitfalls we’ve seen is when a transformation becomes more about applying a known framework (usually the one a consultant or internal evangelist prefers) than designing the right way of working. We’ve encountered setups with all the layers of SAFe or Spotify model - none of which actually improved delivery. Why? Because context was ignored. The framework became the goal.

Perhaps the biggest wake-up call is that agile is not about a specific framework at all. Scrum, SAFe, and other frameworks are just tools - means to an end. When organizations treat them as gospel, they often add layers of “agile” bureaucracy and lose sight of why they adopted agile in the first place. One industry expert put it plainly: “Agile is not about a framework, technology or software. Rather, it’s an opportunity to understand each other’s work and bring people together around continuous delivery of value.”

Agility is about enabling a simple, effective flow of work toward a clear purpose - delivering value to the customer quickly and iteratively.

What we did
‍This was exactly the realization that turned around the client’s stalled transformation. By stepping back from the framework-first mindset, we helped the organization refocus on what really matters: delivering value. We moved them from a heavyweight SAFe Scrum setup to a drastically simplified, leaner Kanban-based flow. This reduced unnecessary roles and ceremonies and instead prioritized streamlining the value chain end to end. We helped them establish an insourcing model to build internal capabilities, designed a digital operating model with value stream alignment and clear responsibilities, and established centers of excellence (CoEs) to scale agility, enable consistent practices, and free up resources across the delivery lifecycle.

Supporting insight
‍BCG argue that frameworks are most effective when adapted to the organization - not applied rigidly. Agility should be defined by flow and outcomes, not adherence to structure.

Conclusion: focus on flow, purpose, and people

Agile done right is simple. It’s not about checking boxes or adopting the trendiest framework. It’s about enabling people to solve problems quickly, continuously, and together. That requires flexible planning, empowered teams, healthy products, and practices that fit your reality - not someone else’s.

We’ve seen agile fail. But more importantly, we’ve seen it work - when it’s grounded in purpose, not process.

_References

• _{McKinsey: "Perspectives on transformation" (70% of transformations fail to meet objectives)}
• _{Gartner: Agile and Kanban adoption trends (2023)}
• _{BCG: "The illusion of agility" and agile transformation case studies}
• _{Scrum.org: "Escaping the feature factory"}
• _{Kopenhagen Konsulting client cases and transformation experience}