Somewhat new (6 months) to Cisco, and I am a SA. Can someone help me understand why we are doing Agile TSA cause it seems problematic and not very customer friendly based on my limited experience so far.
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Management: "Sales number are not good. What is the problem? Must be the engineers. We need to give them more QTP assignments, they must master Salesforce, let's get them to record training videos, we need them forecasting, we need agile TSA"
Engineers: "Can you please leave us alone so we can do what we do best?"
Management:"Huh?"
In this thread: bad SAs complaining because now they have to own the technical relationship and know something themselves and not just punt to the tsa.
Agile works great if the SA doesn’t suck. Of course most do these days. They couldn’t even spell CCIE. Turned into baby AMs.
Our SED in Central is weak. Completely aware of the issues but won’t actually stand up and represent the field.
"Agile" as a general concept is misused heavily every place I've worked. Years ago I was one of the first "Agile" trained employees at Cisco. However, I repeatedly witnessed people misusing "Agile", or calling their projects "Agile" when they were not. Agile as a practice at Cisco needs to be a hybrid model (mix of Agile and traditional mgmt) due to the type of structure many Cisco customers have. I always laugh when Agile is used to try and fix problems at Cisco....all it does is make things worse.
CX can't have smart engineers in the field solving customer problems. They have to convince customers to pay for services.
This has been the dream of Cisco service leaders from the beginning of time.
Actually the best TSAs are leaving. Ask Data Center and EN. This Agile TSA is a debacle. The SAs are going to it next. The SAs are already on the socialist plan as for commissions and will be going down this path too.
The reason some TSAs are leaving is because they can’t hide out anymore. Since they are being tracked they have to work.
Agile TSA takes away financial incentives?
I am in Commercial and Agile TSA is a complete failure. Commercial continues to lose some of their best people due to Agile TSA and Click to Expert. All this sounds great in theory but it does not work. Why have so many people left due to this. Why are SEDs so afraid to stand up against it.
Enterprise is irrelevant. Been in a long downward slide. Commercial and public sector are all that matters and agile works great for them.
Agile TSA is an abysmal failure. It is also causing the top TSA's to rapidly leave. It works for commercial because they are low / no skilled TSA's who only go in wham bam thank you one time meetings with customers. It does NOT work for large accounts and enterprise accounts where planning meetings and relationships matter. The TSAs also said that the way they are goaled means they dont get paid or have any impact on their paycheck. They used to have a goal on specific sets of accounts now it is for all of the west, commercial west + enterprise west + sled west. They have no way to ever impact their own paychecks or future any longer. Why bother staying? Why care about a deal any longer?
Every agile TSA engagement we have done since this disaster of a program rolled out has been abysmal. We used to have good high quality enterprise TSA's now we have the left over bottom of the barrel from the agile pool. They know nothing and are useless. We've lost multiple deals from this and nobody will listen or do anything.
Many understand Agile TSA, and there is a place for it, but unfortunately it is being used as a blanket statement across the board. One size DOES NOT fit all. Agile TSA is career limiting to every TSA. In the Agile TSA approach, you cannot impact your business, career and you cannot grow. Agile TSA diminishes the impact and importance of building technical customer relationships. Why is the competition kicking out butts. One of the reasons is due to the fact the competition is allowing their engineers and architects to own the technical relationship with customers. Has anyone tried to leverage Agile for EN or Data Center. It is a complete joke and those in charge act like there are no issues.
Agile TSA is limiting career opportunities for TSAs. You are a technical call center monkey.
Why are there no open discussions with Cisco leadership and with the field. Why are the significant issues with Agile TSA being minimized. Why not right-size Agile TSA cause there is a fit for it, but mainly in small and midsize where is it always transactional business.
Why have so many left Cisco due to this. No one answers that.
Agile TSA is becoming a liability and leadership is unwilling to admit this nor have transparent conversations with the field and hear all the issues.
I love Agile. I wish people could explain why they don't like.
All I hear are people who don't like their manager or they don't like Agile, or Agile is ki----g the business, bla, bla, bla, I hate Agile, bla, bla, bla...
Nobody ever really spends the time to understand Agile enough to put forth logical conclusive arguments against Agile. ...Ever, because they bristle at Agile and hate it enough to not learn anything about Agile, ever.
And so from a distance it sounds like:
I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile
I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile
I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile
I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile
I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile
I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile
I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile
I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile
I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile I hate Agile
The account planning meetings don’t go away just cause of Agile TSA. In fact, you will have more internal prep meetings than ever before. Agile TSA is Eric Knipp’s way of diminishing the value of the architectural TSAs. We have already lost big deals in EN and Data Center due to Agile TSA. Of course, Eric Knipp is not tracking that metric.
As a TSA I like it as I can focus on solving customer problems with our technology technology instead of sitting in never ending account planning meetings. I am way more productive. We should have done this years ago.
Data Center support from Agile TSA is downright awful. We have lost some of our best Data Center TSAs due to this. Our competition is already using Agile TSA against us. SEDs don’t have the boldness to stand up to Eric Knipp nor do SEDs stand up for their own people. Our SED in Central is fully aware of the issues with Agile TSA but won’t say anything and expects his SEMs to fix this program instead of him getting engaged, understanding the problems and driving improvement.
What happens (when quality is down and customer issues are up) is that someone comes along and appears motivated, because they needs a bonus.
If this money motivated person is able to get a team of trained Agile coaches to convince a few other managers that they could get a bonus too, then viola. We have a recipe for success.
At least until all the managers get their bonuses and move on to another Cisco group, with a whole new audience of young recruits.
Don't worry, In a year or so, someone else will need a bonus, and find a new "program" to sell to the masses, in order to stay in power and take our bonuses.
The people Cisco hires these days, initially, don't know any difference between social media and a router anyway.
You get what you pay for. And then lay them off once they're old enough to know better.
Because it’s Eric Knipp’s way of “saving money” and “improving efficiencies” to ELT without actually talking to the field for feedback before implementing.
Can you be more specific? It’s just more efficient.