Agile TransformationsThat Stick

Nicola Dourambeis

Purple Agility

Enterprise Agile, Innovation & Organizational Transformation

Former salesforce VP, coaching at Yahoo!, learned agile with ThoughtWorks in 2004

Consulting clients include eBay, RMS, Twitter, Zendesk, British Telecom

Focus on people and culture over process. Process enables outcomes

Why Transform?

Agile Transformation Playbook

Danger signs and what to do about them

Why Transform?

Go faster & beat the competition

Increase quality

Build stronger and

happier teams

Scale

We’ve crossed the chasm

Going agile is no longer a question

Agile is table stakes

If we all agree, then why is it so

hard?

Change is hard

People resist change

Agile is all about people

Dysfunction must be addressed

It’s important to be:

Bold

Determined

Consistent

Kind

Bold

Agile

Transformation

Playbook

How to make it stick?

Agile has to be part of the culture – everything changes

Don’t focus on mechanics, focus on values, principles & behaviors

Look for and remove systemic blockers

Get leaders aligned

Determine what outcomes you are trying to achieve

*(this make take some time to do)

Technical:

How do you do builds?

Do you have continuous integration?

Do you have test automation frameworks?

Can teams mock?

Determine your infrastructure

Organizational:

Are you staffed to build cross functional teams of 10 or less?

Are those teams persistent?

Are there ScrumMasters and Product Owners?

Do the teams have backlogs which own portions of the technology?

Determine your infrastructure

Form a cross functional leadership team to make decisions which impact the whole organization

Build your organizational backlog

Definition of Done

Roles and Responsibilities

Environments, Tools & Metrics

Delivery Rhythm and Planning Cadence

Requirements and Dependency Management

Technical Debt strategy

Way to stay visible

…but resist defining everything

Add large scale process only when it is needed

Train Everyone in Agile

Leaders

Managers

Whole teams

* Everybody – even those people who’ve “been doing it for years”

Bottom Up Release Plan

Whole teams

Expect this to reveal hard truths

Allow the teams start without too much tweaking

They will make mistakes. They may feel confused.

Help them see tradeoffs and make wise decisions

Do not over – coach

Let them own the details of their process

Keep them visible and accountable

Let them fail fast and reset

Danger Signs

And what to doDanger Signs

and what to do about them

There’s so much process, teams (or you) forget what outcomes you are trying to achieve.

Backlash or

Mechanics thrive but teams do not improve

Process Overload

The Fix

Go back to basics

Focus on the “what” and “why” rather than the “how”

Push decision making lower

Take a hard look at your metrics – people take their cues from what you collect

Step one – select tool

Step two – determine process

Step three – train people on tool and it’s process

Tool enforcement pain

The Fix

Put away the tool in favor of simple, collaboration tools

Allow teams to customize their process to their work and context

ScrumMasters are not developed (or rotating or part-time or shared with any number of roles)

Product Owners are not bought it to a “development process”

Role Confusion

SMs - Name SMs, build job descriptions & success metrics. Develop community for shared learning

Ensure rollout (and rollout team) is comprehensive, not just engineering. PMs (and their managers) need skin in the game

The Fix

Decision Making is held; no self organization

Leaders are unable to push decision making down to teams.

Managers don’t have a new job, continue directive style, assignments, estimates and commitments

The Fix

Coach leaders on the impact of their actions to outcomes. Bring in data rather than arguments.

Give managers a real role in the agile org which is different from their previous one. Critical partners to create agile culture.

Too Many Metrics

Lots of Gaming

Detailed scorecards look good but teams are not succeeding or improving

Reporting is a burden and it’s tough to know how to action off data

The Fix

Simplify – go back to desired outcomes

Measure no more than 5 things

Remind people of the “why” so metrics have value and promote course correction

Final Thoughts

Genuine transformation takes time – remember it’s culture change

Execute playbook quickly but inspect and adapt often

Fail fast and find successes to amplify

Questions?