In a recent post at InfoQ, Mike Bria reports on two recent articles by Johanna Rothman which discuss best practices for agile implementation. The right way to go about an agile transformation is a controversial subject, in which some agile practitioners advocate an “all-in” approach to adoption and other recommend a “toe-dipping” strategy. According to Rothman, both approaches are valid, but what matters is the context in which these approaches are applied. Rothman recommends that an “all-in” approach is appropriate, but only at the project level. Similarly, she believes that “toe-dipping” is also a good idea, but, again, only at the organizational level.
This is consistent with other literature I’ve read on the subject. And, at least for those who know agile and Scrum well, an understandable piece of advice. After all, by beginning an agile transformation with a by-the-book implementation at the project level, the organization can expand its installation in an incremental and iterative fashion. (Sound familiar?) That is, this method actually harnesses agile’s most important principles to provide a framework for expanding it throughout an organization. For example, just as agile does not require development teams to identify all requirements of a project at the outset, an isolated deployment of agile functions like a pilot, allowing the team to observe impediments and collect requirements (and best practices) as the team makes its way through its initial sprints. Once this pilot team feels it has a strong understanding of project management with agile and has amassed some best practices, it’s time for the organization to take the next step in an incremental rollout and create a second agile project team.
Because agile represents such a significant shift in both how work is done and how teams conceive of work, implementing agile at the entire organization from the outset would likely result in disaster. Considering that the single biggest impediment to successful Scrum adoptions is cultural, beginning with a pilot team allows a supportive buzz to build throughout the organization that will lessen resistance when other teams are asked to adopt agile methods.
Posted under Agile Methodology, Scrum
This post was written by admin on September 21, 2009
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Come on guys. Do we still have to convince people about the Agile approach? Long before the word was invented, we already knew that this approach was right.
Walter Royce, who wrote the original paper in 1970, where figure 2 caused the whole waterfall idea, in his text already indicated why waterfall couldn’t work.
If people still have to learn how to work incrementally, iteratively and evolutionarily, putting customer value as highest priority, and making sure we don’t do anything that later will prove to be unnecessary (”waste”), this indicates a deficiency in the educational and managerial system. Either people (as well as managers) are ignorant (not being educated adequately) or they are incompetent (not applying the techniques adequately). If people are ignorant, this indicates incompetence of the educational system.
Let’s move from trying to convince the laggards, to discussing how to optimize the agile practices. After all, being humble enough to admit that we always can learn to do things better, constantly improving using Plan-Do-Check-Act cycles, is the name of the game. Not only to improve the result of the project (the product), but also the way we achieve the result (the project), and even the way we organize all this (the process). Don’t religiously follow any process, like using Scrum, XP or any other fad by the book. Find out when which approach is most appropriate and try that out and keep improving all the time.