Agile Development Blog

In this final post of questions and answers from the webinar Dave West from Forrester and I did on Scaling Agility, we cover Agile champions. You can view the archive of this webinar as well as the other webinar in the series, Realizing the Promise of Agile: Creating Leaner, Meaner and Faster Product Development.

DW – Dave West from Forrester
RAM – Ryan Martens from Rally

To work with the business to become Lean, who is an effective champion? Who is an ineffective champion?

DW – Lean businesses have to come from the business. I have seen effective leadership in many places, but always in the business. This might be a Business Unit or a division or it might be across the whole company – But the change needs to come from the business and be expressed in their terms.

RAM – Nothing to add here.

Do groups/departments/teams outside dev typically resist the adoption of Lean activity because of the perception of “loss of control” or authority?

DW – It is true to say that change is always difficult and that any change to undermine the existing power structures in an organization is a problem. I have seen successful implementation of Lean thinking in the following situations. Firstly, there needs to be a reason to change. At the organizational level that can be market forces, cost, and competition. At the BU or project level, failed projects or new products are always a good lead in. Add to the reason a clear plan around the change where power and career are considered. Answer questions like ‘what does this change mean to x ?’

In general the adoption of Lean thinking makes sense, but even if people see the value if it adversely affects them, it is hard to get buy in. Make sure it does not !!

RAM – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ruin parties like this. Do not brush off this kind of concern, we find it is best to address these head-on. You want a fully participative transition to Lean/Agile and these concerns can be addressed in pilots or learning journeys to other local groups who have already gone Agile. Don’t try to avoid the potholes on your adoption path, you should fill them in.

We had taken an Agile initiative but ran into problems as business could not be convinced about the time needs for them. How can we build a case to move to Agile from waterfall in terms of time requirements from business? They were worried about their workload going up?

DW – There is not silver bullet to this problem. The business needs to see the value and the need. Often the best way to get this involvement is by having the first Agile projects be one that has lots of business unknowns. Something new to the business or IT group. In these situations it is clear that the business needs to be involved and thus getting their buy in is easy. Once this project is a success then use that as an example of value and working practices. Find your champions and get them involved. Also, get the business management to believe and reward involvement for their staff.

RAM – I like Dave’s answer, but also don’t be shy about starting without them and assigning a proxy on your team to work with them on their calendar. To get infected by the great team and project benefits of Agile, you have to start somewhere.

Thanks to all of our attendees for your great questions and to Dave for his insights. If you have more questions, please let us know.