Entries tagged with “12 Agile Failure Modes”.


I’m excited! Next week is shaping up to be something of an epic little timebox for me: 3 keynotes in 3 different cities in 3 days. I love it! Sustainable pace? Well, maybe not every week. But next week has me fired up. I’ve got a definition of Done Done Done that has me flying high.

Here is what’s on the agenda for my 3-day extravaganza:

April 5th finds me in Chicago, an old haunt of mine.

I’ll be part of one of my favorite events with Rally and its partners: “Agile Comes to You”. The keynote? “12 Agile Adoption Failure Modes.” I’ll be talking about negative patterns for Agile adoptions. Yes, I know there are more than 12 ways to ensure an Agile adoption fails. But I only have 30 minutes to speak :-) Heading back to Chicago, I look forward to making new friends and meeting up with old friends, especially one of our panelists, Brendan Flynn of PointRoll. I’m eager to find out what Chi-town is up to with the move of Agile onto “main street” (or is that the Magnificent Mile?) Want to join us? Sign-up here, come say hello at the Chicago Marriott Downtown, and share some of your experiences and queries.

April 6th I hop over the border to one of my favorite Canadian cities, Toronto, Ontario.

Here again, I’ll have the honor of bringing my keynote perspectives on how Agile adoptions fail. I’m eager to learn with attendees what they have seen in this great city and the surrounding technology area about their Agile adoptions. And, I look forward to our discussions on how we can truly succeed in adopting Agile for great, sustainable business value. If you are in Toronto on the 6th, join us in this “Agile Comes to You” event at the Toronto Grand Hotel and Suites by signing up here.

April 7th I return home to Denver, the “Mile High City.”

And yes there is another event in store. I’m very honored to have been invited to be the keynote speaker at the inaugural “Mile High Agile” event. This is going to be a particularly special event for me. My colleagues Rachel Weston and Zach Nies will be co-presenting on “Using Agile Principles to Solve Tough Problems in Your Business.” Rally as a Platinum Sponsor is investing in our great Agile community in the Denver area. The air may be thin up here but the interest in Agile is deep and passionate. We are extremely fortunate to have a group of wonderful, hard-working organizers from the Agile Denver group: Brad Swanson, Somnath Ghosh, Walter den Haan, Tom Smallwood, Eric Cussen, Jim Turosak, Jan Beaver, and Jon Archer. Brad has worked with me to engage in one of my favorite topics for the keynote, “Elevating the Agile Community of Thinkers.” This talk affords me the opportunity to continue to share my passion about community as thinkers and thinkers as community in our Agile world. To all my friends along the Front Range here in Colorado, I look forward to seeing you at The Plaza at the Denver Merchandise Mart.

Coming full circle, my “3 strange days” will move through Agile failure modes to the great community of thinkers we gather in our Agile growth and success. As Captain Picard would say, “Warp One! Engage!

Jean Tabaka is a crash skier, college hoops shredologist, author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. You can follow Jean on Twitter at @jeantabaka

ast_summer_21Last week I attended the Agile Success Tour in Santa Clara, CA. I noticed 5 themes to the discussions and breakout sessions with the nearly 200 software and IT leaders in attendance.

Catch the next event in Atlanta on June 25. The event is free, but registration is required.

1. Product Owners are very important

Waterfall product marketing will find it difficult to adapt to the new responsibilities of Agile teams, unless they learn what is expected of the Product Owner. An absent or uneducated Product Owner can handicap a project before it even gets started.

2. For Agile to be successful, you must gain consensus and commitment

When rolling out new Agile teams, you must get consensus both from the team members converting to Agile and your management. Everyone involved needs to understand that growing pains will occur, but ultimately lead to higher performance. In addition, you must dive in and get started with a “burn the boats” mentality that prevents anyone from considering turning back. See Jean’s post on 12 Agile Failure Modes for more on behaviors that can inhibit your success.

3. Distributed teams, though popular, are hard to make successful

With obstacles like quality of life, cultural and time zone differences, and the drag from waiting for decisions, distributed teams pose special challenges that require Agile teams to inspect and adapt with respect to all. Team building at each location, enhancing communication, mentors, travel, group pictures, and sharing the load all help break down barriers that can prevent distributed Agile teams from reaching their potential.

4. Successful Agile adoption can help companies realize quantifiable benefits

Jean Tabaka shared how companies who are adopting Agile development are seeing significant cost savings in their development organizations with faster ROI, improved time-to-market, and increased productivity. In tough economic times, speeding up Agile adoption to help companies realize cost-savings quickly is more critical than ever before.

5. An Agile community is a valuable tool

Agile development may have simple values, but it is not always easy to implement. Capitalizing on the “wisdom of crowds” and learning from each other’s experience are key to avoiding common pitfalls.