RallyDev.com
Last Thursday, Dave West from Forrester and I did a live webinar on Scaling Agility with Lean: Proven Methods of Operational Efficiency.
We received lots of great questions and shared them with the webinar attendees, but thought they would also be valuable to other Agile practitioners. This first series of questions tackle the obstacles of adopting Agile. Stay tuned for the remaining questions in later posts.
You can also check out the first webinar, hosted by Jean Tabaka and Johnny Scarborough from Global Logic, on Realizing the Promise of Agile: Creating Leaner, Meaner and Faster Product Development.
DW – is Dave West from Forrester
RAM – is Ryan Martens from Rally
What are the biggest blockers you see to good Agile?
DW – My pet peeves are people that resist change without really thinking about it. That treat software like car production and think that you can plan, deliver in that manner. These same people often lament the ability of the software teams to deliver good code at the right price. Software is a fundamental part of business change – If you need a new part to your business it will most likely require software, which may require development and integration. Connecting up their development with the people who have the problem is the first step to success, empowering teams to try new things and question the status quo in support of those business needs is key. Organizations that put artificial walls between the problem and the solution are the biggest blockers. These may come in the form of planning processes, business access, travel budgets, governance models, standards or culture.
RAM – Good Agile development is a mindset change like Dave is describing above. Overly aggressive or passive plans are the biggest blockers to “good Agile.” You need to think about this change as incremental and iterative with a strong focus on continuous improvement and learning through inspect and adapt feedback loops.
