Agile Development Blog

Just published in Dr. Dobb’s is my article on Agile Social Contracts;  It covers the process of Agile rollout planning and the burning need for a clear commitment to your teams and organization.  What is not as well covered are the other four components.

I make the argument in the article that Agile enterprise adoption is easy, if you are prepared and crisp with the right structure and discipline.

Here are the five items you need to be successful at Agile release planning or Agile Enterprise Rollout planning:

Release Planning Structure		Agile Enterprise Rollout Structure
Team – Cross-Functional Development Team	1	Team – Cross-Function Transition/Steering Team
Commitment -  To the Definition of Done	2	Commitment – To changes in external metrics
Contract – Team Norms	3	Contract – Social Contract with the Organization
Roadmap – Product Increments	4	Roadmap – Flow-Pull-Innovate transition steps
Vision – Product/Service	5	Vision – Organization, Process & Technology

Agile Rollout planning is best done like sprint or release planning. This is what I and others mean when we say “using Agile to rollout Agile.“  We use the same methods, structures, and process to rollout Agile as we do to manage our development.  This gets senior managers and executives talking and experiencing Agile along with all the practicing teams.  It leads the transition team to the benefits of visibility, alignment and frequent feedback cycles.  When this is done, it makes Agile Enterprise rollouts as easy as Agile software development.

For more details on our approach to enterprise Agile rollouts, please see the post An Alternative to Agile Adoption Cookbooks – Flow, Pull, Innovate.   This approached is based on a concept of  Shu-Ha-Ri (See Alan Atlas’ post on DIY vs. Shu-Ha-Ri).

For a detailed example on a rollout plan that uses the Flow-Pull-Innovate approach – see the post Agile Transition Plans – an example.

About the Author: Ryan Martens is a backyard chicken farmer, founding board member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, and Founder and CTO at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.