5 Steps to Agile Transformation: Planning For Success

Many are or will be implementing Agile in some form or another.  For some, they are on their second, third, or even fourth attempt to really integrate and leverage Agile.  Where Agile implementations fail is rarely with developers or other project staff.

Executives and other Senior Leaders are often the cause of failure or excess friction due to their hope that Agile will simply be faster and cheaper without having to change the organization’s culture.

In this post we focus on the 5 Steps to planning a successful Agile transformation that you can take back and apply all at once or one by one over time.

This post is for those who are considering, planning, or have done an Agile Transformation if it did not “stick” as well as you would have liked.  If you want to improve your teams’ probability of success moving to Agile or any methodology, read on!

Here is the presentation that accompanies this post:
https://www.slideshare.net/DARaynor/innotech-austin-2018-agile-planning-5-steps-to-agile-transformation-planning-for-success

New Frontiers: Transforming to and championing Agile Transformation

Moving to Agile or even a hybrid methodology is a Business Transformation Change Management effort.  Here is a bit of information on failure and success.

Reasons for Failure or Hassles

• Management pushes Agile yet is not willing to adapt processes including planning and reporting.
• Teams adopt Agile with little Business Transformation Change Management effort to persuade others.
• Treating an Agile Transformation as a Sprint rather than a project.

Two Flavors of Success

• Grassroots – Teams adopt Agile.  Customers support.  Organization leaves them alone.
• Top Down – Management pushes Agile.  Teams are given support and time to normalize.  Organization processes adapt including planning and reporting.

There are many possible paths to success with Agile.  Below we outline a proven 5 Step Process that may save a fail or two and greatly speed your adoption and acceptance of Agile.  We can only skim the surface on what should be done in this post.  If you would like to discuss your options, please contact us.

1. Plan Your Agile Transformation Like A Project!
2. Drive Realistic Schedule and Resource Needs.
3. Secure Executive Involvement and All Resources.
4. Execute and Communicate by Your Plan.
5. Support Agile Retrospective Team Engagement.

Plan Your Agile Transformation Like A Project!

This is a normal part of most projects, especially important ones.  Follow the normal steps you would for any large budget project, except concentrate on the communication aspects of the project.  Make sure you cover the items below.

• Schedule – Practice Agile: Work estimates should drive your schedule. 
• Resources Needed – Executives up to CxO, Internal Customers, and Staff. 
• Executive Involvement – Regular short Alignment Sessions. 
• Communications – Formal, including Escalation, and Informal Permission. 
• Ongoing Processes – To change habits you need 16 weeks of stability.

Important during Start

• Systems Thinking: Who are all the stakeholders including those who authorize projects through implementation and Ops?
• Goals: What is reasonable to expect in terms of product and process?
• Engage: Involve everyone with small tasks and communication.  This will really set new process expectations and roles and responsibilities.

Drive Realistic Schedule and Resource Needs

Your project is NOT a software installation or methodology writing or adoption project.  It is a project that will change how many people, including executives, perform their duties and fulfill expectations.  In order to have success with your Business Transformation Change Management project, you must communicate early, often, repetitively, and influence executives and others with power to do the same.

If you get the above people influencing under close supervision, you will find that it will take the majority of your project time and resources to influence all those who must get on the bus.  Changing your culture is not a task to be taken lightly, in either terms of effort or possible failure.

Secure Executive Involvement and All Resources

Without strong and ongoing executive support you are either doomed to failure or to take the long road (years if not decades) of grassroots support and spreading of Agile.  If your senior leaders want this transformation, for whatever reason, then you must guide them in their role if you are to be successful in your first attempt to instill Agile in your organization.  Below are just a few of the opportunities you have to drive executive behaviors.

• Peer Influencing / Top of Mind.
• Continued Escalation and other support.
• Public Resource Alignment.
• Meeting Attendance.
• Discretionary Budget by Project Manager.
• Steady Public Recognition of Teams and other Stakeholders.

Execute and Communicate Your Plan

As you execute, your communication should be more persuasive than in a software project.  It should be more like a process improvement project.  Your Communication Plan or section of your Project Plan that discusses communication should be very robust with enough details so that executives and other influencers really understand how they can help.

Indeed, communication should be at least half, and more likely a larger majority of your effort, tasks, budget, time, and resources.  Without this focus, you will likely, best case, have huge hassles and face delay of actual implementation and adoption.  Worst case, you could fail.

Remember, you are not managing a software, process improvement, or tools project, you are managing a “Change People’s way of Working and Thinking” project.

Support Agile Retrospective Team Engagement

Leading by example, or as we called it at a firm where I was COO of a business unit, we need to “Eat Our Own Dogfood” or EOODF to save space in emails since we said it so often.

The Agile Retrospective is the perfect place to show that you are adopting Agile and that you are soliciting feedback from your team and others and acting on it.  Start your Retrospectives during the planning of your project by completing them after each and every mini-phase in your planning.

While there are many aspects that could and should be addressed in your project, perhaps the most important one to get everyone used to is adjusting planned capacity according to actuals or in Agile terms, actual velocity.

To review, we can simply say that moving to Agile is hard, due to having to reset expectations of decades long processes such as detailed planning, answering to a higher authority when a team is “late,” and other misconceptions.  Ensuring you have support, not just head-nodding, but real allocation of resources including executive time, is perhaps the most critical success factor.  With planning and cooperation, the benefits of Agile can be felt in your organization.  Go for it!

Our newest soft skills course covers these and many other topics in an experiential way and while useful for everyone is especially valuable for those in or seeking or wanting to improve their performance in formal or informal leadership positions.

Topics include: Who We Are & What We Do as Leaders, Change Yourself First, Set and Fulfill Expectations, Lead By Example: Model the Behavior You Want, and many more.  www.dataanalysis.com/training/courses/impactful-leadership-and-management-best-practices-for-supervisors-to-cxos

What Should Leaders Do to Leverage Decision Processes?  Your Thoughts?

Thoughts on how you can best improve your skills that we did not touch on?  Good luck and keep your eye out for ways to improve your decision processes for your teams!

Your path to business success.