Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I’ve met a number of agile coaches recently. They tell me they’re hired as Scrum coaches or as Scrum Masters. They see their job as “better Scrum.” It would be lovely if that was their one and only job. However, many of these coaches work in organizations just starting a cultural transformation. Even though the …
I spoke with an aspiring coach earlier this week. He asked me if people I ever coached were “resistant.” I don’t label people as “resistant.” If I need to label them, I think about this term, “People with data I should hear.” I like to think about what people resist, especially people in technical organizations. …
Continue reading “Resisting Change or Resisting a Pushed Solution”
Part of what makes an agile transformation difficult is the cultural change required. That’s what makes an agile transformation a journey. A client said to me, “I want the agile. The agile is good stuff: faster delivery of smaller stuff that we can get revenue for. I want it now. How fast can I get …
Continue reading “Agile Transformation is a Journey, Part 6”
I’ve been thinking more about possible measurements in an agile transformation journey. The first Possible Measurements post focuses on product throughput measurements. This post will focus on measurements you might see when the culture changes with an agile transformation. Again, do start with your why. Without knowing why you want to use agile approaches throughout the organization, …
Continue reading “Agile Transformation: More Possible Organizational Measurements, Part 5”
“What should I measure???” is one of the questions I see when I work with people going through an agile transformation. Too often, managers measure people as individuals. (Traditional measurements focus on resource efficiency instead of flow efficiency.) Resource efficiency measures don’t measure what the organization delivers or what prevents the organization from delivering. This …
Continue reading “Agile Transformation: Possible Organizational Measurements, Part 4”
If you read my scaling agile series, you can see that becoming an agile organization requires seeing your organization as a system with a culture. You can start with teams, move to programs and the product part of the organization. If you don’t also address the cultural problems of rewards, you won’t continue with your …
Continue reading “Agile Transformation: See Your System and Culture, Part 3”
Agile culture is about the ability to change. (You need to know why you want to change, but once you know that, agile cultures promote change.) We (as agile teams and organizations) deliver something to get some feedback and learning. We use that feedback and learning about what we just did to challenge our assumptions …
Continue reading “Agile Transformation: Practice Change, Part 2”
Let me circle back around to what HR does, as in Part 1: Administration and Benefits Compensation and rewards Education and training Recruitment Hiring Of these, it makes sense to change the compensation and rewards approach, recruitment and hiring if the organization wants to create an agile culture. It’s possible to create a more agile …
What can we make more “agile” in HR? Aside from an agile approach to recruiting and hiring, we can make feedback and coaching much more iterative and incremental. Add in collaborative feedback and coaching, and appreciations, and it starts to look like an agile approach to “managing performance.” In the past, managers held all the …
Continue reading “Creating Agile HR, Part 7: Agile Feedback and Coaching”
To summarize: your agile transformation is stuck. You’ve thought about your why, as in Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 1: Define Your Why. You’ve started to measure possibilities. You have an idea of who you might talk with as in Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 2: Who to Approach. You’ve considered who you need as allies and how to enlist them …
Continue reading “Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 5: Learning to Learn”