I just finished a series for my Pragmatic Manager newsletter about Agile Transformation Secrets: Part 1: Manage for Change Part 2: Emphasize Collaboration Part 3: Principles Over Practices I wrote this series because I find that many people get a little confused about an agile transformation. They think an agile approach will work because they […]
One of my clients has many reasons for wanting an agile transformation. Their old products are at the end of their lives. They need agile approaches so they can get feedback from customers as they develop the new products. They need to deliver to their customers more often. They need to create a mix of
Gil Broza and I are thrilled to announce the updated version of our flagship workshop, the Influential Agile Leader. If you have these kinds of challenges: Your business can’t “stop” to recreate itself as an agile organization. You need to continue and to nurture the cultural changes necessary for a successful agile transformation. You don’t
We might start to think about agile approaches as a project change. However, if you want to “scale” agile, the entire culture changes. Here is a list of the series and how everything changes the organization’s culture: Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 1: Creating Cross-Functional Feature Teams. Without feature teams, I don’t see how you can
Several years ago, I wrote a post for a different blog called “Why Team Size Matters.” That post is long gone. I explained that the number of communication paths in the team does not increase linearly as the team size increases; team communication paths square when the team increases linearly. Here is the calculation where N is
People often ask me, “When is agile right or not right for a project?” I’ve said before that if the team wants to go agile, that’s great. If the team doesn’t, don’t use agile. That answer is insufficient. In addition to the team, we need management to not create a bad environment for agile. You
Here’s something I see in many organizations: Management wants to “control and manage” the projects/efforts/work (whatever they call it) in the same way they did before the organization started agile. They want Gantt charts. They want commitments. They want assurances that the work will proceed in the same way they thought of it before the
In Stuck in the Middle, Part 1, I discussed possible management problems with agile. Those aren’t the only stuck problems I see. Sometimes, I see team problems. What if the teams are “almost agile”—they still have too many experts, their stories are too big, they don’t always deliver value on a regular basis? You know
In part 1, I addressed some management challenges with an agile transition. In part 2, I addressed some team issues. In this part, I’ll discuss why agile is a culture change and ways to consider a system change to agile. Agile looks something like this image. The responsible person (often called a product owner)
A couple of weeks ago, I had a great time participating in the Agile in Large Enterprises panel, a part of the Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) that Electric Cloud hosts. Here’s the recording: We discussed these questions: Why agile in large enterprises and what are the challenges? Where should you start? Centralized? Decentralized? Where should agile