Recently, my company decided to go down the road of Agile transformation. The reasons for this request are not unusual: speed to market, ability to adapt to an ever changing market, ability to enable key customer requirements in a short period of time, etc.  Any company would find value and reason to change their internal development processes to better address these goals.

Preparing my group for this change, I scheduled Scrum Master training for everyone. The two-day class was very educational. During one of the lunch breaks, I sat down with the instructor and asked if he could relay his experience in corporate transformation. How many companies achieved the Agile panacea? His answer was very very few. I was surprised because as an Agile advocate, I was expecting him to speak of nothing but roses, rainbows and sunshine.

His reason was that most companies don’t understand what Agile is. They operate under the following misconceptions:

1. Agile is an engineering process exclusively.
2. Agile is free from the sense that it requires no investment.
3. Agile is well-understood by everyone.

These assumptions lead most companies to engage in expensive consultant driven pilots which flop. Productivity decreases dramatically, release dates slip, the scrum teams fracture early with poor participation especially by the product owners. As a result, the company finds themselves at a disadvantage having lost ground to the competition. Millions of dollars of investment lost, most give up and return back to the way they were doing things. They chalk Agile up to an industry fad.

The reasons for the failures?

1. Everybody’s understanding of Agile is different.
2. No executive buy-in for Agile transformation.
3. Roles and responsibilities under Agile not understood.
4. No investment needed to allow Agile to succeed.
5. Managerial interference preventing groups from following the Agile process.

Given that the company wanted to move to Agile in the near future, I started to interview senior program managers with Agile experience. During the phone screens, I would ask these candidates if their companies had successfully transformed their processes from waterfall to Agile. The answer was about ninety percent no and in the remaining ten percent were in a semi-transition which was still under assessment. The reasons were identical to the ones expressed by the instructor.

I am left in a quandary. How can I start my company on the path of successful Agile transformation when so many other companies started with just as ambitious goals only to end in failure. After several brain storming sessions, we arrived at the question.

“Did the company actually want to transform to Agile?”

Did the company really know what it was asking for? Clarity on what was needed to succeed?  I was not. To begin addressing the question, I authored an RFQ to be presented to a variety of consultants for response.

The Goal:

The goal of the activity was to make the company fully cognizant of what changes are required in culture, investment, expectations, role and responsibilities in order to transition from a Waterfall Life Cycle Model to an Agile Life Cycle Model.  

The approach I wanted to take was for the consultants to understand how the company did business currently.

• Assessing current roles and responsibilities
• Understanding our process decision points
• Understanding the company culture
• Reviewing a few post-mortems with my program managers on a some of the more difficult programs we have managed to date.
• Talking to key stakeholders (exec, director and manager) about what are the benefits and detriments of the current development process.
• Assessing with Sales how our development process is meeting our external customer’s needs
  • Customer “Requests for Enhancements” and features.

I wanted the consultants to understand exactly where our current development processes stood. My feelings were that only after understanding could we start understanding how to best transform to Agile.  The consultants are to assess all groups in the company: Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Product Management, Program Management, Operations, Legal, etc.  

Next, the consultants were to call out:

1. Changes to current roles and responsibilities
2. Changes to decision points in process.
3. Changes to culture
4. Assessment of how Agile is better equipped to work with the issues raised by the assessments.
5. How Agile can improve with external customer engagements
6. Explaining approach for Agile for both hardware and software programs
7. Explain approach for Agile using geographically remote teams (ie: China, India, etc)

Additionally to address the common misconception that Agile comes for free, I specifically wanted to outline investments required prior to undertaking the transformation. Specifically:

1. Staffing
   1. Local and remote
   1. Training on Agile processes
      1. Scrum Master
      1. Product Owners
      1. Scrum of Scrum Masters
   1. Video Conferencing
      1. Solution to enable communication be it at the office or taking calls from home
2. SQA Automation
   1. Both staff and hardware

The final deliverable would be education for the company. The consultants will have three different types of education for three different audiences

Educate Executive Level Staff on Agile

Given that one of the largest issues was executive buy-in. I have specifically called out individualized ROI for each executive.

The education will include:

1. What are they currently getting from the current development process? 
   1. What information are they getting and in what format.
   1. What makes them comfortable?
   1. What is working and what is not working.
   1. How are they currently assessing ROI?

• What will it mean to move to Agile?
  • What information will they now get?
  • What about Agile will make them uncomfortable?
    • Why that is OK.

• What will the transformation cost the company?
  • Headcount?
  • Equipment?

• What will have to change culturally?

• ROI
  • What will the individualized ROI be to each executive? What benefits will they realize?
    • What will the ROI be for:
      • Engineering
      • Marketing
      • Product Management
      • Sales
      • Operations
      • Global Services
    • How will we be able to assess the ROI?

Educate Middle Management on Agile

The role of middle management will change dramatically. Management will be questioning their value add to the process as the majority of the tactical decisions will be pushed down to the Scrum Teams. This education will follow the format used for the executives:

1. What are they currently getting from the current development process? 
   1. What information are they getting and in what format.
   1. What makes them comfortable?
   1. What is working and what is not working.
   1. How are they currently assessing ROI?

• What will it mean to move to Agile?
  • Explaining to the middle management where they are going to be uncomfortable with Agile.
  • Explaining the new roles and responsibilities of their teams under Agile.
    • Your reports will  show up at the daily standup
  • Set expectations for Agile development based on industry experiences.
  • Difference in Sales Engagement for Customers under Waterfall vs. Agile development

• What investments (automation, India Product Owners, India Scrum Masters, etc.) does the company need to make in order to have a successful Agile deployment?

• Explaining your new role as a manager under Agile.
  • What does that mean?
  • What are your roles and responsibilities?

• Explaining the ROI under Agile as well as how to assess it.

Educate Managers and Team Leads on Agile

The role of management and team leadership will change dramatically. Management will be questioning their value add to the process as the majority of the execution decisions will be pushed down to the Scrum Teams. This education will again follow the format used for the executives:

1. Explaining the current development process and highlighting the pros and cons of it verses the move to Agile.

• What will it mean to move to Agile?
  • Explain the roles and responsibilities for their team.
  • Set expectations under Agile based on industry experience.
  • Discussing changes to culture.

• Presenting the recommended investments (automation, India Product Owners, India Scrum Masters, etc.) the company is willing to undergo in order to make Agile successful.

• Explaining your new role as a manager under Agile.
  • What does that mean?
  • What are your roles and responsibilities?

• Explaining the execution ROI for the team as well as for the company
  • Providing a means of assessing that ROI.

The Final Goal

Executive staff to render a decision to commit and proceed with Agile implementation.

If the answer is yes, we will determine a program(s) for the pilot and commit to the investments needed to make Agile a success.

If the answer is no, we will have successfully saved the company millions of dollars in piloting a program on Agile which would end up failing.