In this short article, I will discuss my experience with Agile transformations as a Scrum Master. My intent is to pass along knowledge regarding what worked for me during 4 Agile transformations.
In general, companies moving to an adaptive agile methodology have a common factor: They seek better efficiency and a faster time to market. Following a straight predictive waterfall methodology isn’t working well for those who require faster response to changing markets. Even if your company executives push a directive to move to Agile, as a Scrum Master you will still face resistance from others in your organization. Your business owners might be skeptical, the business analyst may feel threatened, the developers may have been through this before and it failed, maybe your manager doesn’t buy into the idea. I have been through these situations where a company says they want to go Agile, but somewhere along the way the initiative gets lost and its never fully implemented. I will go over what has worked for my practice as a Scrum Master and how this could work for you.
Be an Evangelist for the Agile Transformation
You must be the one person who believes in the Scrum Framework and evangelize the benefits it can have towards organizational strategy. The benefits such as flexibility to handle changing software requirements, the ability to show the customer working software frequently, the benefit of continuous improvement, and many more. What specific value will Scrum give versus the old ways of the waterfall methodology? I always use one of the biggest advantages of using Scrum: The ability to handle changing requirements. It happens on every single project I have ever managed. There is absolutely no way to fully know the software requirements and estimate in hours the amount of work required to deliver to production. Never. Make these points and preach all the benefits and stay positive.
Make Small Changes
I have never believed in the big-bang approach to introducing change into the organization. It never seems to work for large software implementations and certainly will challenge you if doing the same for process change. Agile transformations can appear to be radical changes to many and you have to start out slow.
Motivate the Team
I feel the developers and testers are the easiest people to get on board the Scrum framework. Most of the time, the development team is the most frustrated of anyone else because they are the ones on the ground who could be dealing with a broken process. Scrum may be their only hope to get better at developing and releasing good, quality software. Feel out any complaints with their existing process and evangelize the benefits of doing things better. Also, measure your team’s health using a Team Health Radar. A Team Health Radar is a self-assessment that measures how the team feels about a variety of different dimensions. These dimensions include their work, environment, leadership, communication, work pace, and others. This will help you understand how the team feels during the transition and gives a good indicator for where to address shortcomings.
Deliver Results
This is very important. I recommend beginning with a pilot sprint. Do not set the bar too high, instead, make sure the team can deliver the sprint commitment. Use this sprint to get your team acclimatized to the Scrum Framework. You will need to use your leadership skills. Here is the outcome you should strive towards: The team will deliver what they committed to and you will be able to build upon the success. This leads to my next point.
Build upon Team Success
It could take up to 4 sprints before the team and stakeholders see real results. By this time, you will have a solid velocity that can be used to forecast the remaining sprints. But here is my point: Scrum is all about continuous improvement. You must adjust and adapt your process to make the next sprint better. As you begin to deliver your commitments, build upon the success of each sprint. Make it a habit to communicate you your executive team how the project is progressing.
Conclusion
You can make a difference during an Agile transformation. Even if you have a team that has already implemented an Agile Framework, you must lead the team towards more continuous improvement.
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