1. Educate Leaders and Sponsors on Agile Adoption
Make sure that senior leaders, executives and sponsors clearly understand the Agile Mindset, the goals they are trying to achieve by adopting the Agile Mindset, and what they need to do to support this change. Too many leaders think “going Agile” is making a decision and writing a check for consultants and training. Most fail to appreciate this sort of change requires their sustained commitment and attention.
Helpful Hint: Begin this conversation about the Agile Mindset and the concrete goals the organization wants to achieve early with leaders, ideally before you even start down the Agile road.
2. Anticipate Resistance From Middle Management
Once the senior leaders and executives understand the need for change, most get behind the decision and support the new way of working. Then something peculiar happens – nothing. The energy, drive and momentum from the executive suite hits what I call the “middle management diffusion layer.” The middle managers – for whatever reason – simply decide not to implement the executive direction or slow walk the implementation. IME, the middle management diffusion layer is where energy goes to die and where most Agile transitions stall out.
Helpful Hint: Anticipate the likely pockets of resistance in middle management and take time to listen to their concerns. By addressing their concerns, you can make them more comfortable with implementation.
3. Let Legacy Contracts Expire
Most contracts with vendors and outside partners were written using the Industrial Mindset. This means until these legacy contracts expire and/or can be renegotiated, the Agile environment you are trying to create will have a big, Industrial Mindset anchor holding it back.
Helpful Hint: Review your contracts to see when they expire. When they expire, renegotiate them to be more Agile. For some ideas about what constitutes an Agile contract, check out this whitepaper which I found very insightful.
4. Rethink Your Staffing & Resource Plans
Most staffing and resource plans were created with the assumption that people are fungible, interchangeable, and work best when organized by specialities. This way, at least on paper, a single individual’s utilization in their area of speciality can be optimized to nearly 100%. The goal to utilize someone’s time at 100% is pure Industrial Mindset and, unfortunately, that never works, e.g. look at any Southern California freeway at rush hour.
Helpful Hint: Build staffing plans which focus on dedicated, cross-functional teams, and also have built in slack to accommodate the unexpected.
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