Summary: Is your company going through an agile transformation. In January 2016, the product/development team and I where sent to a 6 month full-time training engagement to bring agile transformation to our product team and enterprise. I think it is time that I write about it. Here are some things you should consider while starting or going through your agile transformation.
Stage of transformation
I have observed 4 stages of transformation.
- Training
- Team integration
- Plateau
- Enterprise integration
Training:
Choose a product and IT team that works on a product that can quickly show business and customer experience (CX) results. Pick a vendor to send your entire team off site to learn the agile and lean UX process. The vendor should be an industry leader in training organizations to transform from waterfall to agile and at integrating lean UX research and design into that process. You should work on your actually product while off site. Lastly, look for small wins and ways you can quickly demonstrate how the agile process will accomplish business goals and improve customer experience at a faster rate.
Team integration:
Your team will come back after 4-6 months to your organization. The team will have push through. This will cause conflict while working with other waterfall teams but embrace it. Figure our a process of working with waterfall teams and still with it. Pick and choose your battles. Use your political capitol wisely and little by little. Don't be surprised if some of your team members use all their political, get burned out and leave the company for new opportunities elsewhere. Transformation is a tiring tasks but rewarding work.
Plateau:
Around 2 years in, your single product team that you chose to start the transformation will be full agile. The problem now is they have to work with waterfall teams. The good news is that business leaders across the company will see your teams success and push other IT and product teams to go agile.
Enterprise integration:
At the 3 year mark, other IT and product teams within the enterprise should start making real process changes to transform from waterfall to agile. This will be hard for them and will take each team 3-5 years to transform to a full agile process. If you are an executive at a company, here is what you can do to move your enterprise forward. 1.) Pair up waterfall team members with agile team members. 2.) Guide each team to start with projects that are low risk and have high business and CX impact. 3.) When agile seems to fail the company, don't give up, back up your team and the process with senior leaders/executives in your enterprise and help your team learn and grow with each failure.