During the past decade, agile has emerged as a popular product development methodology with more than 80,000 certified ScrumMasters, according to the nonprofit Scrum Alliance, and many times more agile practitioners. More and more teams want to build a relationship with agile, but they are not sure how to get there. Taking a big bang approach to agile is not a viable option for many organizations, as most successful adoptions of agile are tailored to the strengths and limitations of the specific organization. This article provides an overview of agile adoption using the metaphor of human relationships.

Figure 1 describes the four phases of the agile adoption process: Explore, Commit, Transform, and Expand.

Figure 1: Agile adoption phases

Let’s take an in-depth look at these phases to understand the key steps of each. Agile does not need an organization; an effective organization needs agile. Hence, leaders of the organizations should initiate a relationship with agile. Figure 2 describes how this relationship matures.

Figure 2: Build a relationship with agile

Phase 1: Explore (Getting started in a new relationship)
This phase is about getting started in a new relationship—finding someone attractive, falling in love, and deciding if this relationship is worth pursuing as a formal engagement.

Infatuation
Reading this article signifies that you are already attracted to agile. There could be many reasons for this attraction: You are intrigued by the thrill of something that is new, popular, and gaining mainstream attention; your customers are very demanding and your organization needs to embrace rapid change; you find it difficult to become effective in a controlled environment, and you like how agile promotes self-organization; and agile experience is becoming mandatory in today’s job market.

Agile may appeal to you, but it is important to determine whether it will add value to your organization. You need to do a quick value assessment to understand if you should give it a try. You can start by reviewing the Agile Manifesto (value proposition). If agile can add value to your organization, then you are ready to take your adoption to the next level.

Dating
If you continue to feel that agile and your organization are a good match, it is time to test the relationship by doing a pilot project. Pick a project team that is best suited to agile. Let this team explore agile principles to help you validate the value proposition. You may need to make an investment (e.g., infrastructure for automatic daily builds, tools for automated testing etc.) to support the pilot team as it experiments with the new methodology. If possible, get a part-time coach to guide the team through the pilot.

Engage
Don’t let the pilot run endlessly. At some point, you need to decide if it is worth a long-term commitment. The pilot should provide you with data points to help you make this decision.

Phase 2: Commit (Exchange vows)
Once an organization decides to “engage” formally with agile, it is very important for them to “exchange vows” for a sustained relationship. It is critical that leaders of the organization understand that success cannot be achieved without fulfilling these key commitments:

Commit to change: Agile is all about embracing change. Therefore, organizations should be prepared for cultural changes. Leaders should create a transition plan for the change and communicate the necessity for change.

Commit to trust and collaborate: Trust and collaboration are key building blocks of any relationship. Your relationship with agile is no different. Trust is needed to promote a culture of self-organization; collaboration is needed to support a culture of trust.

Commit to invest in the relationship: The agile tool kit of engineering best practices is attractive—you need to invest in this tool kit to keep agile attractive forever. You will need to invest in experts to make this journey comfortable.

Commit to inspect and adapt: No relationship or process is perfect. Perfection comes from continuous inspection and adaptation.

Commit to stay together: There is a natural tendency to gravitate toward other attractions; however, it is important to stay with your first choice. If you opt for Scrum, to realize expected benefits, you must avoid “Scrum-but” [1].  “Scrum-but” refers to agile teams that are trying Scrum processes but are experiencing challenges.  For example, a group that is exhibiting “Scrum-but” might say something like, “We are practicing Scrum, but our sprints are anywhere between 6 to 8 weeks;” or “We are practicing Scrum, but we don't always deliver working code at the end of the iteration.”

Celebrate: Last but not least—don’t forget to celebrate. Cherish your decision and get ready for a value-driven journey.

Phase 3: Transform (Mature bonding)
This phase focuses on settling down in the relationship—e.g., stand-ups every morning, incremental investment for the betterment of life, sharing likes and dislikes, and collaboration and adjustment. This simple philosophy transforms a group of individuals into a high-functioning team.

Incremental Investment
The process of transformation requires some investment to create a stable base. If you need a brick house, then you need to invest in bricks. You cannot get desired stability by using sticks instead of bricks. Similarly, agile needs key building blocks to provide the most stable and value-driven culture. You don’t need to invest in everything up front. Your teams need to continuously inspect and make the appropriate choices in the following key investment areas:

Training/Coaching: Validate your approach and expedite the learning process with appropriate training and coaching.

Cross-functional teams: To increase collaboration and self-organization, avoid silos.

Engineering best practices: If you can’t build, deploy, and test daily, forget about agile.

Tools and infrastructure: Do you have sufficient infrastructure to support automation and various kinds of testing? Will an agile tool help reinforce key principles?

Inspect and Adapt
Agile’s iterative nature provides an opportunity to observe on a daily basis how things are progressing. In addition, it provides an opportunity to review the whole iteration at the end (retrospective) and identify areas for improvement. If we observe the right things and make the right choices, then we can improve as much as we want. Unfortunately, we were not born knowing the right things to observe. That’s why “inspect and adapt” plays a key role in the transformation. You may wish to inspect a few things more closely:

Relationship (process) maturity: In the beginning, it is difficult for teams to understand the practical value of agile concepts. Teams can create an agile maturity scorecard and review it after every iteration to take incremental improvement steps until they mature in all areas. A scorecard is a useful way to answer the question, “Are we doing agile?” There is much more to high performance than just following the process; the process is more of a starting point. You can get a sample scorecard at my blog [2].

Agile attitude: This is perhaps the most difficult part of the adoption process and may take a long time to fix—especially at the management level. Key elements of the agile attitude include:

• Change is the norm, not the exception.
• Reality rules, not the project plan.
• The future, not the past, drives the baseline.
• The process serves the people—it does not handcuff them.
• Leading takes precedence over managing.

Self-realization: The iterative and incremental nature of the process helps people gain efficiency by self-realization. Daily standup meetings and frequent retrospectives make people more receptive to constructive feedback and continuous improvement. This part of agile plays a key role in transforming good teams to hyperproductive teams.

Goals and expectations: Agile adoption goals should be reviewed on a regular basis as the targets may change with continuous learning. It is important to set the right expectations for the stakeholders.

Phase 4: Expand (Grow family)
This phase is focused on enjoying the fruits of the hard work of the previous phases. It is time to grow and celebrate.

Expand business: Agile drives faster time to market, which results in increased business opportunities.

Expand portfolio: Agile results in low-cost change, which increases operational efficiency to expand portfolio.

Expand agile adoption: Agile builds hyperproductive teams, which set a good example for others to follow.

In a nutshell, agile adoption is a big cultural change—and it is not easy. If you are the change agent in your organization and charged with setting up the agile relationship, then remember: Winners never quit; they inspect and adapt.

I wish you all the best as you explore, commit, transform, and expand your agile family. If you are new to agile, visit the self-learning guide on my blog [3]. You can also watch the following video to get a better understanding of the model and its relationship with agility.

References

[1] Scrum But: http://blog.versionone.com/blog/productive-agility/but-scrum.

[2] Sample agile maturity scorecard: http://www.agilehelpline.com/2011/02/inspect-adapt-scrum-assessment.html.

[3] Self-learning guide: http://www.agilehelpline.com/p/resources.html.

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