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If you begin an agile transformation without a plan, you are merely wishing for agility to happen in your company. Planning is key to success. When beginning an agile transformation, the Agile Project Manager must list the needs of the company, the risks, and the constraints. In one Fortune 500 company I worked in while leading an agile transformation, I listed the needs as being the following (in order of priority):
- Projects must be completed in shorter durations
- Changes to project scope must be accepted and not rejected
- Project deliverables must meet and exceed customer expectations
The following are a few of the constraints that exists in many companies that are attempting to move toward agility:
- Resources will not be 100 percent dedicated to a single project;
- The environment is a tiered organization, meaning software development, the project management office PMO, and infrastructure, or shared services, are in separate silos;
- Projects have to go through an extensive capitalization and tollgate process before funds are allocated;
- Resource managers and project managers use command-and control techniques to manage projects.
Once the needs, risks, and constraints have been identified, the Agile Transformist needs to develop a plan that will remove, minimize, or defer them so that the Agile project Manager can create momentum and buy-in for the move toward agility. The plan I’ve formulated is the following:
Step 1: Determine the team’s readiness for agile
Step 2: Deploy the agile process to the organization
Step 3: Determine how to support the agile process
Step 4: Provide consistent coaching for all involved in the agile transformation
I’ll go through each step in subsequent posts.