9 steps to agile adoption â€“ a proposal

9 Steps to Agile Adoption – a Proposal

Naveen Indusekhar,Sr. Program Manager and Agile Coach @

McAfee, an Intel Company

Introduction

While Agile adoption and practice is a complex model for mid/large sized Product companies to implement, we see a need for some sort of framework that can help drive it.

Why do you need to be Agile? Where do you start, when do you start, and also how do you start? These are questions that reside in most of us during early stages of adoption. Here is a 9-Step breakdown that will help companies and teams adopt multiple Agile methodologies in different situations and scenarios. Maturing it from a ‘Persona Perspective’ framework helps the ‘decision-maker’ have a case for investment, further evaluate if it works, and improve it all through!!

The discussion and idea is just my proposal that should help a team or an organization and is need not be the only way to implement Agile in an organization. Further detailing into these phases can form an overall Mindmap structure that is open to adopting from an organization and people standpoint.

Inputs for the presentation are from practical exposure of the author, his peers/mentors, and documented practices of Agile Methodologies.

Step 0 of 9 Steps to Agile Adoption – a Proposal

• Step 0: Perform Value Stream Mapping to identify gaps within organization and analyze if one needs to improve these for an organization to succeed having a vision and goal. At the end of it, do you think Agile will solve your problem? If yes go to step 1, else check for alternate solutions. If selecting step 1, start working on future value stream map (where you want to be).


• Step 1a: Create Cross Functional Leadership Scrum Team/s to include executive leaders from various functions like Development, Quality, Program Management, Product Management, Finance, HR, Marketing, Sales, etc. General Manager of the company can be the potential Product Owner.

• Step 1b: An Agile Enterprise Transition team consisting of Business Execs, Engineering Heads and Coaches (Lean/Scrum/Kanban) to form another virtual Scrum team (7-9 member team). This team has the sole goal of transforming the organization to Agile methodologies and they need to sync with leadership team in their vision and mission.


• Step 2a: Vision Backlog created by Leadership Scrum Team that may be consist of large Business or Architectural Epics spanning 0.5-3 years (roadmap). The backlog to also include formation of Agile teams, budget planning based on ROI, High level capacity planning, etc.

• Step 2b: Similarly create a backlog for Agile Transition Team to include stakeholder acceptance, training, mentoring, coaching, implementation strategy, dashboards, publish ‘success’ stories, work with other departments like HR/finance/facilities, etc.


• Step 3: Segregate projects into:

Innovation Projects - Explore Lean Startup as a possible option for new product innovation investments where you are not sure of what and how of the product, but have a vision.

Feature Incremental Projects - Explore Scrum for feature incremental projects where you pretty much know ‘What’ is needed.

Support/Sustenance - Kanban can be the way to go for Sustenance or Support where inflow and outflow are unknown and hard to plan for.

Any other? (Waterfall, Custom, etc)


• Step 4: Build small sized Lean Startup teams (5-7 members) and give them a Vision to go and invent. Build basic Proof of Concept (POC), run it by Alpha users to get early feedback. If the measures show substantial interest from users, consider moving the POC to Feature Incremental team (Step 5). Lean Start up teams go back to innovation pool (outside office boundaries) – working typically on 3-6 months on one idea.


• Step 5: Migrate to Agile Scrum either with ‘one trial team’ approach OR entire business unit to Scrum. Both approaches have positives and negatives. Hire (initially may be for some positions) or train interested members as Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Mentors. In parallel, identify capable Scrum of Scrum Masters. Build Program/Release level backlog (owned by Product Management team and Architects). Run Scrum. Run Scrum of Scrums or SAFe


• Step 6: Most importantly plug in Extreme Programming (XP) practices like Pair Programming, Continuous Integration, Automation, TDD, Refactoring, etc. to succeed in Scrum. Engage Release teams, Localization (translation), Security and other shared resource teams to Scrum teams as needed.


• Step 7: Build Kanban teams for Sustenance requirements. It can be used for operational tasks as well. Team can prioritize on daily basis and limit Work in Progress (WIP).


• Step 8: Celebrate TRIUMPH of successful Agile adoption and reward teams!! This is an incentive for next set of teams to migrate. Share metrics and practices to inspire other teams and leanings from ‘what didn’t go well’ is invaluable data. Learn and adapt.


• Step 9: Move organization to a flow that is sustainable and teams produce more Value than in the past (through periodic customer feedback). Continuous Improvement is a MUST (Kaizen). Endure to identify and fix organization/project level impediments, track risks and dependencies with mitigation plans. At any given point, Company should aspire to be as ‘Lean’ (no wastage and highly productive) as possible.

Questions?

Thank you!

9 steps to agile adoption â€“ a proposal

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