Organizational transitions are hard. It really requires a lot of items to be put in place before any real change can happen. All of them are people related. 1) Risk-taking culture, 2) Leadership, 3) Coaching, 4) Team structure.
1) Risk-taking Culture
The company has to have a environment where people are free to take risks. If people who take risks are punished, the risk takers leave. You’re left with people who do not want to take risks. People who don’t take risks won’t stick their necks out. They’ll be on the far-end of the adoption curve.
2) Leadership
This is tightly coupled with the ‘Risk-taking Culture’. The leadership must at least be willing to sponsor time and training for new methods to be used with the product development teams. They need to adopt the change themselves, but they can _even_ play a wait-and-see role by experimenting with a few teams and see how it goes.
3) Coaching
Coaching and training. Learning new product development techniques is a really big mind shift. In an Agile context everyone’s world changes. Product managers need to be communicating features a lot differently than they had before, programmers need to be accustomed to requirements changing more frequently, QA needs to create more flexible testing infrastructure, user experience experts need to adopt their methods to teams working in iterations.
4) Team structure
There are two environments where introduction of Agile methods are difficult. a) A very large team (split up into multiple, smaller teams) working on a single large product that’s under the gun to deliver on time. Change is hard to manage when a deadline is looming. b) An organization which views their people as resources to get shuffled around every other month to work on new projects. When there are not stable teams, it’s hard for any change to take root.
View Joe Arnold's profile
Follow Joe Arnold on FriendFeed
Hello Joe:
Got to your blog and an interesting first article to read.
Is it by coincidence or design that most of leading product development companies like Yahoo, Google, MSN and others like Thoughtworks etc in recent years have been Agile driven and almost none are CMMi. Is there some significant difference in the way management perceives their role, environment and market-organization dynamics?
Another factor is to have a champion for change and belief in change of his/ her so strong that it comes around.
If you had a memo to write to management thats going towards deterministic processes like company wide formal estimation methods and evaluations - what would you write?
Thanks
naked flash games…
One notable blogging tool that does not support trackback yet is Blogger.) Some individuals or companies have abused the TrackBack…
Party Planning Companies…
Six Apart started a working group in February 2006 to improve the Trackback protocol with the goal to eventually have it approved as…
software implementation checklist…
Maybe, but I’m not sure it’for everyone….
All about Digimon Adventure Online Game. Digimon Adventure Fans Blog….
…Digimon is a small virtual pet. You can download and play an online RPG in the Digimon universe. It looks and feels like 2D graphic RPG adventure. You can train and level up your Digimon, make hundreds of quests, and travel through a huge universe a…
Shag Hairstyles and Haircuts…
shag hairstyle basically gotits name from the word “shaggy” since …once the hair is cutand layered it gives off a shaggy look. The shag hairstyle has always been apopular hairstyle, and there are plenty ofshag hairstyles to choose from…
Huge exhibits of Arbonne Skin Care Products…
Arbonne International is one of the main companies in the world when it comes to beauty and skin care. Its skin care line is one of the best in the world that many women. The products of Arbonne skin care products are formulated in Switzerland….
Shag Haircuts for Curly & Wavy Hair…
Stylists of the those celebrities are magicians, capturing each of their personalities and presenting them in sophisticated fun loving shag styles. Let’s hope we’ll see more and more celebrities with their gorgeous shags….
competitive mortgage rates…
If you are thinking over a mortgage refinance, you should pay attention a lot of mortgage refinance types of program. For example, you can look into a 10 year fixed rate mortgage refinance. In this case your mortgage payments higher than a longerterm l…
Anita’s Paper Dolls…
Fashion printable paper dolls - are printable paper dolls designed to reflect fashion trends or occasionally fantasy play. The fashion dolls are made of vinyl, and are made both as toys and as collectibles. They are enjoyed by many people around the wo…
Why Former Smokers Start Smoking Again?…
All kind of tobacco is harmful, no matter how it is manufactured, said scientists. For example they found that smoking tobacco described as ‘light’ and ‘mild’ is not better than regular cigarettes. scientists reported that the tobacco industry has …
Which is more detrimental Smoking or Obesity?…
Doctors stated in a study that heart deseases are hitting the overweight people more often than a decade sooner than “normal” weight….
Swine flu symptoms…
Recommendations to prevent spread of the swine influenza among humans include using standard infection control against flu. This includes frequent washing of hands with water and soap or with alcohol-based hand sanitizers, especially after being outsid…
Can Everyone Wear Short Hairstyle?…
For short hair styles and rounder faces, it is important to make the face appear longer than it truly is….
mail viagra…
The child’s world life needs to buy viagra support his or her educational goals. An organized, quiet study area is needed. A balance between diet, rest, play, and study should be maintained….
Casino 1243432950…
Casino 1243432950…