It has been a while since I have had a chance to write on my blog, and have I missed it!

You may be a busy person too and want to go directly to my latest article on TechBeacon about why you should save your time and money to scale agile if your organization is not ready for it: http://techbeacon.com/are-scaled-agile-frameworks-worth-trying

If you are interested in reading a bit more about agile transformation at first: Please continue reading  🙂

For the past several months I have been heavily involved in introducing and coaching companies in how to introduce agile thinking and principles. These organizations were looking for better project results, improved lead times (=time-to-market), better flow, fewer internal blockings, less waste in their system etc.

These are traditionally organized organizations with too many silos, and not enough collaboration between the silos. As always, there are dependencies between the silos. These are often handled too late causing delays, ripple effects on other projects or initiatives. AND they cause a lot of frustration at all levels.

No doubt the transformation to a more agile approach will improve performance and project results in these companies, but the main reason why I believe that these transformations will actually happen, is the strong management support behind the initiatives and an honest desire to change the organization. Knowing that this change will not come over night.

If you don’t have back-up and support from the management layer, a transformation from traditional project thinking to agile will not happen. You may see improvement on the team level here and there, but nothing significant seen from the helicopter perspective.

Agile systems require a different way of managing people, teams, and projects, and this is not intuitive. In fact it is a paradigm shift. It takes time to adjust your old (bureaucratic) habits to new agile ways, and this adjustment in a whole organization will take years.

Someone has to say it: There is no easy way. No free lunch. No silver bullet. If there were, we would have found it ages ago.

When you start an agile transformation, there is often a desire to scale it to the program level. However, it does not make sense to scale e.g. Scrum, if Scrum is not working properly in your organization. If the roles are not filled by people with the right skillset, if the Product Owner don’t have the authority to make decisions, if there is no agile mindset, agile just will not work, and scaling it will only make things more complicated.

That caused me to write an article about why you should save your time and money to scale agile if your organization is not ready for it. My article has been published on TechBeacon, and you can read the details here: http://techbeacon.com/are-scaled-agile-frameworks-worth-trying

Enjoy! If you have questions or comments please feel free to make them here or send me a mail on annette@xvoto.dk.