How to Successfully Transition into Agile

Is your organization looking into the value deliver while using agile project management? If so, then we will be looking at four (4) key elements in driving your organization’s transition to Agile.

Here are the four key elements to get started:

1. Establish an Agile Mindset
2. Overcoming cultural constraints
3. Kick start your Agile practices
4. Sticking to the Agile Essentials

Establish an Agile Mindset:

Your current project team will be transitioning from a waterfall approach which takes into consideration driving projects using a linear approach. This entails gathering all the requirements, then breaking them down into small tasks, thereafter execution, and delivering it within a specific time frame. These notations hold strong to the triple constraints with a fixed scope, cost, and time. However, the paradigm shifts into agile looks at a fixed cost and time while having the scope flexible. The overall goal of transiting to agile is to improve delivery, increase quality, and create a faster time to market.

Cultural Constraints to Agile transitions:

• Management style — Agile rely on Collaboration vs directive and demanding hierarchy
• Acceptance of Change — Agile allow for willingness to accept change rather than have a change control process
• Process focus — Agile need lightweight process
• Trust — essential element for an agile transition

Starting an Agile Practice:

The best way to get started in Agile is actually working on a pilot project after establishing an Agile team to learn more about making your team more agile from my earlier blog — Building an Agile team.

Identify the right pilot project looks at the following criteria:

1. Size (project should run between 6–12 weeks)
2. Not a high risk
3. Depth and breadth should engage all the team roles
4. Customer engagement (allow for sponsor buy-in on the approach)

Sticking to the Agile Essentials:

The framework most persons practicing Agile use is Scrum. Scrum consists of 5 events and 3 artifacts that are essential in getting your team to become agile.

Events

1. Sprint — Team design, builds, develops, and tests within a time-box.
2. Sprint Planning — Product Owner presents the most valuable work to be done.
3. Daily Scrum — Team provides updates and daily plans and raises issues [15 minutes]
4. Sprint Review — Team & PO share what’s been built to the shareholders
5. Sprint Retrospective — The team internally examines its practices and identifies improvements.

Artifacts

1. Product Backlog — List of everything that could be done for the project [collection of User Story]
2. Sprint Backlog — Items the team committed to for the current sprint.
3. Product Increment — Completed work from current and previous sprints

Check out my Article How to achieve Agile using Scrum Framework to help you stick to the agile essentials.