Kick Start Agile

Starting With Agile At Org Level | Starting With Agile At Team Level | Forming the Agile Transformation Team | Forming Communities of Practice | Agile Transformation | Training&Coaching |

3-step Learning Model (Shu-Ha-Ri) 

Follow Shu-Ha-Ri which is a 3-step learning model that applies to any situation in which new skills are being learned. The goal is to move the organization from Shu(doing everything strictly as per written rules) to Ha(experimentation after some level of understanding and maturity is attained) and finally to Ri (Creating best practices based on learnings and adapting to same) as quickly as possible, as described below: Remember to honor the necessity of being in particular phase as long as required to achieve full understanding of the process.

START WITH AGILE AT ORG LEVEL

This would be like running a project to do a Proof of Concept(POC) over the current processes and identifying improvement opportunities. Doing a Return Over Investment (ROI) exercise.

START WITH AGILE AT TEAM LEVEL

What needs to be done to start moving towards a more Agile way of behaving before they have access to a Coach.  Here are some options to consider. 

FORM THE AGILE TRANSFORMATION TEAM(ATT)

Agile Transformation Team (ATT) Structure

Suggested structure for transformation team to drive the initial move towards Agile transformation.

Steering Committee

• Overall governance decisions
• Decision support on key operating guidelines
• Review of Progress

Transformation Core Team

• Create and drive agile transformation roadmap
• Conduct Agile maturity assessment both at organization and team level
• Provide operating guideline recommendations for organization and teams within organization
• Remove impediments for organization to become Agile
• Grow knowledge and experience to become resolution advisors
• Development of selected work per agile transformation roadmap​ on process, tools, training & measures (assessment, on-boarding and adoption)
• Feed transformation progress updates to steering committee
• Carry out Agile transformation impact assessment
• Create success stories; Grow agile adoption
• Organizational Change management – Change management plan & Communication plan
• Identify, plan and arrange trainings

Extended Team

• Participation on need basis
• Extended teams are the ones like Tools team, Communities of Practice (COPs), groups like Audit, Architecture, Security etc.

Based on the expertise involved on related work items of Agile Transformation work backlog for discussion, views, reviews, experimentation, pilot and feedback.

Work Progression through Transformation Team

This has to be like a typical Agile way of doing things. ATT once setup should work towards identifying the work items and priorities based on Agile Transformation Road map (See Agile Transformation Road map). Team should agree on the execution mode for working the prioritized wok backlog. Kanban makes more sense with no time boxing restrictions. ATT Core team (along with extended team as needed) progresses the work and shows(demo) it to Steering Committee, once approved the work item is marked “done” and rolled out.

FORM THE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE(COP)

A community of practice is a group of people who share a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. Through the process of sharing information and experiences members learn from each other, and have an opportunity to develop themselves personally and professionally. CoPs evolve naturally and are formed specifically to help grow a skillset, while providing support to those who are undertaking the journey of developing their practice. 

The key elements of a CoP are:

• The domain: members are brought together by a shared learning need or desire
• The community: collective learning becomes a bond among members over time; the learning and experience they each contribute is varied, even though it is on a shared topic, and it is this diverse richness that contributes to the learning and growth of the community
• The practice: their interactions produce resources that affect their practice, whether they engage in actual practice together or separately

CoPs are regular meetings, and participation is voluntary. Primarily these are for people in the midst of the specific practice, such that there can be valuable contribution.

• Communities to start with
  • Scrum Master Community of Practice
  • Product Owner Community of Practice
  • Developers Community of Practice
• Other communities that can be helpful
  • Architects community of practice
  • Testing community of practice
• Future COPs
  • Communities for Scaled Agile
  • Communities for Engineering Practices (Test Driven Development (TDD), Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) , etc)

TRAININGS & COACHING

Training helps create a level of understanding of the subject and coaching helps implement that understanding effectively. Training & Coaching together enable the business and delivery organizations to achieve high performance with Agile mindset and methods. Ongoing and steady coaching can help teams progress beyond basic awareness and practices to self-organization and eventually high performance. ACCESS OUR TRAINING

Integrated training and coaching approach that responds to the organization’s ability to absorb and adopt change is required to enable effective Agile processes. It is must for organizations to have an effective training strategy which should include:

• Basic trainings over agile and its methodologies – create awareness and common vocabulary & talking language
• Role specific trainings, external or internal, with seasoned and experience Agile practitioners – Help people in different agile roles understand their responsibility and accountability
• Self-paced agile courses on related topics- to help employees learn without waiting for in-person class.
• Team trainings- Common level of understanding, learn together and respect other roles
• Team coaching – help learn from experiences of Agile coach, easy access to guidance.
• Active participation and discussion in communities of practice- Share best practices and learn from experience of your peers.  

Training strategy should be created at earliest. Inputs for training strategy can be taken from initial agile maturity assessment of organization. Evolve this strategy and approach as you move further in your agile transformation journey.

Training strategy should also include the communication plan for rolling out and communicating trainings, approach to select candidates for training and training over tools (JIRA, AgileCraft, Rally, VersionOne, etc. which will be used for agile execution.