What's the best way to introduce Agile into the enterprise? Start at the bottom, with individual practices? Start at the top, obtaining upper management's buy-in? While there's no secret recipe that guarantees success, there is likely to be less dissonance if the stages of organizational adoption are understood, anticipated and addressed.
This spring, Kane Mar has been writing on introducing Agile into the enterprise. He proposes a considered approach to reduce the risk of culture clash, suggesting some natural stages and how adoption progresses from one stage to the next.
He takes us from a traditional workplace that starts out with local experiments, through acceptance, culture clashes, localized organizational changes, and formalization, to enterprise rollout, and the large-scale changes finally needed to become an "agile enterprise". This enterprise-wide stage will raise broader issues like compensation, promotion, and job roles in addition to the earlier team problems with tools, build times, quality, etc..
Kane Mar works with Danube Technologies, a small Seattle company well known in the Agile community for their ScrumWorks product. He uses XP and Scrum practices with his own teams and write "Practical Advice for Agile Teams", including this series in four parts:
Part 1: The Path to an Agile Enterprise
Part 2: A Plan of Action
Part 3: Impediments - People, Process, and Technology
Part 4: Impediments - Teams, Management, and Culture
This spring, Kane Mar has been writing on introducing Agile into the enterprise. He proposes a considered approach to reduce the risk of culture clash, suggesting some natural stages and how adoption progresses from one stage to the next.
He takes us from a traditional workplace that starts out with local experiments, through acceptance, culture clashes, localized organizational changes, and formalization, to enterprise rollout, and the large-scale changes finally needed to become an "agile enterprise". This enterprise-wide stage will raise broader issues like compensation, promotion, and job roles in addition to the earlier team problems with tools, build times, quality, etc..
Kane Mar works with Danube Technologies, a small Seattle company well known in the Agile community for their ScrumWorks product. He uses XP and Scrum practices with his own teams and write "Practical Advice for Agile Teams", including this series in four parts:
Part 1: The Path to an Agile Enterprise
Part 2: A Plan of Action
Part 3: Impediments - People, Process, and Technology
Part 4: Impediments - Teams, Management, and Culture