Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Changing the Mindset of an Organization

I have been working hard to convince people (i.e., management) within my organization that the benefits and values that Agile brings to organizations and projects far outweigh any possible side effects (I guess some warped people could see hyperproductivity and making everything visible as negative side effects).

We have a global agile process group and everyone on the team is in complete agreement that our current RUP process would benefit by adapting some Agile/Scrum techniques. Here's our current game plan:
  1. How do we convince the organization of the benefits? How do we convince them that change is good?
  2. Who do we get to sponsor the initiative at the executive level? We need someone with the courage to act differently, to find out if the environment will support us.
  3. How do we incorporate Agile & Scrum best practices into our corporate culture and our projects sooner rather than later?
Any suggestions or experience with these questions would be greatly appreciated (both good and and comments welcome).

1 comment:

Gerald Williams said...

Organisational change is the hard bit and I have discussed it in my blog along with a few example of an organisation that made the big leap - SCRUM/XP etc within a year.

There is plenty of evidence ou there for the fact that Agile improves productivity, reduces time to market, improves quality etc so the business case for it is high - but like anything the combination of Agile practices you choose needs to suit your organisation.

John Kotters Book - 'The Heart of Change' - is very good on how to change the mindset of an organisation with plenty of examples.