Chapter 16

Building a Foundation

In This Chapter

Obtaining organizational and individual commitment

Recruiting appropriately

Establishing the appropriate environment

Investing in training

Securing initial and ongoing support

To successfully move from traditional project management processes to agile processes, you need to start with a good foundation. You need commitment, both from your organization and from people as individuals, and you need to find a good project team for your first agile project. You must create an environment conducive to good agile practices. You want to find the right training for your project team, and you need to be able to support your organization’s agile approach so that it can grow beyond your first project.

In this chapter, I show you how to build a strong agile foundation within your organization.

Commitment of the Organization and of Individuals

Commitment to agile project management means making an active, conscious effort to work with new methods and to abandon old habits. Commitment at both an individual level and at an organizational level is critical to agile transition success.

Without organizational support, even the most enthusiastic agile project team may find itself being forced back into old project management processes. Without the commitment of individual project team members, a company that embraces agile approaches may encounter too much resistance, or even sabotage, to be able to become an agile organization.

The following sections provide details on how organizations and people can support an agile transition.

Organizational commitment

Organizational commitment plays a large role in agile transition. When a company and the groups within that company support the changes that come with agile methodologies, the transition can be easier for the project team members.

Organizations can commit to an agile transition by doing the following:

Engaging an experienced agile expert to create a realistic transition plan and to guide the company through that plan

Investing in employee training, starting with the members of the company’s first agile project team

Allowing scrum teams to abandon waterfall processes, meetings, and documents in favor of streamlined agile approaches

Providing all of the scrum team members necessary for each agile project: the development team, the product owner, and the scrum master

Providing dedicated scrum team members for agile projects

Encouraging development teams to become cross-functional

Providing automated testing tools

Logistically supporting scrum team collocation

Allowing scrum teams to manage themselves

Giving the agile project team the time and freedom to go through a healthy trial and error process

Encouraging agile project teams and celebrating successes

Organizational support is also important beyond the agile transition. Companies can ensure that agile processes continue to work by hiring with agile project teams in mind and by providing agile training to new employees. Organizations can also engage the ongoing support of an agile mentor, who can guide project teams as they encounter new and challenging situations.

Organizations, of course, are made up of individuals. Organizational commitment and individual commitment go hand in hand.

Individual commitment

Individual commitment has an equal role to organizational commitment in agile transitions. When each person on a project team works at adopting agile practices, the changes become easier for everyone on the project team.

People can individually commit to an agile transition by using these methods:

Attending training and conferences and being willing to learn about agile methods

Being open to change, willing to try new processes, and making an effort to adapt new habits

Resisting the temptation to fall back on old processes

Acting as a peer coach for project team members who are less experienced in agile techniques

Allowing themselves to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes

Reflecting on each sprint honestly in the sprint retrospective and committing to improvement efforts

Actively becoming cross-functional development team members

Letting go of ego and working as a part of a team

Taking responsibility for successes and failures as a team

Taking the initiative to be self-managing

Being active and present throughout each agile project

Like organizational commitment, individual commitment is important beyond the agile transition period. The people on the first agile project team will become change agents throughout the company, teaching other project teams to work with agile methods.

How to get commitment

Commitment to agile methods may not be instant. You’ll need to help people in your organization overcome the natural impulse to resist change.

A good early step in an agile transition is to find an agile champion, a senior-level manager or executive who can help ensure organizational change. The fundamental process changes that accompany agile transitions require support from the people who make and enforce business decisions. A good agile champion will be able to rally the organization and its people around process changes.

Another important way to get commitment is to identify problems with the organization’s current projects and provide potential solutions with agile approaches. Agile project management can address many problems, including issues with product quality, customer satisfaction, team morale, regular budget and schedule overruns, and overall project failure.

Finally, highlight some of agile project management’s overall benefits. Some of the real and tangible benefits that drive shifts from traditional methods of project management to agile methods include the following:

Profit benefits: Agile approaches allow project teams to deliver products to market quicker than with traditional approaches. Agile organizations can realize higher return on investment.

Defect reduction: Quality is a key part of agile approaches. Proactive quality measures, continuous integration and testing, and continuous improvement all contribute to higher-quality products.

Improved morale: Agile practices such as sustainable development and self-managing development teams can mean happier employees, improved efficiency, and less company turnover.

Happier customers: Agile projects often have higher customer satisfaction because agile project teams produce working products quickly, can respond to change, and collaborate with customers as partners.

You can find more benefits of agile project management in Chapter 18.

Will it be possible to make the transition?

You’ve established all kinds of justifications to move to an agile method, and your case looks good. But will your organization be able to make the transition? Here are some key questions to consider:

What are the organizational roadblocks? Is there a value-delivery culture or a risk-management culture? Does your organization support coaching and mentorship alongside management? Is there support for training? How does the organization define success? Is there an open culture that will embrace high visibility of project progress?

How are you doing business today? How are projects planned at the macro level? Is the organization fixated on fixed scope? How engaged are business representatives? Do you outsource development?

How do your teams work today, and what will need to shift under agile methods? How ingrained is waterfall? Is there a strong command and control mentality in the team? Can good ideas come from anywhere? Is there trust in the team? Are people shared across teams? What do you need to ask for to secure a shift? Can you get people, tools, space, and commitment to pilot the change?

What are the regulatory challenges? Are there processes and procedures that relate to regulatory requirements? Are these requirements imposed upon you from externally or internally adopted regulations and standards? Will you need to create additional documentation to satisfy regulatory requirements? Are you likely to be audited for compliance, and what would be the cost of noncompliance?

As you review your analysis of the roadblocks and challenges, you may uncover the following concerns:

Agile approaches reveal that the organization needs to change. As you compare agile practices and results with waterfall, you’ll reveal that performance has not been all it could have been. You need to tackle this head on. Your organization has been operating within a framework of how projects were expected to be run. Your organization has done its best to produce a result, often in the face of extreme challenges. For all parties involved, you have to acknowledge their efforts and introduce the potential of agile processes to allow them to produce yet greater results.

Project management leaders can see agile processes as a threat. Current project management leaders earned their position through hard work, long hours of study, certification, and years of leadership. They may view some of that value slipping away in a transition to agile processes. Present the agile methodology as an extension of project managers’ capabilities and career, not as devaluing anything they’ve worked hard to secure.

Moving from leadership to service model can be challenging. When you move to an agile methodology, leaders are now in service. Command and control gives way to facilitation. This is a big shift for the project team. You have to consider how to demonstrate the shift as a positive result for everyone. You can read more about servant leadership in Chapter 14.

Keep in mind that some resistance will arise, and is natural, as change can’t happen without opposition. Be ready for resistance, but don’t let it thwart your overall plan.

What is the best timing for moving to agile?

Organizationally, you can start your initiative to move to an agile approach at any time. You might consider a few optimal times:

When you need to prove that agile project management is necessary: Use the end of a large project, when you can see clearly what did not work (for example, during a sunset review). You’ll be able to demonstrate clearly the issues with waterfall, and you’ll gain a springboard for piloting your first agile project.

When your consideration is doing accurate budgeting: Run your first agile project in the quarter before the start of the annual budget year (namely one quarter before the end of the current budget cycle). You’ll get metrics from your first project that will allow you to be more informed when planning next year’s budget.

When you are starting a new project: Moving to agile processes when you have a new project lets you start fresh without the baggage of old approaches.

When you have new leadership: Management changes are great opportunities for setting new expectations with agile approaches.

When you are trying to reach a new market or industry: Agile techniques allow you to deliver quick innovation to help your organization create products for new types of customers.

These are all great times to start using agile processes. The best time to move to agile project management is . . . today!

Choosing the Right Project Team Members

Choosing the right people to work with, especially in early stages, is important to agile project success. Here are things to think about when picking people for the different roles in your organization’s first agile project.

The development team

On agile projects, the self-managing development team is central to the success of the project. The development team determines how to go about the work of creating the product. Good development team members should be able to do the following:

Be, in one word, versatile.

Be willing to work cross-functionally.

Plan a sprint and self-manage around that plan.

Understand the product requirements and provide effort estimates.

Provide technical advice to the product owner so that he or she can understand the complexity of the requirements and make appropriate decisions.

Respond to circumstances and adjust processes, standards, and tools to optimize performance.

When choosing a development team for the pilot project, you want to select people who are open to change, enjoy a challenge, like to be in the forefront of new development, and are willing to do whatever it will take to ensure success, including learning and using new skills outside their current skill set.

The scrum master

The scrum master on a company’s first agile project may need to be more sensitive to potential development team distractions than on later projects. A good scrum master should

Have, in one word, clout.

Have enough organizational influence to remove outside distractions that prevent the project team from successfully using agile methods.

Be knowledgeable enough about agile project management to be able to help the project team uphold agile processes throughout a project.

Have the communication and facilitation skills to guide the development team in reaching consensus.

Be trusting enough to step back and allow the development team to organize and manage itself.

When determining the scrum master for a company’s first agile project, you want to select someone who is willing to be a servant-leader. At the same time, the scrum master will need to have a strong enough temperament to help thwart distractions and uphold agile processes in the face of organizational and individual resistance.

The product owner

Product owners often come from the business side of an organization. During a first agile project, the product owner may need to acclimate to working on the project daily with the development team. A good product owner should

Be, in one word, decisive.

Be an expert about customer requirements and business needs.

Have the decisiveness and business authority to prioritize and reprioritize product requirements.

Be organized enough to manage ongoing changes to the product backlog.

Be committed to working with the rest of the scrum team and to being available throughout a project.

Have the ability to obtain project funding and other resources.

When choosing a product owner for a first agile project, pick someone who can provide product expertise and commitment to the project.

The agile champion

At the beginning of an agile transition, the agile champion will be a key person in helping ensure the project team can succeed. A good agile champion should be able to do all these tasks:

Be, in one word, passionate.

Make decisions about company processes.

Get the organization excited about what’s possible with agile processes.

Support the project team as it goes through the steps to establish agile processes.

Acquire the project team members necessary for success, both for the first project and in the long term.

Be an escalation point to remove unnecessary distractions and non-agile processes.

When choosing an agile champion, look for someone who has authority in the organization — whose voice is respected and who has led change initiatives successfully in the past.

The agile mentor

An agile mentor, sometimes called an agile coach, is a big help to an organization’s first agile project. A good agile mentor should

Be, in one word, experienced.

Be an expert at agile processes, especially in the agile processes your organization chooses.

Be familiar with projects of different sizes, large and small.

Be able to provide useful advice and support without taking over a project.

Be able to help guide the project team through its first sprint at the beginning of the project and be available to answer questions as needed throughout the project.

Be able to work with and relate to the development team members, the scrum master, and the product owner.

Be a person from outside a department or organization. Internal agile mentors often come from a company’s project management group or center of excellence.

If the agile mentor comes from inside the organization, he or she should be able to put aside political considerations when making suggestions and providing advice.

A number of organizations offer agile strategy, planning, and mentorship, including my company, Platinum Edge.

The project stakeholders

On an organization’s first agile project, good project stakeholders should

Be, in one word, involved.

Be able to defer to the product owner for final product decisions.

Be willing and able to attend sprint reviews and provide product feedback.

Have an understanding of agile processes. Sending project stakeholders to the same training as the rest of the project team will help them be more comfortable with new processes.

Be willing to receive project information in agile formats, such as product backlogs and sprint backlogs.

Be available to provide details from time to time when the product owner and development team have questions.

Be able to work collaboratively with the product owner and the rest of the project team.

The project stakeholders for a first agile project should be trustworthy, cooperative, active contributors to a project.

Creating an Environment That Works for Agile

When you’re laying the foundation for moving to an agile methodology, you want to create an environment where agile projects can be successful and project teams can thrive. This means a good physical environment, like the one I describe in Chapter 5, as well as a good organizational environment. To create a good agile project environment, you want to have the following:

Good use of agile processes: This may seem obvious, but start your project by using agile practices from the beginning. Use the Roadmap to Value from Figure 16-1 and follow the processes faithfully. Start with the basics; build on them only when the project and your knowledge progresses. Progress doesn’t mean perfection; get started and learn.

Transparency: Be open about project status and about upcoming process changes. People on the project team and throughout the organization should be privy to project details.

Inspection: Use the regular opportunities that agile processes provide to see firsthand how the project is going.

Adaptation: Follow up on inspection by making necessary changes for improvement throughout the project.

A dedicated scrum team: Ideally, the development team, scrum master, and product owner will be fully allocated to the agile project.

A collocated scrum team: For best results, the development team, scrum master, and product owner should sit together, in the same area of the same office.

A well-trained project team: When the members of the project team have worked together to learn about agile processes, they know what they’re supposed to do.

Luckily, many opportunities for training in agile processes are available. You can find formal certification programs as well as agile courses and workshops. Available agile certifications include the following:

The Project Management Institute Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) accreditation

From the Scrum Alliance:

• Certified Scrum Master (CSM)

• Certified Product Owner (CSPO)

• Certified Scrum Developer (CSD)

• Certified Scrum Professional (CSP)

Numerous university certificate programs

With a good environment, you have a good chance at success.

Support Agile Initially and Over Time

When you first launch into agile processes, you have much to take care of. Give your agile transition every chance for success by paying attention to key success factors:

Choose a good pilot. Select a project that’s important enough to get everyone’s support. At the same time, set expectations: Although the project will produce measurable savings, the results will be modest while the project team is learning the methods and will improve over time.

Get an agile mentor. Use a mentor to increase your chances of setting up a good agile environment and maximizing your chances of great performance.

Communicate — a lot. Keep talking about agile processes around the organization at every level. Use your champion to encourage progress through the pilot and toward more extensive use of agile.

Prepare to move forward. Keep thinking ahead. Consider how you’ll take the lessons from the pilot to new projects and teams. Also think about how you’ll scale from a single project to many projects, including those with multiple teams.