Agile Transformation Journey–Part I
Introduction
Every organization has a story behind their transformation journey — be it Agile or otherwise. Sharing my learning as this firsthand experience inspired me to take up a career in agile coaching. For a two minute intro about Agile Transformation, do check What is Agile Transformation? -A two minute elevator pitch.
How it all started..?
A decade ago, I worked as project manager with a product company that built solutions for shipping companies. The company was at a major crossroads, having been recently acquired by a shipping giant. As it happens with most companies, major reshuffle happened; new hires were appointed for senior posts. With new people comes new initiatives and over the next few weeks, the management came up with vision and mission statements for the following year. Areas of improvement were identified — customer retention, marketing & Sales, new markets, faster ROI, quality delivery, better customer engagement and so on. We had a laundry list of identified problem statements waiting to be acted upon.
The stage is set…
Being part of the product development team, we started brainstorming on how can we improve on our current challenges :improved quality and faster delivery cycles . We were currently on a plan-driven approach of delivery (Waterfall) looking to explore the adaptive delivery models (incremental / iterative). Our new development director brought in the idea of experimenting with agile. Scrum was quite a popular model by then but we were keen on a model fit for a program/portfolio level initiative since we had multiple product streams. Took us a lot of discussion sessions to feel convinced that implementing an agile methodology for engineering should be the way forward to plug the holes in our ship.
The path taken …
“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.” John Wooden
Unsure if Agile was the magic bullet to solve our pain points but we stepped into unknown waters with a strong belief that introducing an agile mindset and principles among our teams was the right step to go forward. What was our strategy and how did we define our roadmap for implementing this?? Stay tuned for my next article on Agile Transformation Journey –Part II.
