Agile transformation (part 1) — bottom-up
The recent trend of software eating the world has forced many companies to rethink their software delivery strategy and embark on agile transformation. As an agile coach, one of the most common questions I have been receiving is: “Should agile transformation be driven from top-down or bottom-up?”
Here’s the TL;DR version — Assess the current state of agile adoption in the organization. Start small from bottom-up, then top-down when crossing the chasm.
For nine running years, the inability to change organisational culture continues to be the #1 reason in agile adoption failure. Large corporations struggle the most because the hard part of agile transformation is the transformation, not agile.
Agile transformation requires a mindset change in every individual. Short of a company-wide brain surgery exercise, a big-bang large-scale mindset shift is impossible. The next best alternative is the bottom-up approach — identify the innovators and early adopters, support and grow them before crossing the chasm.
According to Moore, the marketer should focus on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. The most difficult step is making the transition between visionaries (early adopters) and pragmatists (early majority). This is the chasm that he refers to.
Crossing the chasm is a term coined by Geoffrey A. Moore, adapted from the technology adoption curve by Everett Rogers. The chasm refers the different expectations between the early adopters of the product and the early majority. Many good products and ideas struggle to go mainstream and die because crossing the chasm is incredibly difficult.
Bottom-up
The first challenge you will face is to identify the innovators and early adopters from the rest. Fortunately, they stand out from the crowd. Innovators and early adopters tend to be risk tolerant and see challenges as opportunities. Most importantly, they are highly willing to exert a lot of personal energy and initiative to make the change work and create success stories.
The second challenge is to choose the right battles. Battles that are big enough to matter, small enough for quick win. One of the common mistakes is to pilot agile with an unimportant project. Agile requires a lot of involvement from business people and business people have no time for unimportant project. Play too safe is unsafe.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project
The next challenge is to help early adopters remove obstacles and trust them to deliver. The nature of all organisations is to optimise for efficiency over effectiveness. In contrast, an agile mindset optimises effectiveness over efficiency.
The purpose of these rules is to allow the organization to make decisions using “standard operating procedures” as a guideline and hence remove from the organization the need to “think” about the decisions being made. For an organization to think, time and resources are required, an expenditure of energy
Example:
- Effective participatory decision-making over efficient top-down decision-making
- Effective in-person communication over efficient offline communication
- Effective outcome from people over efficient utilisation of resources
- Effective coaching and feedback over efficient performance appraisal
- Effective servant leadership over efficient command and control
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all — Peter Drucker
Your early adopters will face headwind in every direction. Trust them, support them and be explicit about beliefs and principles — new way forward.
And the last challenge is to amplify their success and embolden more early adopters. Evangelise agile adoption. Find good business partners. Collaborate. Make them successful. Create success stories like this and this. Lather, rinse, repeat …
… happens when we build trust and confidence in the methodologies that work. When we reduce anxiety of the new and unknown. When we serve up example after example of all them signalling: this is safe, you won’t get in trouble doing it this way. In fact this way is better, cheaper, faster and less risky. That’s how we spur adoption and ultimately transformation — 18F
All is good until you reach the chasm
In contrast to early adopters, both the majority and the laggards are risk-averse and motivated to keep things the same. They see challenges as evidence that change is not going to work. They need explicit permission to try the change and are not willing to exert personal energy for the change. They are often the primary reason for organization to take a top-down approach — formal structure and processes, performance incentives to change behaviour, consulting and training support — as the needs of the majority cannot be neglected for long.
Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions
In conclusion, bottom-up approach is a good way to kickstart agile transformation. With the support of senior management, bottom-up approach will rally early adopters and increase agile adoption rate — till you reach the chasm.
Updates — Mar 2016
- To be continued in Part 2 — A top-down approach to cross the chasm.
