The hard sell

A question that regularly pops up in the Agile community is how to convince people (often upper management) to go Agile. While this is a valuable question to answer, there is an even more important question:

How do we convince people that an Agile transformation of a sizable organization is an ongoing effort and not something that can be completed in a year or two? And how do we do that up front while still convincing them that going Agile is a good idea?

I believe this is necessary to avoid losing momentum after implementing the very visible practices at the team level (typically Scrum). Whether you focus on the rest of the organization sequentially or in parallel, the changes to management mindset, organization structures, competences, culture, governance etc etc. will take longer, have greater impact and be less visible. The problem is that these changes are much harder to explain and will significantly affect those you try to convince – now it’s suddenly about them changing and not only deciding whether others should change.

Find an answer to this question and you will have done your organization a favor of tremendous proportions. Alternatively, you risk ending up in the dreaded “Agile reboot scenario” after a few years.