Agile Transformation : Prerequisites

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Prerequisites for an Agile Transformation

Agile has 4 values during project delivery :

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

As a company when you decide to become Agile or you choose Agile as a part of your digital transformation, one of the first thing you need to do is to choose which Agile methodology/framework you want to use on your projects. There are several methods used out there :

• Scrum
• Kanban
• XP
• Crystal
• Lean etc.

These articles will focus on the most popular one : Scrum.

Deciding which method to use depends on your company’s requirement, your project team setup, your existing delivery process and your desired delivery process.

Scrum is often used by companies who want to have regular release and program increments and is a popular framework, group of ceremonies and rules for implementing Agile.

Here is a standard Scrum framework. This is to give you an idea about framework but these articles aren’t to teach you Scrum.

Before starting an Agile transformation it is important to have a common understanding of Agile and the expectations of this transformation. Creating your company's own Agile framework is important. This means that you create your adapted Agile rules to your company's culture and of course your company's culture shouldn't conflict with Agile principles.

Who is involved in this transformation is also a very important ( spoiler: everyone in the company).

In your company’s Agile framework, you need to define the roles of Scrum team members and enablers. You also need an Agile coach. Don't forget that with Agile transformation you ask your employees to change. Sometime you ask people to stop doing things that they have been doing for many years and to do things differently. When there is change, there's resistance to change. This is where you need someone to motivate and convince people to do their job differently.

According to your company's structure and budget for transformation , you might have a company wide Agile coach next to internal Scrum Masters. Otherwise, you will need to hire Scrum Master(s) with coaching experience. In my own experience, a Scrum Master is also required to be a coach or the team/project is likely to fail, especially if the team is new to Agile.

A common practice is to choose pilot team(s) /project(s) to start Agile. This is of course, unless your company is starting as an Agile company. These articles are aimed at companies working with waterfall who want to become Agile.

After choosing your pilot team(s) the next thing to do is to organize training for the team(s) members.

It's very important to include all the enablers of the project in this training. You cannot expect your employees/colleagues to learn Agile by themselves. Of course they could learn Scrum rules by themselves. And also, many people already know Agile, or at least they think they know. But Agile is 4 values and 12 principles. So when it comes to implementation, it varies a lot from one company to another. To succeed in this transformation, it is important that everyone is being on the same page.

We will talk more about training later in “Training” section.

So starting doing Scrum isn’t something you decide one day and start doing it right away. There is some preparation to do first. Trying a shortcut will not lead you to the destination. But once you do it right way, when you don’t skip steps there is no reason not to reach your goal and become an Agile company.

In my next article I'll tell you about a failed Agile transformation journey. Then we'll continue to steps of transformation. That is a good example for why we need preparations before doing Scrum or any Agile framework.

Next article : How To Fail