Your dev team is a sloth? Turn it into a lean and agile machine... we have training for that!

"organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." — Conway's Law

There is a lot of spend around agile at "legacy IT" organizations because it's working well in the younger and nimble tech firms. Conway's Law, however, says that that the nimble companies are more likely to be agile because... they are nimble. Simply put, the IT organization's culture and communication has also got to get agile if agile methodologies are to succeed.

No amount of agile training can change the IT culture. It's a top-down, inside-out change for these established organizations.

And that's a tough sell.

Here's a way around it; change the IT culture first. We need to become value driven and customer focused, learning the fiscal language around the institution's bottom line. It's hard to do because it means that executive team will need to change (as opposed to the development team) but it is the right way forward and it is what makes the newer companies nimble.

Build on what is already working for the customers. What is your core competency, what makes you stand out?

Listen. What isn't working and how are your competitors winning? Take a hard look at yourself from the marketplace.

Create stories that entail urgency and emotion. Connect the gaps with human beings; what is your product not doing well and how is it hurting your customer? What needs to be fixed?

Establish priorities in deliverables. We cannot the boil the ocean, so the executives will need to hone into the top value items, ones that affect the bottom line.

Then let your development teams at it. They'll come back and ask for agile training. Not just that, they'll come back and tell you what else is not working.