Winning the Organizational Transition to Agile

Joe Wynne is a versatile Project Manager experienced in delivering medium-scope projects in large organizations that improve workforce performance and business processes. He has a proven track record of delivering effective, technology-savvy solutions in a variety of industries and a unique combination of strengths in both process management and workforce management.

  Agile   Organizational Project Management  

Changing to an agile methodology is an organizational change management problem. To you as a scrum master, this brings about special challenges—even if you are well-skilled in agile techniques.

Your response to these challenges presents an opportunity to show off leadership skills. During big organizational changes, being a leader means participating to resolve the challenges, thus bringing about the desired business outcomes.

The change or transition of an organization from a legacy methodology to an agile methodology is generally painful. It is rarely smooth. That gives you plenty of opportunities to participate—as long as you are prepared. Two common challenging areas are reversion to old ways and confusion over status reporting. Let’s look at both more in depth…

1. Partners or stakeholders reverting to old methodology during transition
One common problem to prepare for is that partners and stakeholders may not buy in to all implications of the agile. Leaders of business units may not like the time commitment that is required of their subject matter experts, for example. Or they may not like all the participation expected of themselves. 

Prepare for your leadership response:

• These business unit leaders are often your sponsors or final reviewers for the deliverables you are creating, so make them more comfortable by setting up …

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