Great question. In broad terms, start by getting business stakeholder support and identify a Product Owner. Provide training if it's needed. Create the team(s) and then support them as they plan and take ownership of the delivery. Key points are finding the right people to mentor and support the teams as they transition; getting and keeping business customer buy-in. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
The first step is to understand this: you can use Agile approach with waterfall life cycle. Is not because I am saying that. Is because you have lot of examples outside there and I can give you examples including it what I am living today in my actual work place. But just you do not take this, no problem with that. Just in case you will keep your line of thinking (again, no problem with that, I faced this for years when people hired me to help them to move to agile) I fully recomend to take a close look to Tom Gilb´s EVO. Forget about it was created with basement on software. Take a close look to it. On the other side, take a closer look to Jim Coplien´s Organizational Patterns which are for software but you can use it with everything. At last, do not forget Allistar Cockburn Crystal Clear method where you find how people and teams could evolve to support agile based environments. Saving Changes...
Assuming you are referring to transitioning an existing project's delivery approach from a predictive to an adaptive lifecycle, this is most definitely an "it depends" answer.
A lot will depend on:
1. How "agile" are the team and the key stakeholders?
2. How far has the project progressed - for example, are requirements locked down?
3. What is the nature of the project itself - is it software development, infrastructure or a non-technology project?
4. What constraints and success criteria have been identified for the project?
As Sergio says, an agile mindset and certain agile techniques (e.g. non-solo work, test driven development) might be used regardless of the lifecycle of a given project, but changing the lifecycle itself is not a trivial matter.
I would alternatively look at going from Waterfall to Lean methodology instead of going directly to Agile. Waterfall being the traditional methodology each step is pronouced and deliberte and involves taking a project from start to finish without the need for incremental or repetitive steps.
With Lean you are scaling down everything that you need in order to implement the project and as a such is easier to transfer onto Agile Methodology.
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