How to involve the senior management in a agile transformation?

The transformation (any for that matter) should begin with senior leadership.

William -

the best agile transformations are top-down & bottom-up. As Andrew has indicated, you need the commitment and buy-in from senior leadership given the magnitude of change and costs involved, but you also need the willingness and thirst for change at the "front lines". When that happens, you've got mid-level management squeezed from both ends which can help overcome growing pains.

A few key areas which senior management needs to be involved in directly:

1. Walking the talk - they MUST model the changed behaviors
2. Funding for the one-time & ongoing run costs
3. Owning and addressing enterprise-level blockers escalated from agile teams

In many respects, the senior leadership team can utilize agile principles/practices - for example, they should be self-managing in terms of holding each other accountable, they should think as a "whole team" rather than individuals with agendas, and they can prioritize and manage the backlogs of project investments & enterprise blockers in an agile manner.

Kiron