Are the majority of agile transformations failing? Succeeding? Just sort of stumbling along? It’s really hard to tell. You hear a lot of promises and platitudes from consulting firms specializing in transformations, you read case studies that focus on the good and downplay the bad, and there’s a plethora of agile trainers who will certify that you’re a master, a professional, or an agile coach in just a few short days. Who do you trust to share with you what’s really happening in organizations making these transformations? What’s really working? What isn’t?

1. © Disciplined Agile, Inc. 1
Agile Transformations
The Good, The Bad, and The
Ugly

2. Who We Are
Co-creators of the Disciplined Agile (DA) toolkit
Help enterprise-class organizations around the world to improve their
processes and organization structures
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 2
@scottwambler@mark_lines

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Agenda
• The Ugly: Challenges with Agile Transformation
• The Bad: Questionable Strategies
• The Good: Strategies for a Disciplined Journey
• Parting Thoughts

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The Ugly: Challenges
with Agile
Transformations

6. Change Efforts have a
Lousy Track Record
• Average success rate of change
initiatives 34%
– Standish Group, 2011
• Reasons
– Lack of a structured change
management process
– Irrational human behavior
– Treating change as linear
process initiatives
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7. Adopting a Prescriptive Method/Framework Helps a Bit
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 7
You Actually Get
Recent study of 3,000+ teams within
155 organizations found:
• Teams adopting agile (mostly
Scrum) saw productivity increases
of 7 to 12% on average
• Teams adopting prescriptive scaling
frameworks, the most popular of
which is SAFe, saw average
productivity increases of 3 to 5%
InfoQ.com/articles/reifer-agile-study-
2017
You Are Promised

8. © Disciplined Agile, Inc. 8

9. Culture is Hard to Change
• Typical goals of agile transformations
– Build high performance motivated teams
– Optimize enterprise groups for agility (such as
finance, architecture, UX, QA)
– Centers of Excellence/Communities of Practice
– Incorporate agile governance
– Alignment with HR/People Operations
• These goals require culture change
• Cannot force people to change
• Change must be negotiated continuously

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The Bad:
Questionable
Strategies

12. Agile software teams are building awesome race car
engines…
12© Disciplined Agile, Inc.

13. …but they are surrounded by organizational
tractors
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14. Questionable Strategy: Focus Solely on Software Development
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Questionable
Strategy: Let
each area/group
determine how
they can
transform –
“Divide and
conquer”

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Questionable
Strategy: Hope your
problem will solve
itself

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Questionable
Strategy: Wait until
there’s a obvious
crisis before you
begin your change
journey

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Questionable
Strategy: Assume
that senior
leadership knows
best
Don’t be silly, the staff will do what we tell
them.

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Questionable
Strategy: Believing
that you can
transform quickly

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Questionable Strategy: Assume everyone wants to go
on your improvement journey

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Questionable
Strategy: Adopting
an agile framework
because everyone
else is doing it

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Questionable Strategy: Assume that transformations
are straightforward

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The Good:
Strategies for a
Disciplined
Journey

24. Delivery teams
interact with the
rest of the
organization, and
they need to
become agile
too!
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 24
Enterprise
Architecture
Security
Finance Operations
People
Management
Procurement
IT
Governance
Data
Management
And many
more…

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Enterprise
Coaching
Team
Coaching

26. Agile
Transformation
Effort Over
Time
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© Disciplined Agile, Inc.

27. Agile
Champions/Sponsors
• Agile champions external to the team
can help support and promote change
• Help to accelerate agile
“transformation” in the organization
• Without executive sponsors in it for
the long term it is very unlikely your
adoption will succeed
• You need an internal Product Owner
for your transformation
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© Disciplined Agile, Inc.

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Executive
Workshops
- Education
- Vision
- Guiding
Principles

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Several “Big
Visible Charts”
will help
communicate
our vision &
progress
against it

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31. Leanchange.org

32. Metrics
Design with
GQM
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 33
Goals trace
back to Vision
canvas goals

33. A Strategy
Board helps tie
high level
objectives from
the Vision
canvas to
smaller
enablers
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 34

34. From Transformation to
Continuous Improvement
• This is a journey, not a destination
• Once the key transformative work has been complete, the
transformation changes more to a continuous improvement
approach
© Disciplined Agile, Inc.

35. Continuous
Improvement
Process
Blade
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36. Establish CoEs and CoPs/Guilds
• Centres of Excellence
– Typically staffed full time by
“experts”
– Temporary
– Ensure consistency of
approach and messaging
– Provide leadership and
purposely disseminate
information
– Enterprise & Team Coaches
• Communities of Practice/Guilds
– Part-time responsibility staffed
by practitioners (could be
guided by CoE)
– Long-term
– Shared learnings and
experiences
– Improve their collective craft
over time
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 37

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A Disciplined Agile Centre of Excellence
© Disciplined Agile, Inc.

38. Invest in Coaching
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 39

39. Disciplined Coaches Focus on Mindset and Skillset
Values
Principles
Lifecycles
Process Goals/Blades
Decision Points
Practices/Strategies
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 40
Mindset
Skillset

40. Adopting a Prescriptive Method Helps a Bit
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 41

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Identify a Potential
Improvement
Experiment with
the new WoW
Assess
Effectiveness
Adopt the new
WoW
Abandon the new
WoW
Share Learnings
with Others
Continuous
Improvement
Apply the
Disciplined Agile (DA)
toolkit to
identify better options
Guided

42. You Improve Faster With Light-Weight Guidance
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 43

43. You Can Improve Your Way Out of Method Prison
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Disciplined Agile
Gets you out of Jailwith a bit of guidance

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45. Simplify the Process
Get plans out of MS
Project & make
them visible.
(no hidden work!)
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 46

46. Simplify the Process:
Replacing detailed project charters &
requirements docs with 3-day Inception phases
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 47

47. Invest in Terraforming: Workspace design
No need for meeting rooms!!
Fosters continuous collaboration
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 48

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49. Some Advice
• Communicate, communicate, communicate
(town halls, radiators, wikis, lean coffees) –
radical transparency!
• Have a Product Owner for your Transformation
• Executive sponsorship is critical
• Coach and mentor people over the long term
– Everyone and at all levels of the
organization, not just IT
• Get some help from experienced Enterprise
Coaches
• Hire coaches who can help you to “be agile”
AND to “do agile”
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 50

50. Thank you!
@scottwambler @mark_lines
info@disciplined-agile.com
© Disciplined Agile, Inc. 51