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Succeeding With Agile: A Guide To Transitioning

Posted by Mike Cohn on Aug 07, 2008 08:32 AM

Community
Agile
Topics
Leadership,
Adopting Agile
Tags
Scrum,
Agile Alliance,
Agile2007,
Self-organizing Team
Summary
In this presentation filmed during Agile 2007, Mike Cohn talks about the transitioning process towards an agile organization, why the process is inherently difficult, and what it takes to see self-organization emerging in a previously tightly controlled environment.

Bio
Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software. He is the author of Agile Estimating and Planning and User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, as well as books on Java and C++ programming. He is a founding member of the Agile Alliance and serves on the board of directors for the Scrum Alliance. He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM.

About the conference
The Agile Alliance organizes an annual international Agile conference, which brings together the key people in the Agile space to talk about techniques and technologies, attitudes and policies, research and experience, and the management and development sides of Agile software development.

Related Sponsor

VersionOne is recognized by Agile practitioners as the leader in Agile project management tools. Companies such as Adobe, BBC, CNN, Dow, HP, IBM, Sony and 3M have turned to VersionOne to help deliver greater value to their customers.

3 comments

Reply

hao ka by harry wang Posted Aug 8, 2008 9:12 AM
EXCELLENT DIAGNOSIS by Kripanidhi S.M. Posted Aug 12, 2008 11:59 PM
So true, so true... by Richard Lissimore Posted Aug 13, 2008 9:12 AM
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    hao ka

    Aug 8, 2008 9:12 AM by harry wang

    hao ka

  2. Back to top

    EXCELLENT DIAGNOSIS

    Aug 12, 2008 11:59 PM by Kripanidhi S.M.

    This is an excellent diagnosis of the symptoms and problems encountered in an Enterprise Agile Adoption scenario, with a practical analysis of its prognosis, possible treatment plans and ideas for monitoring and maintaining the continuous improvements in it. Thanks for sharing your experiences and ideas. Kripanidhi http://www.scrumtales.blogspot.com http://www.binaryessentials.com

  3. Back to top

    So true, so true...

    Aug 13, 2008 9:12 AM by Richard Lissimore

    Mike's point about you shouldn't try to get a team to be self-organising by command and control is one of those insightful moments that everyone should pause and think about.

    In the past during interviews, discussions etc. I've mentioned taking a light touch approach as discussed in Sanjiv Augustine's "Managing Agile Projects" book and so many people, including some who have been seasoned agile proponents, have mentally taken the opposite angle of "the team won't become self-organising unless I tell them how to be", and dismissed the light touch approach.

    IMHO to get a team to move towards becoming self-organising needs continous encouragement, respect, shared knowledge between all team members, and most of all, knowing when (as a manager, coach, or mentor) your pre-conceived mental image of them being self-organising day to day should be retired as they've reached their own disciplined state of being self-organising and have moved from the norming to performing stage of team development.

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