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Succeeding With Agile: A Guide To Transitioning
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.
Community comments
hao ka
by wang metis,
EXCELLENT DIAGNOSIS
by Kripanidhi S.M.,
So true, so true...
by Richard Lissimore,
hao ka
by wang metis,
Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.
hao ka
EXCELLENT DIAGNOSIS
by Kripanidhi S.M.,
Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.
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
www.scrumtales.blogspot.com
www.binaryessentials.com
So true, so true...
by Richard Lissimore,
Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.
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.