"Starting an Agile Team -

Evolution or Revolution?"

Scott Bird and Rick Freedman

2016 PMI Professional Development Days

September 2016

Introductions: Scott Bird

• Process Excellence Leader, se2

• 12 years agile experience

• 5 years coaching experience

• 3 agile transformations

Introductions: Rick Freedman

“100 Most Inspiring People in

Project Management”

“Top Thinkers in

Project Management”

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6

Assessment and

Planning

Education

Team Level

Project Level

Portfolio

OngoingOngoing

Enterprise Adoption

Executive

Team Startups

“Big Room Planning”

Agile Portfolio Mngt

Teams

Initial

Kaikaku vs Kaizen

Starting an Agile Team - Revolution

• Getting Ready

– Identify stakeholders

– Structure the team

– Get approval / buy-in

• Agile Bootcamp

– 2-3 days

• Team Kickoff

– 1-2 days

Setting up the Team

• Identify stakeholders

• Get approval / buy-in

• Structure the team

“Agile Bootcamp”

• Introduction to Agile

• 5 Levels of agile

planning

– Vision

– Roadmap

– Release

– Sprint

– Daily

• Roles

• Artifacts

• Ceremonies

• Product Backlog

• User Stories

• Estimating

• Measuring progress

Team Kickoff

• Team Formation

– Product Vision

– Team values

– Working agreements

– Ceremonies and cadence

– Backlog Grooming

– Definition of Done

• Backlog Creation

– User Story Mapping

– User Story workshop

– Estimating

Pro’s and Con’s

• Advantages

– “Immersion” style

learning

– Allows for learning and

experimentation in a safe

environment

– Sets a common baseline

for all teams

• Challenges

– Requires a significant commitment to being “offline” for 3-5 days

– Requires significant training resources

– “Shock” Therapy may trigger additional resistance

• Just like agile delivery, agile adoption is an incremental

project

• Culture is sticky

• Existing process is sticky

• Waterfall mentality is sticky

• Developer personal practices are sticky

• Why advocate iterative, incremental development and not

apply it to adoption?

Starting an Agile Team - Evolution

Why Evolve?

• Respect the unique culture

• Reduce risk

• Avoid wholesale disruption

• Reduce stress and resistance

• Grow agility, don’t buy it

• Inspect and adapt!

Mindset Eats Practice for Lunch!

• Practice or Mindset?

• The Shu-Ha-Ri Fallacy

• Agile is a philosophy, not a physical practice

• No mindset, no agility!

• Honor the practices but focus on

understanding and conscious acceptance

What Does Agile Evolution Look Like?

• Leadership support

• Select the right team(s)

• Select the right project(s)

• Agile mindset training

• Agile practice training

• “Show Up and Throw Up”

• Build the first Scrum Board

Starting the Evolution

• Task-based “thrown up” board

• Sorted and categorized board

• Initial story form

• Initial product backlog

• Prioritized backlog

• Initial estimation: T-shirt sizing

• Sprint planning

• Initial Sprints

Evolving Scrum by Scrum

• Early sprints: focus on training as we go:

• Agile principles

• Agile practices

• Team collaboration

• Incrementally:

• Add planning hierarchy

• Turn tasks into stories

• Migrate from T-shirt to story-point sizing

• Add rigor to planning, review, retro practices

• Drive to consistent velocity

Tracking the Evolution

Practice To Do In Progress Stable Mature

“Show up and throw up” X X X

Scrum Ceremonies and Cadence X X

Sprint Commitment X

User Stories X

Estimating X X

Epics/Stories/Tasks X X

Metrics X

Release/Project Planning X X

Pro’s and Con’s

• Advantages:

• Observe the culture

• Minimize disruption

• Mindset before practice

• Evolve into roles

• Concentric circles

• Visible results

• Inspect and Adapt!

• Challenges:

• Longer adaption

• Slower impact

• Resistance risk

• Backsliding risk

• Agile ‘pockets’

• Varied practices

• Diminishing momentum

Summary

• Evolution / Kaizen

– A more natural approach to adoption

– Longer time frame with increased backsliding risk

– May be a better approach if minimizing disruption is one of the goals

• Revolution / Kaikaku

– Higher impact at a

faster rate

– Creates a higher spirit

of team cohesion

– May intensify

resistance