Change Management

Training

Purpose of this presentation

• Help you understand what YOU can do to trigger organizational change

• Ask questions to trigger ideas

• Ideas that lead to change

• Discuss it in the context of Agile Transformation

How can you get a 6-year old to clean his room?

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A model for change

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Change…

• …takes courage

• …generates resistance

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Finding the path of least resistance

• Choose the length and width of your path

• Be careful of the illusion of change

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Wildfire Metaphor

• Find combustible material in your local work area

• Set it on fire

• Once you see flame, pour gasoline on them

• Encourage multiple small fires to merge.

• The large fire will begin to spread itself

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Avoiding the ”Us & Them” problem

• Strategy: Talk to everyone at once: – Developers – + Managers – + Customers – All at once!

• Strategy: Capture the Intent from each group

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Ask the right question

• ”Why can’t you” => ”Do you want to? How can you?”

The art of the Possible

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Visualize the current situation • This is what Kanban is good for: visualize the

workflow.

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Be realistic

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Death March detection

• Using gut feel: Do you believe the current goal is achievable?

• Vote by hand / fingers:

– 5 = certainly

– 4 = probably

– 3 = barely

– 2 = probably not

– 1 = forget it

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Remove impediments and be happy

• Top 3 impediments to be handled in priority

• ”How did it feel to come to work this week?

– Developer Happiness Index (rated 1 to 5, average on the team)

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Compare options (including status quo)

• Evaluating all options simultaneously

– 5 = Great!

– 4 = Pretty good

– 3 = Acceptable, but barely

– 2 = Don’t think I can accept this

– 1 = Forget it!

• Choosing a course of actions

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Reversible experiments

• Try things out, but with the possibility of reverting

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Make a business case for your change

• Use figures to motivate change

– Team estimates that our velocity would increase by 50% if we sit together.

– This means we can release 2 months early. What is the business value of that?

– What is the cost of tearing down this wall so that the team can sit together?

• …in practice not so easy to evaluate the benefits, but try anyway

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Use metrics to visualize progress

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Ask for forgiveness rather than permission

• The right to fail:

« The only real failure is the failure to learn from failure! »

• Or another way to put it:

1. Fail fast

2. Learn from it

3. Don’t do it again

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Agile transformation

• Agile requires a transformation, not only adoption. – You adopt a tool or a process. Agile is a

mindset so you can’t really adopt it. But you can adopt Agile practices.

– Agile requires transformation, which implies change.

• Culture is the #1 challenge with Agile. Agile defines a target culture for successful delivery of software. • Think about Agile as a culture and not only

as a product or family of processes.

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Schneider Culture Model • Where are we? As a company, as a team.

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Agile in Schneider Culture Model

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Kanban Culture • Is Kanban agile?

• Agile is first about people. Kanban is first about the system.

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Kanban is a good tool

• Use Kanban as a Trojan horse, containing Agile inside.

• Practice an agile mindset with Kanban as a starting place for evolving the process.

• Its primary purpose is to provide a feedback loop that can be used to drive change in organizations.

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Software Craftsmanship • Focus on competence

and technical excellence.

• We will talk again about code as craft. Promoted by XP.

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Pick the right tool • Work with

the existing culture.

• Do not fight against it.

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Disruption

• Change in one place will create disruption in the rest of the organization.

• Care and attention is required to accomodate disruption.

• Design culture « adapters » to satisfy the organization while driving change.

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Leaders go first!

• Live the values

• Lead by example

• Seek to truly understand their culture

• Be as transparent as the teams they lead

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Another perspective

Agile is an evolutionary approach to innovation and growth, respecting the

people who create value.

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Summary

• Don’t change other people, motivate them to change themselves

– Give them a reason to change (visualization)

– Show them a way to change. (Small, clear steps)

– Give them support, encouragement, and feedback

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Reference: Change Management • http://blog.crisp.se/2012/08/31/henrikkniberg/everybody-wants-

change-but-nobody-likes-to-be-changed • http://www.infoq.com/resource/minibooks/agile-adoption-

transformation/en/pdf/Agile%20Survival%20Guide%20-%20Michael%20Sahota%20-%202012.pdf

• http://agilitrix.com/2011/04/agile-culture-series-reading-guide/ • http://fr.slideshare.net/lazygolfer/doing-agile-isnt-the-same-as-

being-agile • http://blog.intercom.io/asking-questions-versus-giving-advice

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