scrum bangalore meetup_5-25 v1.5 2012

Slides Provided by Jayathirtha Rao, CSM, ITIL – © 2012

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Empowering your customer How to make your customer agile

Or

Selling Agile


What we call “selling” is really the act of finding what

interests people and seeing if an agile approach can help

meet their needs.


What do you want to be Agile for?


Unspoken Reasons

I’m afraid of change

I’m afraid I will have nothing to do

I’m afraid I will lose my job

I’m afraid people will see how little I actually do

I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep up

I’m afraid I won’t be able to learn the new software

I’m afraid this will mean hard work

I’m afraid I’ll be fired if the decisions we make don’t work

out

It’s just so much easier and safer when someone else

tells me exactly what to do


Ask them: How do you handle it now ?

Follow up with: How is that working out for you ?

An admittance that a problem exists and a solution is needed is the

best way to start the discussion.


Common Questions

Agile Doesn’t Allow for Long-Term Planning – How

Are We Supposed to Do Our Budgets?

Take a completed project and do a dummy release plan

It’s Worked So Far, Why Do We Need to Change? Show how it will make them look like stars; and take

away the painpoints

Our Situation Is Just Too Complicated For Agile Use cases of teams from different fields. Certification audits

FDA/Sarbenes-Oxley, CMMI 5 can be Agile. Challenge why not, help create an impediment backlog, ask what can be done, and create a structure


We Need To Matrix Resources To Get Maximum

Efficiency There are plenty of reports that show the productivity hits

when people are time-sliced across multiple initiatives – up to 40%! This is without management overhead.

Our People Can’t Be Trusted to Self-Organize The problem is usually with management at this point,

and not with the team.

How Can We Make Strategic Decisions Without Gantt

Charts? Create information radiators and then invite the

executives to the team room and help them understand what’s being built and how we can track


I Don’t Have Enough Time To Work With The Team

Every Iteration Try to partner with him or her in order to keep the

backlog staged for the team’s next iteration

I Can’t Wait An Entire Iteration For That Feature! Discuss with them the possibility of shortening the

iteration length to better accommodate their needs. Usually, once the stakeholders see that delivery is reliable and consistent, this pressure subsides.


Not so obvious takeaways

Typically, companies have used their IT suppliers for

introducing agile. This is often limited to just IT thinking

and may not represent the expertise required for

leadership, change and process transformation involving

non-IT personnel

Agility is not a replacement of what the company is doing

today – it is an enhancement, an improvement and an

advancement that is significant enough to look at

seriously and leverage

While patience is a virtue, profitability is a purpose and

companies can’t afford disruption if it means delays,

therefore, select a program or project that can bring

quick wins and demonstrate success


Part of selling is learning when not to sell.

Sometimes you have to plant the seed of an idea within people’s minds

and then let some calendar time pass. Learn when to push and when to

back off; and educate throughout the process.


Questions? Feedback? Offline discussions?

Jay Rao – 9986076702 / [email protected]

scrum bangalore meetup_5-25 v1.5 2012

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