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Agile Coaches' Corner shares practical concepts in an approachable way. It is for agile practitioners and business leaders seeking expert advice on improving the way they work to achieve their desired outcomes. If you have a topic you'd like discussed, email it to podcast@agilethought.com, or tweet it with #agilethoughtpodcast.

Aug 9, 2019

Today’s guest is Scott Riley, a colleague of Dan Neumann’s and a Delivery Leader at AgileThought. As a Delivery Lead, Scott wears multiple hats and is responsible for the successful delivery or implementation of projects. If anything goes wrong during a project, it is Scott’s job to be able to identify what that issue is and remedy it.

 

In this episode, Dan and Scott are discussing the challenges of bringing agile into a non-agile environment. They talk about the challenges they generally see in work environments transitioned to agile, misconceptions they often hear around agility, the concerns and struggles they often see as organizations are in their agile journey, how to overcome these challenges,  what makes for a successful agile organization, and how AgileThought works with organizations that are getting started on their agile journey.

 

Key Takeaways

Misconceptions Scott often hears around agility:

That being creative, quick, or clever is all it takes to be agile

If there are no rules in place that means you’re being agile

That agile should be implemented because ‘it’s just the new way of doing things’ rather than to solve a problem the organization is facing

Challenges Scott sees in organizations that are in a place of pre-agile adoption:

That there’s no foresight into scalability

They’re not paying attention to how they can sustain things, longterm

Challenges of bringing agile into a non-agile environment:

Fear of change from the organization

That they only bring in aspects of the framework without implementing it fully

That the organization is confused about what is agility from having multiple consultants from different organizations

How to overcome these challenges:

Help the organization and its members to become extremely familiar with the principles of agile

Make sure it’s the path this organization actually wants to go down, by asking the important questions (such as, “Why agile?” and “What problem are we addressing?”)

Do the coordination but not to the detriment of people’s sanity

Concerns and struggles Scott often sees as organizations are in their agile journey:

Struggles with cross-team communication that turns into a game of telephone

Building something with an assumption rather than the true knowledge of what it should be

The uncertainty of self-organizing teams

For a successful agile organization:

It’s important to have a true understanding of the Agile Manifesto and all of its principles

You need open channels of communications between business people and developers who work together daily

Make sure that conversations don’t lead to misdirection

Teach members how to collaborate and bring every decision into a team process

How AgileThought works with organizations that approach them to have a conversation about their agile journey or to improve their agility:

We help by facilitating conversations

We determine where their baseline is and where they want to go

We provide an assessment and then move forward with that

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Scott Riley (LinkedIn)

The Agile Manifesto

Eric Landes (LinkedIn)

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 19: “Eric Landes on Kanban Metrics in the Scrum Framework”

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 22: “The Role of Managers in Agile Organizations with Esther Derby”

Agile + DevOps East (in Orlando, FL)

 

Scott Riley’s Book Pick:

Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland, by Dave Barry

 

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