After rebuilding an existing application on a new tech stack within time and under budget our team had an overall retrospective with stakeholders this week to identify systemic issues. We found more than 20 problems in total and derived eight detailed recommendations the organization will need to address when moving forward to the next level of agile product creation.
Read on and learn how we achieved this result in under two hours with an overall retrospective attended by 16 people.
Do you remember the good old days when the organization started with its first Scrum team? And the new engineering kid on the block was “merely” supposed to deliver a potentially shippable product increment at the end of a sprint? When no one thought about how to align scrum teams?
The first team was to sound the bell for the upcoming change towards a learning organization. Little did we know back then about the challenges along that route. When teams 2, 3 and 4 joined, shipping a product increment at the end of a sprint became first complicated, and then complex.
It turns out that becoming agile does not only required to create (Scrum) teams. Reaping the full benefits of becoming agile, of becoming a learning organization built around software also requires changing engineering practices. Nowadays, it is all about continuous value delivery.
TL; DR: Agile Workspace Means Choice Among a Diversity of Spaces
If you want your organization to become agile, adding more whiteboards to the workspace will not suffice. You have to abandon the idea that the workspace is an assembly line for white-collar workers. You need to let go Taylorism. We are now in the age of the creative worker.
To become agile – and reap its benefits such as becoming more innovative –, you need a diversity of workspaces to support all forms of creative work: focus, collaborate, learn, and socialize. Also, you have to let your creative workers choose which space is best suited for a task.
Let’s face it: While your enthusiasm for the big picture of agile practices is admirable, your stakeholders will most likely be moved by one thought only at the beginning of the transition: “What’s in for me? How will I now have my requirements delivered?”.
Read on and learn about one way how to kick-off the transition to a learning organization by pitching a simplified version the big picture of agile practices to your stakeholders first.
Where to start when kicking-off an agile transition?
Usually, tools and processes are smallest the common denominator among all participants, as they are at the core of the grand scheme of agile things.
It is a rare occasion that you start from scratch with a brand-new team without an existing product, probably even in a more or less nascent organization, for example, a startup.
In most cases, an existing product delivery organization with available products, and services will go “agile“. In this case, turning attention to the available product backlog is a pragmatic first step. The following process describes what aspects need to be attended to optimize the outcome.
A hands-on, practical guide on how to kick-off an agile transition: Embrace the agile mindset and scale your engineering and product organization to harvest your organization’s full potential.
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