Tuesday 23 July 2013

Link: Your boss, the invader from Mars (or how agile transitions can become unhinged by poor buy-in)

If you've ever tried to implement an agile transition in a traditional workplace, you'll know there are many stumbling blocks - one of the greatest being that of the existing stakeholder: Your boss, the invader from Mars explains how change can and should be dealt with by both the SCRUM and kanban approaches to agile development - and how that can easily be messed up by your boss.

The case-study especially strikes a chord with my experiences, describing a shop wanting to "become more agile" but not actually implementing agile processes, instead trying to add the "agile" on top - with a rather apt simile where the agile process are described as "layered over existing dysfunctions as a sort of veneer".

The article then goes on to show various ways in which a boss who is not fully vested in the agile approach can unhinge the transition process... but also lets us learn the various lessons from that so a we can hopefully improve upon it in our own attempts.

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