Agile Transformation
Has anyone gone through a successful Agile transformation moving from waterfall to scrum? If so what was the biggest hurdle/pitfall? Was Sr leadership truly onboard? How long did it take you? -mnf
there is no such thing as a successful transformation. The culture of your company will ensure that it fails. however, the consultants will make a lot of money, so it will be portrayed as a great success. Enjoy the ride!
^It will be a fun ride
Look at Walmartlabs and try to speak to a veteran of more than 4 years . It is one of the most political company you will ever see. However, they did one thing right - identified Agile benefits and invested heavily in it. Biggest hurdle was people - everyone said agile is bullshit and does not work. Developers were pissed that they needed to be in office for scrum meetings. Testers were running all around with last minute code changes. Effectively, Agile was converted into mini waterfall . Senior leadership however remained adamant that Agile is the only way. They invested heavily in training PMs. They broke down the requirement from “modernize the existing platform serving $10 billion in revenues” to “add an item to cart” . And this was single most important milestone. People realised making awesome plans is far easier than implementing it. As such the whole requirements itself was broken down into 100x simpler requirements and implemented in baby steps. It took 3 years to successfully launch first end to end service but it was cracker of a success. Many new services followed to production in relatively short time afterwards and everyone lived in happy Agile world. I have personally seen the benefits of Agile and I am certain it is 1000x better than waferfall. Naysayers are people who don’t understand Agile or just do it wrong way. If your team lead is not ready to break teams in sizes of 6 and people don’t want to invest 10 mins of their daily time in discussion, you will fail - Agile or waterfall is immaterial.
Thanks this was super helpful
The idea that naysayers don't understand agile or do it the wrong way is very dismissive. If Agile works for you, great, but there are many successful ways to develop software. Managers just need to figure out what is best for their team.
Agile is a cancer to our industry. It deserves a bullet to the head to put it in its grave. End of story.
They try to budget for water fall, the POs try to drive the how, they tie hours into capacity. Etc. Some teams got it almost right away others are years in and still aren't near agile