- There are a lot of challenges that come with embracing
a more agile mindset.
But the biggest challenge in large organizations
is underestimating how radical this transformation can be.
This isn't really one challenge,
as much as it's a group of common challenges.
You can get a sense of this challenge
by looking at how many changes your organization has made.
If you have the same people doing the same things,
just with more agile sounding names,
then you probably aren't making significant changes.
Your organization should be
a little anxious about the changes.
And generally, organizations don't like to be anxious.
But if you think about it, there are a lot of big changes.
Your organization will need to step away
from long-term detailed plans.
Instead they need to inspect and adapt.
If you're a longtime project manager,
this idea should make you pretty uncomfortable.
You've probably spent years or even decades
trying to stamp out all the uncertainty.
If you want to embrace a more agile mindset,
then you have to change your whole relationship
with uncertainty.
Instead of trying to stamp it out,
you need to see it as a competitive advantage.
You can improve your product
if your agile team adapts faster than your competitors.
If you're a business analyst,
then you have to change the way you think about the product.
It might seem natural to come up with your own requirements
and then hand it off to the team.
An agile team is different.
Here you have to work hand in hand with the team
to deliver your product.
There isn't any handoff.
Instead, your team and their team are the same team.
That might make you uncomfortable
because in the past there were
very clear lines of responsibility.
But an agile team mixes up these lines.
Finally, if you're a manager,
you have to change the way you receive status updates.
You might be used to a one page, weekly status report.
It shows if your project is on time and under budget.
An agile team doesn't communicate with reports.
Instead, the team communicates with working software.
That means that you'll want to attend
frequent sprint reviews
and give direct feedback about the product.
For most organizations,
these changes will all be very difficult,
and you shouldn't underestimate
how much different they are from the status quo.
I've seen many organizations try to split the difference.
They'll do a little bit of changing
and hope for some process improvement.
When they do that, they're almost always disappointed.
That's because agile is a radical change
in your organizational mindset.
If you're not thinking about the product differently,
then you're probably not going to get that much benefit
from many small changes.