Walking Towards Agile Transformation

By David H. Tardini, Head of Agile Transformation in GFI Informatique

David H. Tardini, Head of Agile Transformation in GFI Informatique

Many times the changes that the organization needs to evolve towards Agility can be uncomfortable for certain teams and persons.

The persons who are leading the agile transformation must design and lead the strategy to manage the cultural and methodological change in all areas of the organization.

Defining objectives clearly, reporting progress and measuring the degree of adherence are the responsibility of the agile transformation committee. The information must be concise, clear, transparent and available to all persons in the organization, including stakeholders.

In the first stage of the transformation process, the results may not be satisfactory because the adherence factor will be deficient and the resistance to change very high, see the Learning curve (fig1).

For this reason, we should not associate the result obtained in the first stage as a factor to measure success or failure.

It is important to be aware that it is a maturing process that will be more or less arduous depending on the type of organization in which the agile transformation process is being implemented.

Interpretation of the concept “Getting out of the comfort zone”

Reflecting with experts in coaching, psychology and agility, we agree that the expression “Getting out of the comfort zone " could lead to an erroneous interpretation in the Agility context.

According to definition, the word comfort means wellness or material comfort, meaning that something comfortable would be what provides support and generates wellness. So why would a team or a person have to leave the comfort zone? Perhaps the interpretation that we should adopt is to leave his usual area, in which, currently, does not allow to add value to his team and consequently to the organization because the needs of the market have changed and it is necessary to move forward out of “the usual area” to evolve towards agility.

It’s important to understand that one of the main objectives of the Agility is to achieve the wellness of persons which constitute the entire organization; so that they can contribute the best value in their products and/or services to their clients and consequently maximize the benefits of the company.

Bearing in mind that in the not too distant past, many organizations have been successful in implementing agile methodologies to accelerate the delivery of valuable software, this situation has encouraged companies to expand and replicate the model to other areas gradually. Currently, some frameworks allow scaling agility to the whole corporation such as Scrum@Scale, SAFe, DAD, etc. but in practice, several organizations have experienced that as the number of teams increases the speed of delivery decreases, due to integration problems, misinformation, duplication of work, etc. Today the Agile / Scrum scaling frameworks have evolved significantly to improve this situation significantly.

One of the most recent success stories is the Scrum@Scale framework (developed by Dr. Jeff Sutherland) that is designed to achieve this goal through its free scaling architecture.

By using free escalation architecture, the organization is not forced to grow in a particular way determined by a set of arbitrary rules; but it can grow organically based on their specific needs and at a sustainable rate of change that can be addressed by the groups of persons that make up the organization.

The road to agility is an arduous road and requires a lot of effort for all the people and components of the organization, but it is one of the priorities of vital importance for companies in the current times, where companies need to maximize the value provided to their company’s customers.