Agile change and transformation
The basic rules of Agile project management frameworks like Scrum are deceptively simple. Drawing from his experience as an Agile coach, Jeff Campbell offers in his book “Actionable Agile Tools” some lightweight practices and tools that could help you to implement successfully an Agile approach.
What we do in software development is hard. Lots of companies, teams, and people pick up Agile approaches to make it easier, and then realize it’s still really hard. They learn that Agile didn’t fix things. And, then they get to work trying to fix Agile.
It’s all too common these days to see arguments on Twitter or mailing lists with these rules-bound zealots arguing that ”you’re not agile” because you aren’t following the rules to their satisfaction.
In his book Agile Reflections, Robert Galen has aggregated multiple articles that he wrote about transitioning to Agile for the online publication PM Times. The book is based on his experience as in Agile coach helping companies in different phases of their transition to Agile software development.
Adopting new software development approaches like Agile and Scrum is always a challenge. There is a natural tendency for part of an organization to resist changing and some prejudices exist against Agile, mainly due to a lack of knowledge. This article discusses these misconceptions and provides some tips on how to overcome these prejudices to get Agile adoption on track in your organization.
As Scrum is the most popular framework adopted by organizations adopting an Agile approach for project management, many companies are trying to find financial facts that justify its adoption. This article discusses the topic of evaluating the return on investment (ROI) of using Scrum and Agile project management approaches. It suggests some hints about mistakes to avoid and on how to get meaningful results from this activity.
Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward” is a book that aims to provides some techniques that will help teams starting to adopt an Agile approach to software development to solve some of the issues they will face. If your team is tempted to get back to the traditional project management approach, you will find material in this book to continue your journey towards Agile.