Getting Started With Agile

One of the things I've read about regarding moving from Waterfall to Agile is that it's a good idea to do it slowly. Best case scenario appears to be that you have one team that feels passionate about it, and they "go Agile" all on their own, while the rest of the company goes on about its Waterfall business. Then, when that team starts hitting its stride, you seed a 2nd team with some of the members from the original, let them establish a rhythm, and then repeat, until eventually everyone's Agile.

Needless to say if you work with me or have followed the Agile posts here, that's not what we did in my current workplace. Instead, we did a Big Bang approach, kicking off about a dozen Feature Teams at the same time, as well as converting some of our supporting groups over, all at once (last August). In our defense, we did pilot some practices before that, in order to gather data and try to start everyone off on a better footing. And I think we did get some significant value out of those trial activities, so I'm not belittling that work in the least. But as I'm starting to get greater exposure to more and more of the teams at work, I'm coming face-to-face with the reality of just how much diversity there is in terms of progress made. Literally every team I interact with is at a different point, with some possibly even stalled, with little idea how to get going again (or even recognition of the fact).

And that's what got me thinking today about the preferred "start small" approach. The value of having one or two experienced and enthusiastic members to build a team around was probably under-estimated by those of you who engineered our transition. We started everyone off cold, and hoped that within each team just such a person - or persons! - would emerge. Now I'm left to ponder how much better it would be going now, nine months later, if we hadn't left that so entirely up to chance?

Clearly we can't change history - who do I look like, Hiro?? - but I thought I'd post this for posterity, and in case anyone reading it is considering making a move to Agile. This probably falls under the category of, "No duh, Sherlock... why didn't you just listen to the experts?" but there it is.