Getting a big company to change the way it operates in any meaningful sense is always tough. They invest lots of time and money in establishing best practices and training people to follow them. Change happens but it’s never simple or quick when hundreds or even thousands of people are involved.
This causes major issues when changing from waterfall software development to agile software development. To combat the problem, companies often invent hybrid development approaches that are never truly agile. Hybrid approaches address a few key areas. Things get a little bit better. Management loses interest and the change effort ends.
That’s a shame. It amounts to leaving money on the table. Getting big companies to change takes more than just presenting an idea and asking for support.
It takes Positioning, Preparation and Passion.
I’ve discussed this three-phased approach to agile adoption in a post I wrote for Colabpro. The post is called “How to Be a Successful Agile Development Evangelist”. Think about the term ‘evangelist’ — someone who is enthusiastic about an idea, likes to tell other people about it, and wants to see it grow. Combining that with Positioning, Preparation and Passion is the path to successful enterprise-agile adoption.
Please take a look and let me know what you think by leaving a comment at Colabpro or here.
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