4 Dos and Don’ts When going “Agile” Enterprise Wide

Going Agile entreprise wide? We help you navigate the waters of organisational change. And to get you there, we take a deep dive into Change Management best practices. Key contributors, obstacles, lessons from past experiences … here is all you need to keep in mind before embarking on the journey. 

“How Did They Get There?”: 4 Success Factors

1. Not addressing resistance upfront. Managing resistance is a big part of dealing with the change. And it should be done at three different points in time: 
   reventively by explaining the value of Agile, proactively by addressing doubts and concerns, and reactively when resistance starts to hinder progress.
2. Maintaining traditional waterfall approaches. Problems arise when Agile is not yet the norm. Its principles and practices must be applied to every single initiative. Partial or fragmented implementation ends up consolidating the status quo and legacy routines.
3.  Fearing failure. This goes against the mindset and everything the approach stands for. But as Edwards Deming wisely said, “transformation is not automatic. It must be learned; it must be led”.  That brings us to the final obstacle, and probably the biggest hurdle.
4. Not treating the change as a cultural change. Agile transformations take time and targeted Change Management skills. It is essential to map out culture, understand and measure it to effectively shift mindsets and behaviours. For that reason, agile transformations are never … that agile.
   
   

4 Major Lessons from Successes and Failures

When asked what they would do differently in hindsight, respondents to Prosci's survey emphasised several key points that sum up a lot of the above:

1. Create a Change Management plan. A robust Change Management plan can address recurring issues, starting with the need to create awareness and desire, or deal with resistances before they surface and spread.
2. Create buy-in from impacted groups. Improving adoption rates takes intentional efforts. Generating buy-in among top executives and involving sponsors is only half of the battle. To get everyone on board and cascade the change, managers are your best allies.
3. Deliver more coaching on Agile. Oftentimes teams fail to embrace the approach because they haven’t been properly equipped and feel they are tiptoeing through a minefield with the approach technicalities.
4. Apply Agile sufficiently. Creating organisational agility (agile) is one thing. Choosing and implementing specific Agile methodologies to run the portfolio is another (Scrum, Lean, Kanban, …). As mentioned earlier, make sure to apply Agile sufficiently. In our experience, the biggest challenge with organisations asking us to do Change Management in Agile is their patchy implementation of Agile.