Scenario:
You are a new Agile Coach hired by a service company that has been struggling to transition from Waterfall to Agile methodologies. The Delivery Manager, “Waterfall Wix,” has been leading the team using traditional Waterfall practices for over 15 years. Despite training sessions and workshops on Agile, the team is still facing issues with over-planning, micromanagement, and a lack of flexibility. This has led to frustrated stakeholders, a demotivated team, and an increased risk of project failure.
Challenge:
How would you approach the situation to effectively help “Waterfall Wix” and the team embrace Agile principles? Consider at least one of the following aspects in your response:
- Building Trust: How would you establish trust and rapport with “Waterfall Wix” to understand his/ her concerns and resistance to Agile?
- Training and Coaching: What specific training and coaching strategies would you employ to help Wix and the team transition smoothly?
- Incremental Changes: How would you introduce incremental changes to minimize disruption and demonstrate the benefits of Agile practices?
- Stakeholder Communication: What steps would you take to improve communication and transparency with stakeholders to ensure their buy-in and satisfaction?
- Empowering the Team: How would you empower the team to take ownership of their work and foster a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement?
Provide a detailed plan outlining your approach and justify your strategies based on the principles discussed in the blog.
2 Responses
Velocity of each individual iteration will be a different figure. There are many ways velocity gets impacted. Apart from planned absence (planned leave, training etc.) and holidays, there could be unplanned absences caused by illness, personal emergency etc. which impact velocity. User stories that do not get completed in an iteration get moved to next iteration. This brings down the velocity of the iteration where the story was started and bumps up the velocity of the iteration where it got completed. This being the situation, good practice is to take an average of last five or six iterations as the velocity of the team. Team stability is another factor that impacts velocity. Teams that have higher churn will see higher volatility in velocity. Other factors such as change in technology, adoption of new tools, increase in automation, will also impact velocity either positively or negatively! However, if team is stable and has reached “performing stage” steady rise in average velocity will be seen over a period of time till any of the factors mentioned above comes into play and impacts it.
Thanks Milind, fully agree with your comment.
Finally, irrespective of the increasing trend in velocity, there is improvement for sure. This cannot be missed, if observed. One of the intent of my blog is to encourage this observation, by taking a mildly provocative stand.