I am about to possibly rock your world — or the organizations around you.
Welcome back to yet another week at www.implementingscrum.com. I appreciate all the comments from the last posting and comic strip, and it feels good for me to get back into posting the comics and new thoughts.
It seems like you enjoy them too (thank you).
If you ARE in this situation, start the difficult conversations today about how to fix it… and SHARE this posting within your organization.
If you are NOT in this situation, well… count yourself lucky and SHARE this posting with your friends who might be in the following situation!
Is your organization struggling to come up with an “Enterprise Plan” for rolling out Agile [and Scrum in particular]?
I am working with clients today that have a similar problem. I have worked with many many many large [and small] enterprises over the years and have seen many patterns that work. I have also been personally involved with ideas that have failed (and yeah, some were even my ideas).
Here is the number one reason I have seen that “Enterprise Rollouts” of Agile and Scrum FAIL:
They try to implement it too fast and furious.
Does this sound familiar?
Here is some great advice (and I know most people will ignore it AND possibly even disagree with me) for successfully rolling out Agile and Scrum projects:
Start with ONE project.
That’s it. Sound too easy? Hmm… Remember that the easiest and obvious answer may be that way for a reason!
“But Mike,” people say to me.
“WE are different.”
“WE need to get our entire portfolio up and running using Agile and Scrum across the worldwide distributed enterprise so that we can get metrics and tools in place to increase our time to market, lower costs, and make everyone feel like it is a party coming to work every day.”
OK… so the “party” part in that last statement was made up by me (smile). Just making sure you are with me.
The idea that, “We are different” and “we need to do bla bla bla bla” ALL RIGHT NOW will kill your Agile and Scrum implementation.
Don’t believe me?
OK… try it and get back to me. Or… continue down this thread with me….
If you are jumping on the Agile Bandwagon and using Scrum to transform your entire enterprise because “everyone else is now doing it” (yeah… Agile and Scrum have hit mainstream!) here is another word of advice.
STOP.
Right now.
Please.
Remember it took your organization years (and maybe decades) to paint yourself into the corner you are in today. Your organization has probably spent years coming up with incredibly complicated frameworks, processes, or methodologies to get things done. People have been promoted and rewarded for building empires and silos of expertise.
You also know that if you keep doing this, you are screwed.
Because your competitors are now all “Agile” and a lot are using this thing called “Scrum.”
There is still a major failure rate out there using Scrum (and the other Agile techniques).
Why is this?
Organizations — made up of really smart people (usually) — are making one of the greatest and most common mistakes in history… trying to inject too much change at one time.
Remember what happens when you try to do this (on a regular basis even)?
The organization will always always always go back to the way it was.
Dysfunctional.
Comfortable, but Dysfunctional.
AND… just as screwed as before you wanted to start this Enterprise Rollout of Agile and Scrum.
So.
Listen.
PLEASE.
If you are just getting started (or have already been down the path to where now “Scrum” or “Agile” is a bad and forbidden word in your organization) with a Scrum and Agile change management process….
Start with ONE Scrum project.
Get Executive Sponsorship as high up into the organization as possible (they need to take the fire cover for you and will be burning political favors).
Worry about scaling it later.
Otherwise, you’ll be just as comfortably dysfunctional and screwed at the end of the day.
Don’t believe me?
That’s OK.
Your competitors do.
Let me know your thoughts.
I am listening!
Hi all.
I arrive in London Sunday, February 20th and am out on the 23rd. While I be facilitating a Certified ScumMaster Workshop during the day on Monday and Tuesday on Goswell Road, I’d be up for meeting anyone on any evening starting Sunday.
I’ll be at Heathrow on Tuesday night (thinking of staying in that little micro-hotel again!] and then back across the pond to the USA on Wednesday.
Interested in meeting up with me? Think someplace like “The Slaughtered Lamb” (oh what a place… and YES it REALLY exists!).
Let me know!
[also... you can follow me on twitter @mvizdos for even more fun and off-the-wall comments or head to www.michaelvizdos.com and sign up for my e-mail only list there where I chronicle the learnings from all the places I go in the world]
Cheers.
- mike vizdos
Welcome back to yet another week at www.implementingscrum.com.
And yeah, it’s been a long hiatus from my contributions to this site (by the way… for those of you who do not know… my name is Michael Vizdos and I am solely responsible for all content on this blog… it is not a huge corporate entity or machine — it is a way for the two of us to communicate).
So much has changed since starting this site in 2006. Life — both personal and professional — has changed in many ways for me.
What about you?
In trying to figure out how to get things restarted here, I thought this would be an appropriate comic strip (originally posted as http://www.implementingscrum.com/2008/04/21/up-the-creek-without-a-paddle/ years ago).
See… in all the traveling and working (on personal and professional stuff over the past few years)… I have learned that the stuff I write about and post on this site IS important and DOES have an impact.
And.
I stopped paddling. Stopped posting. And kept watching — in amazement and awe — how this site kept growing and growing without me doing anything.
Yikes. I need to step up and start contributing once again.
Much of the “work work” I do today involves training (still — but not as much as the past!) the Certified ScrumMaster Workshop. It is an aweome experience — described as *life changing* by many attendees and has evolved dramatically.
The major shift of this training workshop is because I am seeing that most people in the industry today seem “OK” with Scrum being almost ho-hum-bla-bla-bla (well… maybe except for Jeff Sutherland, who continues to kick my ass to up my game [and probably does not know he has this impact on me]).
Scrum involves a lot of work.
This is where I am spending most of my time with work today — facilitating teams that are having a hard time with keeping the paddle moving against this never-ending tide of change resistance.
Fun stuff for me.
It is failing all over the place now… and there are a lot of blog entries dedicated to writing and discussing this.
Me… I want to focus on the positive.
And the tough stuff.
Professionally I am now at a point where I can — and DO — select my clients (as much as they select me for whatever reasons [which I am extremely grateful for!].
And.
I am really now only selecting to work with people who WANT to be successful with using Scrum — and the other agile techniques that are also required for a successful organizational change to occur.
It takes time.
It does not happen overnight.
I am proof of that (smile).
So… Here I go again.
I’ve looked at myself and have seen and recognized that I “stopped paddling” and well… it had a lot of consequences (both good and bad).
My choice now with this site is to start paddling again and keep pushing things forward.
It starts with you and me. Just two people. We are all that matters to get things going together.
Are you ready to start again with me?
I’ll ask for feedback continually… much like a great ScrumMaster needs to do.
Time to get back in the boat.
Here we go!
