How Culturally Ready Should a Company Be Before Starting an Agile Transformation?
We recently asked the members of the Agile Mentors Community about cultural readiness for starting an agile transformation.
In our discussion forum we got a variety of well-thought-out answers around this:
“It’s kind of a chicken and egg game. What comes first? An organization that is culturally ready to change, or a company that just starts experimenting with frameworks? What do you think? How culturally ready should a company be before starting an agile transformation?”
Read on to learn what our members had to say about this.
Cultural Readiness Matters
A Scrum Master from Virginia shared two experiences—one that worked, and one that failed, concluding that cultural readiness really does matter.
The company that was successfully invested in agile training and updated systems to support the teams and the agile ways of working. “It was bumpy at first, but things eventually smoothed out and we delivered the updated product on time to good commercial success. They now use agile and Scrum for all of their products,” he says.
On the contrary, this Scrum Master worked at a company that spent a lot of money hiring agile coaches, Scrum Masters and new software, but did nothing to address the existing culture. “Unlike the first company, they were ‘doing agile’, but did not change any of the environments or processes that the teams had to work within and they failed miserably,” he says.
An agile coach and Scrum Master from the United Kingdom agree that an organization has to be culturally ready. He says, “Things that will kill a transition to agile are a blame culture if they don’t think they have a problem that needs fixing and a high staff turnover.”
A US-based agile trainer added, “Too many organizations think getting ‘ready’ for agile means training the teams and perhaps the first-line management. My preference would be to engage (not necessarily train) the people who think agile is the way to go. If the new image of the culture they need isn’t what they’re prepared to embrace, adjusting expectations for what can and can’t be adopted will be necessary.”
An agile coach from California adds, “If the pain and discomfort of the status quo aren’t perceived as being greater than the potential pain and discomfort of change, then it’s going to be a tough row to hoe.”
“I think you can almost guess the readiness based on the current focus/internal meetings of the company,” says an agile coach from Texas.
“When I hear company town halls which focus on buzzwords, with no plans/definitions of the buzzword and how it applies to our business, I worry. When I hear company town halls when people talk about plans and hopes for the future, I worry less. When I hear in one sentence, ‘We need to bande agile to go faster, deliver more to our customer, and complete our 5 year plan in 3 years’, I leave,” she says.
A Scrum Master from Australia chimes in by saying, “Culture is driven by Leadership. Without the express support and drive from leadership, any attempt at culture change would be marginal at best. The ‘Law of the Lid’ comes to mind. Unless leadership takes the steps to promote and live the change that is needed, things will be business as usual.”
Agile is an Evolution
Another Scrum Master, also from Virginia, says he prefers the term ‘Agile Evolution’ to ‘Agile Transformation’ since agile is a continuous process and there are always improvements to be made.
“I believe any organization can begin to practice agile where they are currently. It may be small changes at first. A grassroots movement is what started the organization I work with down the agile path. I think any time is a good time to start on the agile journey,” he says.
Whether we’re talking about a full agile transformation, somewhere in the journey, or just grassroots efforts to get started, there are many different perspectives to consider such as the current culture, size of the organization, and what they hope to achieve.
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