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The Challenges of bringing Agile Principles to a Waterfall Agency
- 1. The challenges of bringing Agile principles to a Waterfall organisation A 10 minute lightning talk by Mel Wilson – DPM @Incuna
- 2. This is me. I manage projects. @MelissaWilson32
- 3. The company Large corporate clients Clients used to working with Waterfall Proposals for work sell the Waterfall project lifecycle Strict, tight deadlines cause high stress environment
- 4. Change is needed Promised deadlines missed Reputation is compromised Constant crunch and development burnout
- 5. Why go Agile? Improve estimates Empower the team Open forums of discussion Increase profit margins Improve client relationships Refine processes & being agile is like being a cat, obvs…
- 6. The Resistance Little working evidence People are scared of change Planning & resourcing tools already tried & tested No capacity to learn and adapt
- 7. Going rogue Created & shared documentation Implementation of Agile Ceremonies Implemented processes throughout company Standardised jira workflows
- 8. Small victories Projects delivered on time Clients satisfied with quality of product Devs happy, motivated and engaged Requests for more Agile across the company Dev and PM working closer together with more open conversations Evidence produced and PM team mainly convinced
- 9. On-going challenges Resourcing and scheduling continue to trip up project progress Getting client buy in to the Agile process Ensuring no regression into ad hoc nightmare Roll out of adequate training for dev and PM
- 10. Tl;dr An interesting challenge Have patience Change doesn’t happen overnight The whole company needs to be bought in to Agile Communication and education is key Agile isn’t for every company, Strive for continuous improvement
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone, my name’s Mel I’m going to be talking to you today about some of the challenges I’ve faced bringing Agile Principles to a Waterfall and at times ad hoc agency Now I’m certainly no expert in Agile or in helping companies transition to using the Agile methodology, but I thought this would be an interesting experience to share with you Some of you already know this, but for those of you who don’t, I started off as a Support Admin at White October before taking up the role of Digital Project Manager at Incuna.
- So just to set the background a bit Incuna is a medium sized company of around 40 employees based in Summertown There’s an internal dev, design, PM and accounts team with some members in Singapore, Amsterdam and Berlin The kind of clients Incuna have tend to be quite large, corporate organisations with very strict timelines for project delivery The clients are used to working with a Waterfall method of delivery, with cost and timelines agreed upfront When pitches and proposals are put forward there is often a very small window of time to do so. This can lead to the underselling of a product to win the work. With this in mind, scope creep happens regularly due to undefined requirements from the client With tight deadlines and lots of stress it can be a difficult environment to work in
- So some changes are needed to be made With the way the company is currently operating, many promised deadlines are being missed Consistently missing deadlines will begin to damage the company’s reputation. If we are missing deadlines, what else are we missing or compromising on to make up lost time? Are standards slipping on testing and quality of product dropping? Constant pressure, stress and working late will eventually cause dev and PM burnout. With burnout brings low team moral and eventually it will affect company culture
- Why should Incuna go Agile? Many companies operate in a waterfall and ad hoc way every day with no issues, why can’t Incuna do the same? The current way of working is causing too much pain with the constant firefighting we are having to do If we try implementing some agile principles we could improve estimates which may stop us missing deadlines Using scrum and the roles defined within it can empower the team allowing them to take ownership and motivate them to keep moving forward Running Agile ceremonies can open up forums for discussion on how to improve processes and development procedures Better estimates improve our profit margins Closer contact throughout the project life cycle can improve client relationships And refining processes will increase efficiency overall
- Many of the things I have just mentioned are very positive, but I was met with some resistance I only had 16 months of industry experience and even less as a digital project manager – my working examples were lacking even if I did have exposure to them at WO People are afraid of change. When I suggested new ways of working in our weekly PM catch up it was met with push back Some of the tools for resourcing and planning I suggested were dismissed quickly due to previous attempts at using the application while the company was in a different stage When your team is constantly fire fighting, when will you have time to try these techniques out and implement them?
- With limited working examples of successfully implementing agile principles, I decided to go rogue. Break away from the team while I try these things out With my previous knowledge of agile I created documentation and templates for all the agile ceremonies and shared them with the PM team I had my own projects to experiment with and working with open minded devs I began implementing retrospectives and sprint planning and estimating sessions. I gathered feedback about each session to see how each meeting work, if any value could be taken from them. After positive feedback I approached the more open minded PMs and began rolling these changes out on their projects too Alongside implementing the ceremonies, I worked with lead devs to standardise our dev workflow within jira
- After lots of patience and feedback, I had some success The projects that had sprints, sprint planning and estimating and retrospectives were delivered on time, and with time for QA. The client was very happy with the products quality and that it was delivered to the agreed timelines The devs enjoyed trying the new processes and were happy with improving the current ones too. They even encourafes other PMs to use the same meetings for planning and retros The implemented process has improved PM and dev communications by having more transparent and open conversations With all of the above in place, the PM team are mainly convinced
- There’s always going to be challenges and other areas to improve on Resourcing and long term planning continue to trip up project success with the continuous search for the ‘perfect tool’ Getting clients on board with Agile and them understanding the true meaning is an incredibly difficult job, especially as it involves a large shift in process Having time to roll out training for the entire company will be a long term battle as we work towards the right justifications for the right training for the team The daily battle of reminding the team of the process will continue, otherwise ad hoc chaos takes over
- Trying to implement agile principles has been an interesting challenge that has certainly tested my patience No matter how fast you try to implement change, it takes time. You need to build up the trust of your peers that these methods work The whole company has to be bought in to agile, including the clients if you want to implement the methodology fully That said, it isn’t for every company. One size doesn’t fit all and if you find some principles help but others don’t, that’s OK It doesn’t have to be perfect. Always strive for continuous improvement of your processes and the company as a whole.