The document discusses the journey of a company transforming to Agile practices. It began with a traditional 2-day Agile training but failed to see results as business stakeholders were not engaged and teams remained separate. Small continuous changes were then made, such as embedding testers and business analysts into development teams. These small changes led to greater effects over time. Demonstrating working software to senior management helped gain their support for further Agile adoption, including major refactoring work. The key lessons are to take small incremental changes, expect continuous change, and take the team through the journey together.

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The Journey to Agile
Shabbir Naqvi
Senior Delivery Manager at YNAP

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How many of you can relate to this?

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The Journey to Agile
1. Agile transformation projects don’t work
2. Smaller continuous change is more effective
3. Using change from your teams to drive bigger change
4. Lessons learnt
I want to talk about these four things...

4. @shabbirnaqvi14
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http://www.techdaring.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/OLD-COMPUTER.jpg
Going to use a real company as a case study
They had very legacy systems, ~15-20 years old
Many stakeholders across the world, serving >50 brands
They could only release monthly
Waterfall development practices
Separate development and tester teams

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Main problem was releasing things slowly, or projects considered to take too long
Business needed things quicker

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Image credit:
https://www.iag.biz/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/387-Agile-Business-Analysis-Trainin
g.jpg
Senior management decided to adopt Agile
Hired a consultant to give a 2 day Agile training course to the whole development
team
Started doing sprints, had burndown charts in place, etc.
Somewhat re-structured teams, apart from embedding testers and aiming for
cross-functional teams

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Didn’t actually change anything
Business were not engaged, separate Project Management team with their own
Business Analysts
No Product Owner

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Decided to start small:
- Work with the team to figure out the main challenges they’re facing
- Perfect venue: retrospectives
First challenge: MVPs
Got the BA somewhat embedded into the team to work with the developers
Next challenge: Estimations were new to the team
Cautiously did our sprint commitment and tweaked it every couple of weeks
Next challenge: Skillset gap
Testers embedded into the teams properly
Team commitment meant everyone helps each other
Devs did testing, testers helped with BDDs sitting with devs

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Continued tweaking, assessing, iterating
Small changes led to greater effects

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What about having a bigger impact?
Senior management often wants to just see results
Demo’ed MVPs to them & customers
Despite being able to release monthly due to the legacy systems, we could show
them for certain what we were going to release
This meant we could release the best value to the customer every month thanks to
the slightly shorter feedback loop
Senior management noticed and started to like this Agile thing!
Where did we get to?
- 3-4 development teams with Scrum
- Support team with Kanban
- Started major refactoring work, signed off by senior management

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Lessons Learnt

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1.
Image credit: http://leissonlife.com/files/2016/02/babysteps.jpg
Take small baby steps to change
Concentrate on a single thing at a time
Too much change all in one go causes confusion, unsettles people
Take everyone through those baby steps

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http://www.wcpm.co.uk/epmbook/orgchange.htm
Managing change is crucial
As can be seen, change can have serious negative impacts on people

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2.
Image credit: https://www.cmscritic.com/site/assets/files/2177/webchanges.jpg
Change is neverending
Technology always changing, so expect change in the future
Be prepared for change, embrace it

15. @shabbirnaqvi14
So much coming up in tech...
● ‘Exponential’ tech - robotics, VR & AR, 3D printing
● Artificial Intelligence
● Cognitive Technologies
● Blockchain
● IoT
● ‘Anything as a Service’
● Cybersecurity
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/technolo
gy-industry-outlook.html
Or Google ‘Deloitte Technology Industry Outlook 2017’
Some examples of change coming up in 2017

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3.
Image credit:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4zWztThK1n8/T9UcTNov_gI/AAAAAAAAAoc/lLI8jL4uucM/s
1600/133+on+jounrey+together.png
Take the team through this journey together
The best teams I’ve worked with have always been the ones who have shared the
journey
They know why they use certain processes, because they’ve seen what happens
when they don’t
They respect each other’s opinions
They understand each other’s ways of working
Good example:
- Worked with a team for >12 months
- Tweaked processes continuously
- Tried formal Scrum, tried Kanban
- Changed all sorts of things, timings of meetings, sprint cycles, etc.
- Team experienced this together, hence they understand why they work the
way they do
- And of course, team has bonded very well during the journey

17. @shabbirnaqvi14
shabbirnaqvi@outlook.com
Thanks for
listening!
Questions?
@shabbirnaqvi14
shabbirnaqvi.com