This document discusses agile adoption through change management. It presents a 4-step approach: 1) Understand change management and how it aligns with agile releases. 2) Baseline change needs through lightweight assessments. 3) Model change using a framework that communicates early results, listens to feedback, collaborates with users, and iteratively measures success. 4) Practice the model by having groups discuss how their jobs may change with agility and identifying value messages. The document advocates using this agile change management model when facing resistance to change, process confusion, technology misuse, or legacy mismatches.
Lean Change Management - 5 Years of InsightsJason Little
What's next for Lean Change Management? Here's a preview based on completing a roadshow around the world, in person and virtually, showing patterns of what really matters to change agents.
In response to seeing a "how to pass your Scrum Master/Agile Coach Interview" we've created a way for employers to call BS on candidates who could otherwise dupe their way into a coaching role.
Learn how to apply Agile practices to change management and organizational development. This presentation was given at the Toronto Organizational Development Network meetup in March 2014.
Executing Change Management with Agile PracticesJason Little
Organizational change is unpredictable but we tend to still run these programs like we run projects. The change program is given a scope, budget and a deadline and then we're shocked when it doesn't work! If you're forced into running a change initiative within the constraints of a project, you can use Agile practices to help you manage the uncertainty.
Building Your Own Change Management FrameworkJason Little
The only "best practice" for change management is accepting the un-certainty that comes with complex change. Here are some tips for how to create your own custom change management framework by picking practices from different tools and frameworks
Agile and Change Management - CMI Canada Webinar Feb 2018Jason Little
This webinar was shaped by attendee questions, and was run in a lean coffee type of way. The lesson? As change agents, 'the change' isn't about us, it's about the people who need to live with the consequences of the change so shape the change based on what they need.
Lean Change Agent - Applying Lean and Agile to Change ManagementJason Little
As a change agent, I’m sure you’ve experienced how difficult it can be to introduce change into an organization. That could mean you’re an Agile Coach or Scrum Master tasked with introducing Agile, and it can also mean you’re a Change Management Professional who is looking for more effective ways to develop and execute change programs.
This 2-day workshop, based on the book Lean Change Management, is designed to help you discover more effective practices for introducing, and managing change in your organization. You’ll learn by doing, not by reading PowerPoint slides! You’ll hear real stories about how to apply better, innovative practices to managing change.
Lean Change Management - 5 Years of InsightsJason Little
What's next for Lean Change Management? Here's a preview based on completing a roadshow around the world, in person and virtually, showing patterns of what really matters to change agents.
In response to seeing a "how to pass your Scrum Master/Agile Coach Interview" we've created a way for employers to call BS on candidates who could otherwise dupe their way into a coaching role.
Learn how to apply Agile practices to change management and organizational development. This presentation was given at the Toronto Organizational Development Network meetup in March 2014.
Executing Change Management with Agile PracticesJason Little
Organizational change is unpredictable but we tend to still run these programs like we run projects. The change program is given a scope, budget and a deadline and then we're shocked when it doesn't work! If you're forced into running a change initiative within the constraints of a project, you can use Agile practices to help you manage the uncertainty.
Building Your Own Change Management FrameworkJason Little
The only "best practice" for change management is accepting the un-certainty that comes with complex change. Here are some tips for how to create your own custom change management framework by picking practices from different tools and frameworks
Agile and Change Management - CMI Canada Webinar Feb 2018Jason Little
This webinar was shaped by attendee questions, and was run in a lean coffee type of way. The lesson? As change agents, 'the change' isn't about us, it's about the people who need to live with the consequences of the change so shape the change based on what they need.
Lean Change Agent - Applying Lean and Agile to Change ManagementJason Little
As a change agent, I’m sure you’ve experienced how difficult it can be to introduce change into an organization. That could mean you’re an Agile Coach or Scrum Master tasked with introducing Agile, and it can also mean you’re a Change Management Professional who is looking for more effective ways to develop and execute change programs.
This 2-day workshop, based on the book Lean Change Management, is designed to help you discover more effective practices for introducing, and managing change in your organization. You’ll learn by doing, not by reading PowerPoint slides! You’ll hear real stories about how to apply better, innovative practices to managing change.
Many large IT projects continue to struggle with user adoption, leadership support, and overall stakeholder buy-in. Effective use of Agile best practices is a proven means of addressing these buy-in issues within the IT organization, but what about other departments? In this session, we will discuss how Agile principles can drive an enterprise-wide change management approach in order to better reinforce the transformations taking place in your organization. The goal? Maximize collaboration between IT and the business and break down silos through iterative, incremental progress.
Tools for Making Sense of Complex Organizational ChangeJason Little
Organizational Change can be complex and challenging. Often the problem isn't the method being used, but not having the right set of tools to help you make sense of what is happening. These are 4 tools and visualizations you can use regardless of which change methodology you are using.
Toronto Agile - Organize People Around the WorkJason Little
Presented at Toronto Agile's March 2018 webinar. How to use network density to understand how people are organized, and the impact of substantial organizational change.
Agile and Beyond 2016 Rethinking Agile TransformationJason Little
Should you be Agile or can you just do Agile? Which Agile scaling framework should you pick? We tend to make things more complex than they need to be, but we can simplify things!
ACMP Canada - Transforming Traditional Approaches to ChangeJason Little
Much of what we know about change is based on models designed in a different era. Things are different today, and there are more modern approaches we can take for how we approach change.
Public Sector Transformation with Lean Change ManagementJason Little
Lean Change Management helps organizations make sense of how best to implement change by showing them how to use many innovative, feedback-driven practices
You're in it for the long haul so stop thinking about transformation and start thinking about how to run small, time-bound experiments to get you to that utopian Agile state.
During this presentation I challenged the notion that "agile fails due to resistance or failure to change culture". Lean Change Management helps people passionate about meaningful change learn new approaches to organizational change.
Agile 2015 - Navigating Organizational ChangeJason Little
Einstein said "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them" yet many organizations that want to adopt Agile end up using existing organizational structures to make it happen. That is, they create a centralized team to roll Agile out, define metrics, create a dashboard, communication and training plan and finally a Sharepoint site to push the change outwards. The outcome ends up being another failed Agile transformation story because people either resisted change or they failed to change their organizational culture.
This isn't an 'Agile' problem, it's a structure problem. The real issue is that organizational structures are designed to serve the internal purposes of the organization, not their customers or the value they create for their customers.
In this session we'll explore real organizations that are thriving by structuring in radically different ways. That includes apply the concepts of dual organizational operating systems, de-centralized networks, structuring around value streams, horizon planning and full-on organizational explosion.
3 Techniques for Architecting Change - Agile and Beyond 2015Jason Little
We hear simple statements like "we need to adopt an agile mindset!!", "we need to create clarity around the purpose for agile!", but these simple statements are not easy to do. Here are 3 practical techniques you can do tomorrow to move towards create a shared purpose when bringing Agile in.
Becoming Agile: Agile Transitions in Practice - Rashina Hoda - AgileNZ 2017AgileNZ Conference
Agile adoption has been typically understood as a one-off organisational process involving a staged selection of Agile development practices. This does not account for the differences in the pace and effectiveness of individual teams transitioning to Agile development.
About Rashina Hoda:
Dr Rashina Hoda is an internationally renowned researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Auckland. She has 10+ years' experience studying Agile teams and is the author of 60+ publications on Agile self-organisation, project management, knowledge management, reflective practice, task allocation and more.
Rashina served as the Research Chair of the Agile India 2012 conference and recently received a Distinguished Paper Award at the flagship international conference on software engineering (ICSE2017) for her ‘grounded theory of becoming Agile’ that explains the multiple dimensions of Agile transitions in practice.
She created and teaches the Agile course at UoA in close collaboration with industry and loves to present the 'voice of Agile research' to industry and academia alike.
What is the best Agile Adoption or Agile Transformation organization and team structure and the talent needed to successfully implement Agile across the company? Is there a best approach?
Many large IT projects continue to struggle with user adoption, leadership support, and overall stakeholder buy-in. Effective use of Agile best practices is a proven means of addressing these buy-in issues within the IT organization, but what about other departments? In this session, we will discuss how Agile principles can drive an enterprise-wide change management approach in order to better reinforce the transformations taking place in your organization. The goal? Maximize collaboration between IT and the business and break down silos through iterative, incremental progress.
Tools for Making Sense of Complex Organizational ChangeJason Little
Organizational Change can be complex and challenging. Often the problem isn't the method being used, but not having the right set of tools to help you make sense of what is happening. These are 4 tools and visualizations you can use regardless of which change methodology you are using.
Toronto Agile - Organize People Around the WorkJason Little
Presented at Toronto Agile's March 2018 webinar. How to use network density to understand how people are organized, and the impact of substantial organizational change.
Agile and Beyond 2016 Rethinking Agile TransformationJason Little
Should you be Agile or can you just do Agile? Which Agile scaling framework should you pick? We tend to make things more complex than they need to be, but we can simplify things!
ACMP Canada - Transforming Traditional Approaches to ChangeJason Little
Much of what we know about change is based on models designed in a different era. Things are different today, and there are more modern approaches we can take for how we approach change.
Public Sector Transformation with Lean Change ManagementJason Little
Lean Change Management helps organizations make sense of how best to implement change by showing them how to use many innovative, feedback-driven practices
You're in it for the long haul so stop thinking about transformation and start thinking about how to run small, time-bound experiments to get you to that utopian Agile state.
During this presentation I challenged the notion that "agile fails due to resistance or failure to change culture". Lean Change Management helps people passionate about meaningful change learn new approaches to organizational change.
Agile 2015 - Navigating Organizational ChangeJason Little
Einstein said "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them" yet many organizations that want to adopt Agile end up using existing organizational structures to make it happen. That is, they create a centralized team to roll Agile out, define metrics, create a dashboard, communication and training plan and finally a Sharepoint site to push the change outwards. The outcome ends up being another failed Agile transformation story because people either resisted change or they failed to change their organizational culture.
This isn't an 'Agile' problem, it's a structure problem. The real issue is that organizational structures are designed to serve the internal purposes of the organization, not their customers or the value they create for their customers.
In this session we'll explore real organizations that are thriving by structuring in radically different ways. That includes apply the concepts of dual organizational operating systems, de-centralized networks, structuring around value streams, horizon planning and full-on organizational explosion.
3 Techniques for Architecting Change - Agile and Beyond 2015Jason Little
We hear simple statements like "we need to adopt an agile mindset!!", "we need to create clarity around the purpose for agile!", but these simple statements are not easy to do. Here are 3 practical techniques you can do tomorrow to move towards create a shared purpose when bringing Agile in.
Becoming Agile: Agile Transitions in Practice - Rashina Hoda - AgileNZ 2017AgileNZ Conference
Agile adoption has been typically understood as a one-off organisational process involving a staged selection of Agile development practices. This does not account for the differences in the pace and effectiveness of individual teams transitioning to Agile development.
About Rashina Hoda:
Dr Rashina Hoda is an internationally renowned researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Auckland. She has 10+ years' experience studying Agile teams and is the author of 60+ publications on Agile self-organisation, project management, knowledge management, reflective practice, task allocation and more.
Rashina served as the Research Chair of the Agile India 2012 conference and recently received a Distinguished Paper Award at the flagship international conference on software engineering (ICSE2017) for her ‘grounded theory of becoming Agile’ that explains the multiple dimensions of Agile transitions in practice.
She created and teaches the Agile course at UoA in close collaboration with industry and loves to present the 'voice of Agile research' to industry and academia alike.
What is the best Agile Adoption or Agile Transformation organization and team structure and the talent needed to successfully implement Agile across the company? Is there a best approach?
Many organizations have long term employees retiring and find themselves needing to be competitive to fill key roles. Schools are teaching new ways of working that include working as part of a team, and using Agile methods.
In this one hour webinar we will explore how hiring practices and working environments need to change in order to attract and retain top talent in today's competitive market.
Driving Market Impact by Operationalizing Agile MarketingCMG Partners
There's a difference between "doing Agile" and "BEING Agile" - we give case studies from our experience coaching enterprise companies through Agile Marketing adopting.
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Agile Breakthroughs: Better Agile Adoption Through Change Management
1. Agile Breakthroughs: Better Agile Adoption
through Change Management
Katy Saulpaugh, Agile Change Management Practice Lead
2. About me
• Agile coach, Product Owner
and ScrumMaster
• Corporate communications
• Change management
• IT and KIM consulting for
federal, commercial and
nonprofit clients
1
3. About Enterprise Knowledge
Enterprise Knowledge is
focused on providing practical
solutions that help
organizations capture, manage,
and present information. Our
goal is to ensure that, through
our efforts, your organization’s
information can be found, used,
and reused, ensuring the
greatest returns and
satisfaction for your customers
and employees.
Let us help you make your information
work for you:
Taxonomy Design & Development
Knowledge & Information Strategy
Content & Systems Governance
Agile Transformation & Coaching
Records Management Strategy &
Implementation
Software Requirements Gathering
& Selection
Application Development
Contact us:
Phone: 571.403.1109
Email: info@enterprise-
knowledge.com
Follow us:
Blog: www.enterprise-
knowledge.com/blog
Twitter: @EKConsulting
SlideShare:
slideshare.net/Enterprise-Knowledge
2
4. Agile Adoption in 4 Steps
1. Understand
2. Baseline
3. Model
4. Practice
3
6. 5
What does change management do?
Change management addresses the people
side of change to achieve the required
outcomes of a change project or initiative
-Prosci
7. • Change Management on an Agile product: change
management aligned with the Agile release
schedule for your product, designed for the people
who will be using it
6
What do we mean by Agile Change Management?
• Change Management for Agile adoption: ensuring
the right changes in behavior happen when a team
or organization goes Agile
8.
9. EK’s take on failed projects
• Overreliance on Agile tools
• Struggles to release often enough
• (Middle) management that won’t let go
• Processes outside the team don’t change
8
10. Fear of loss Skepticism Inertia
Complexity Geography Culture
9
Factors that complicate adoption
12. Lightweight baselining
• How?
– Dot voting
– Pollev or other online voting tools
– Use previous research
• Who?
– Organization level: sponsor, Agile Coach or PO
– Team level: ScrumMaster or Agile Coach
• When?
– Sprint 0
– Now
13. “Willpower isn’t just a skill.
It’s a muscle, like the
muscles in your arms or
legs, and it gets tired as it
works harder, so there’s
less power left over for
other things.”
-Charles Duhigg,
The Power of Habit
12
Change Portfolio
17. EK’s Agile change management model
Communicate
early results
using two-way
channels
Listen
to feedback and
show its impact
on the project
Collaborate
with users to
create
understanding
Measure
success and
improve
iteratively
16
19. • Surface problems early
• Generate questions to
address
• Show impact on the
project
18
Listen
Listen
to feedback and
show its impact
on the project
20. • Methodology choice
• Policy evolution
• Story intake
19
Collaborate
Collaborate
with users to
create
understanding
23. 22
Let’s try it!
You’re an Agile coach of a software development team. Your
team is gung-ho about Agile but the rest of the business isn’t
so sure. Your client has asked you to help him reach out to
them because everyone is involved in creating your product.
Break into 4 groups:
- Executives
- IT operations
- Sales/marketing
- Customers
10 minutes: What might change about your group’s job after
going Agile? What business value and WIIFM messages about
Agile resonate with each group?
24.
25. Use EK’s Agile change management model when…
Your project lacks ownership from staff
You are experiencing resistance to or confusion
about Agile, or another new process or product
Your technology is being used poorly (or poorly used)
Your legacy technology no longer fits your needs
24
Hi, I’m Katy Saulpaugh. It’s great to be here, and I wanted to tell you a little bit about myself before we start. I’m an expert in change management, Agile and KM. I started my career in corporate communications and change management, and have since made the shift to IT and KM. A few years ago I got the Agile bug and have served in a number of roles on development teams and organizational Agile transformations.
What does it NOT do? Configuration management or change control boards. It’s also not force feeding.
CM is a pretty broad field: it can be applied to many types of initiatives: new technology, new processes, a reorg, or even an office move
I want to take a moment to clarify what we mean by Agile change management. This could go one of two ways: the first, which is the one we’ll talk about today, is aimed at helping teams and organizations adopt Agile.
The second is actually conducting change management activities like communications and training for your product rollout, especially if you release frequently. I just got back from a conference on change management and this is something that was a very hot topic this year.
I think in a way, the first is a precondition for the second. We want to change ourselves first, and really internalize the Agile mindset, before we start evangelizing others on the actual product we’re building. But for today’s purposes, we’re just going to focus on the first. If you’re interested in talking to me about change for product releases I’d be happy to do so after this session.
What does resistance to Agile look like?
https://www.polleverywhere.com/free_text_polls/hJmfrYUj5rPpaAd
Using an Agile PM tool isn’t enough to ensure adoption
I was once in a product owner role, and was told that I could do everything in the role except prioritize. Trust is really important for self-organizing teams, and is oftentimes a prerequisite for successful agile adoption
On the other hand, Agile transformation can cause a lot of fear in non-IT teams, because you can’t tell them exactly how their jobs will change (e.g., finance, sales).
We all know change starts with ourselves. Some changes may actually involve job change or loss, and especially in a low-trust organization, fear may be a powerful motivator. For those who are in non-IT industries, they may see Agile as a trend and may just want to wait it out. And finally, we know the power of a habit to keep us stuck in a rut.
But because people live and work in networks, this is actually a more complex problem. Even if one individual changes, the “virus” needs to spread across the whole network. Added barrier to this spreading could be different cultural values or languages, as well as geographical dispersion.
Why is it important to baseline your change, even if you’re in the middle of it? Although change management has the reputation of being “soft” I think most people want to know whether they have succeeded. If you’re going to invest time and energy in agile adoption activities you will want to see some kind of progress. It will also help you understand the problem deeper.
Traditionally, a change management practitioner on a waterfall project does a large upfront stakeholder analysis or readiness assessment. Obviously, since we’re Agile we will want to get a baseline in a much more lightweight way. The easiest way to find out whether people have adopted Agile is just to ask them! In a recent lunch and learn, we used dot voting to gauge level of comfort with our Agile project. This could also be part of a retrospective if you’re facing resistance at the team level.
Most Agile projects don’t have dedicated change management practitioners – and I would say that only the large projects would need them.
A natural place for this to happen would be in Sprint 0, but it’s still worth measuring even if you’re in the middle of a project.
Has anyone read the Power of Habit? I really like the idea of willpower as a limited commodity. I’m training for my first triathlon, so I think about willpower a lot. That’s why I’ve realized that I’m much better off training in the morning – my energy and willpower levels are still high.
From a business perspective, you need to think from the portfolio level: how many simultaneous projects are going on at once in your organization? If people are having to learn many new processes and tools all at the same time as going Agile, their willpower is going to be depleted and they will be more likely to resist.
In the best case scenario, this can start a conversation with a program manager or executive about project timing. Worst case, if timing of other project demands can’t be flexible, you may have to reevaluate the best time to start going Agile.
Everett Rogers came up with the adoption bell curve in the 1960s to illustrate diffusion of innovations in the marketplace. Since then it has also been used to explain adoption across organizations.
Where you are on the curve depends on your industry. In the IT field, Agile isn’t really an innovation anymore – it is an accepted way of doing business. In marketing, it’s becoming well known but probably still in the early adoption stage. Diffusion of many Agile principles has made it to the self help world, and I think has something to do with the “life hacks” of personal productivity. Taking it to edge cases, it might be considered pretty cutting edge for other fields like international development.
How mature is Agile in your organization?
https://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/Sk3GHN4uSR4iFvd
Here’s an Agile way to think about change management. It’s basically a tweaked version of the Kanban, plan do check act. You can easily incorporate this into your sprint schedule and scale up or down based on what’s appropriate for your role.
Here’s an Agile way to think about change management. It’s basically a tweaked version of the Deming cycle: plan do check act.
Let’s start with communication: setting up two way channels is the fastest way to learn about your organization and keep up if things change. That’s your baseline step, but it doesn’t stop there. Crucial to your success are what is being communicated.
Business value: best from managers, why are you going Agile? Why now?
WIIFM: what’s in it for me – we’ll do a little exercise on this later
Feedback mechanism – this goes a long way to bringing goodwill to the project, especially if it’s larger than just one team.
Understanding Agile is the next step. Agile games focused on a particular problem that a team is wrestling with – prioritization, or the role of a product owner, or acceptance criteria. This can be delivered in bite-sized pieces and doesn’t interrupt work because it’s short. In this sense, training is a form of communication.
When you listen, you also need to do something with that feedback, typically showing its impact on the project in some visible way. This is the best way to get high quality feedback over time. I did this for a Sharepoint adoption project – I was asked to show ways people were really using the site. I ended up adding this into regular training sessions with status reporting and coauthoring.
Usually, it’s at this point of the presentation that some of you are thinking, where is training in this?
To me, training is too reductive. I like to think of collaboration in a product design rather than training. If you’re implementing Agile, people typically don’t have a choice in the methodology that’s being used. Why does that have to be the case? A DOD team I worked with did some due diligence and came up with three options that best fit their needs. This may not be possible with all teams, but why can’t it be a topic for discussion?
Next, as teams become more comfortable with Agile, they often level up to shorter sprints, or allowing a 13 point story. Those types of framework changes stick because they come from the team.
The Product Owner is really crucial for collaboration outside the team because he or she will be educating stakeholders and customers about how and when their stories will go into the backlog. Simply experiencing the end-to-end process, from initial discussion to demo, goes a long way.
Back to the baseline – you will want to measure progress in your adoption regularly, in terms of understanding. But you will also want to include adoption activities in your retrospective. This is your opportunity to consider communications tools that might not be working, new evidence of resistance happening throughout the organization, etc.
You don’t need a change management professional to communicate the benefits of Agile, or help your clients do so.
In this example, the other teams aren’t necessarily going Agile themselves, but their interactions with the software development team are going to change.
How confident are you in bringing change management practices to your job?
https://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/ZDDsgw8zWx7n54b
Here are places where our approach has proven effective. It’s not just for Agile adoption – we’ve also used this for adoption of new knowledge management practices and new technology. Think about your release plan – is change management a part of it?
One of the key principles at EK is knowledge sharing – please reach out, even if you don’t need help. I would love to talk to you!