Agile Development

Talk to any experienced practitioner of Scrum or agile and they’ll all tell you the number one impediment to organizational adoption of agile management techniques is a company’s culture. Change tends to make people nervous. They assume that if change is being implemented, it’s a direct response to their own shortcomings as employees. But the fact is that, when agile or Scrum is introduced, it’s usually leveraged to address a much more deep-seeded problem with how work is being managed. That is, it’s not so much a matter of how individuals are performing as it is about flaws affecting the entire management system. So when organizations suddenly mandate that their employees rethink how they do their jobs, they get scared. Sometimes they get stubborn—refusing to embrace the change or even give it a fair shake.

I just ran across this article by Vin D’Amico discussing the topic. It’s a good start to the conversation, but there are a lot more factors to consider. A great piece I’ve read on the subject is by Laszlo Szalvay of Danube Technologies, which actually advocates leveraging human resources to minimize cultural resistance. You can read it on the Scrum Alliance website here.

I’ve posted about Agile 2009 here already, but, if you missed it, it’s coming to Chicago for the week of August 24 to 28. And if you’re unfamiliar with the conference, suffice to say that it’s the premier event for hearing from the top Scrum and agile thought leaders in the world, meeting folks from other organizations who are also using Scrum and agile, and learning what agile project management tools and services are out there. You want more? Well, InfoQ just published this video interview with Scrum trainer Bas Vodde at last year’s event in Toronto. It should give you an idea of what a great opportunity to learn from experienced thought leaders the conference is.

In the video, Bas considers common problems for implementing Scrum and agile at very large organizations. This has been a big topic in the community for years, as organizations face the challenge of translating the benefits of small team agile for scaled, multi-team installations. But as the tooling landscape and conversation have evolved, expect to hear even more about enterprise Scrum at Agile 2009.