—Alexander Graham Bell

During my journey in helping teams adopt Agile and transforming them to an Agile mindset, the deployment approach I have found most successful is ­applying a Ready, Implement, Coach, and Hone (RICH) framework. This framework provides not only a methodical approach to mechanically applying agile methods but a strong focus on realizing an Agile mindset to achieve a successful agile transformation.

So what is the difference between agile adoption and agile transformation? When I think of adoption, I think of a team or organization that is applying a new set of practices, tools, and techniques. I call this gaining the ability to “do Agile.” When I think of transformation, I think of a team that understands why they are applying the new elements and has changed their behavior so that a new culture emerges that aligns with the Agile values and principles. They have effectively crossed the agile chasm and have the ability to “be Agile.”

The RICH framework specifically focuses on readiness activities that help you prepare not only to adopt the mechanical aspects of agile processes, methods, and practices but also for a transformation of behavior toward an Agile mindset. The framework does this by providing a focus on readiness, implementation, and continuous honing, surrounded by effective coaching (Figure 7-1).

When initiating the journey to Agile, I have found that it is important to begin the process of conditioning the mind toward the Agile mindset. Readiness is the beginning of the process of conditioning, and it includes making decisions on the elements for your implementation. While it is important to lead with readiness, this framework may be used iteratively depending on whether you plan for a more holistic deployment or iterative deployment of certain elements. With that in mind, I strongly encourage activities focused on readiness to begin your goal of agile transformation.

Readiness Activities for Agile Transformation

—Xenophon, Oeconomicus

Readiness starts the moment someone asks the question, “Is Agile right for me?” The goal is to work through this question, understand your context, and figure out how Agile might be deployed. Readiness can start weeks and even months before you really get serious about moving down the agile path. However, it can also be worked through quickly if you are ready to commit. Readiness shouldn’t be taken lightly. It is important to understand the what and the why prior to discussing the how and the when.

Once you believe Agile is a direction you would like to take, then aspects of readiness activities are akin to conditioning the soil prior to growing the seeds. It is good to take a hard look at the conditions of the fields, equipment, and people. Strengthening the soil helps improve the physical qualities of the soil, especially in its ability to provide nutrition for plants. You can make poor soil more usable and rebuild soil that has been damaged by improper management.

This is exactly what readiness activities can do. It is good to examine the condition of the environment where Agile is being considered. You must begin the process of conditioning the mind with an understanding of Agile’s values and principles and the business benefits that can be gained. This can improve the ability to adopt Agile in a way that the participants begin to understand the drive of being Agile. By conditioning the organization toward the Agile principles, we can begin the process of understanding value and empowering people.

I have found it important to understand the context in which Agile is being introduced. For example, it is imperative to gauge the buy-in of executives and stakeholders and willingness and capability of teams. Within an organization, due to improper management, the employees are often reluctant to speak up because of the lack of empowerment allowed and command-and-control behaviors exhibited (explicitly or implicitly). Understanding this context provides valuable insight on ways to adapt and move forward.

Readiness provides us with an opportunity to assess the current environment; lay the groundwork of Agile values and principles; discuss the agile business benefits and the various agile processes, practices, and educational elements; gauge the willingness; and then shape the agile implementation according to the context of an organization.

Any of a variety of readiness activities that may be undertaken to understand the conditions and help you prepare for more than just an Agile adoption—to get the team and organization to transform to the Agile mindset. Please understand that you do not need to complete these activities to begin implementing, but I have learned that if you begin implementing Agile, you quickly realize that you will need to address these areas in some manner, so it is better to be proactive. With this in mind, an iterative approach may be used. Here are high-level readiness activities that you may consider. As always, feel free to adapt this list of activities if it benefits you.

• Establish a common understanding of Agile.
• Understand the drivers for organizational change.
• Provide Agile mindset education on the agile values and principles and drivers for why we are changing.
• Add    “Customers and Employees really matter” to the company vision and “customer engagement” and “employee engagement” to employee objectives.
• Understand levels of executive and stakeholder buy-in.
• Establish an overall strategy and backlog for the agile transformation (including mitigation of risks).
• Understand the current state of engineering and Agile.
• Determine team willingness and capability.
• Determine suitability of product.
• Identify subject matter experts (SMEs) and resources.
• Evaluate and adapt IT governance.
• Identify and establish agile roles and organization.
• Determine education needs.
• Establish agile frameworks and practices that may be used. (This should not be prescriptive model but a flexible framework, because each team is different.)
• Establish done criteria, user story framework, and sizing techniques.
• Craft measures of success and general metrics.
• Identify agile tool and infrastructure needs.

A benefit of readiness activities is that you can adapt the implementation approach based on what you learn. Another advantage is that if you find that there are challenges in an area, you can address and improve the situation. For example, you may find that there is not a clear driver for moving to Agile. This can initiate discussions on business benefits of Agile, motivational factors behind the move, and what it really takes to be Agile.

When you are ready to embark on readiness activities, consider treating them as agile tasks with an iterative approach, adding them to a RICH backlog as the first sprint of activities. Conduct iteration planning and initiate the readiness activities with the goal of producing deliverables that align with the activities and help you establish your direction. Finally, I recommend that once you embark on these activities, you initiate periodic stand-ups to gauge progress, mitigate roadblocks (such as risks and issues), and adapt along the way. Chapter 11 discusses the importance of managing your transformation as a project while using agile process and practices as your framework.

Implementation Activities for Agile Transformation

Implementation activities focus on the application of agile elements within a team or organization. With proper conditioning during readiness activities, the participants will understand why they are applying Agile. I have found that it is best to align implementation activities with the beginning of the lifecycle of a project that is first applying Agile. This allows for a just-in-time learning and work-based approach as the participants begin adopting and adapting to the new processes, methods, practices, tools, and mindset.

The key to an effective implementation is ensuring that the readiness activities have been performed. As mentioned, if you begin implementing Agile on a team or into an organization without considering the readiness factors, you will quickly realize that you need to address these areas in some manner during the implementation.

Another key to effective implementation is to be aware that an agile implementation for each product team will be different based on what you have learned from the readiness activities. As you implement the agile framework, there are many adaptions that may be implemented, depending on the team’s situation—experience, distribution, type of work, and so forth. Implementation begins the cycle of the team or organization getting Agile working on the ground. Here are implementation activities that you may consider. As always, feel free to adapt this list of activities to benefit your implementation.

• Provide agile education—just-in-time and work-based.
• Provide an Agile Team foundation workshop.
• Provide a Product Owner workshop.
• Provide a Scrum Master workshop.
• Provide agile education for executives and management.
• Initiate periodic Agile Q&A sessions.
• Establish an agile online community (resource website, social website, etc.).
• Apply the agile framework and practices.
• Apply agile tools.

During the implementation, consider adding these activities to the RICH backlog as the next sprint of activities. I recommend that once you embark on these activities you continue periodic stand-ups to gauge progress and adapt along the way. Also, as you are implementing, expect some roadblocks. An effective implementation of Agile will affect those across the organization. Be ready to resolve, mitigate, or improve these challenges. This is where coaching and honing activities come into play.

Coaching Activities for Agile Transformation

Coaching accompanies the readiness, implementation, and honing activities. Coaching activities focus on helping the team and organization adapt to the new culture and align with the new way of being. Coaching also helps teams understand the details of activities to achieve to a more successful agile transformation and helps remove the roadblocks along the way. It is highly recommended to use the services of a Agile Coach who has the following qualifications:

• Experienced in deploying Agile
• Veteran in organizational change
• Versed in the notions of business value and customer engagement
• Practiced at setting up self-organized teams and employee engagement

Coaching activities come in several forms. Some coach from an agile perspective, some from a culture change perspective, and others from a sponsorship perspective. Although an experienced Agile Coach may be responsible for deploying Agile, coaching is not just limited to that person. Scrum Masters, Agile Team members, Product Owners, executives, senior management, and middle management all have coaching roles to play. Everyone should share responsibility in the success and help each other along to get there.

Coaches are responsible for facilitating, leading, coaching, and mentoring in the ways of Agile during the readiness, implementation, and honing activities, but they stop at owning any of these activities. This is because as part of the move to Agile, the team or organization must feel they can make decisions and own the work so that Agile becomes part of them. This leads to an increase in buy-in and pride, which increases the chances of a successful adoption. This eventually leads to a transformational change in behavior and culture that is needed to achieve an Agile mindset.

The key to coaching activities is getting the team or organization ready for Agile, helping them through the implementation activities, and then helping them hone their processes, methods, practices, and mindset. At a high level, here are coaching activities (or responsibilities) that may be undertaken to help achieve the transformation to Agile. Feel free to adapt this list of activities if it benefits coaching opportunities.

• Lead and facilitate agile deployment during the readiness, implementation, and honing activities.
• Gauge attitudes, mindset, patterns of behavior, and overall health of the team during the deployment.
• Provide continued support and mentoring as issues and challenges are raised by teams.
• Identify issues that affect customer value, workflow, and quality of the product being built.
• Lead periodic check-in meetings to monitor direction and challenges.
• Provide in-session coaching to apply Agile and validate the implementation of Agile and adapt as appropriate.
• Initiate assessments to determine adoption level of the practices and transformation level of the behavior and culture, sharing results only with the team.
• Groom Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Agile Team members, executives, managers, and any local Agile Champions.

Because coaching occurs throughout the RICH framework and is not as discrete as the readiness and implementation activities, you do not need to explicitly add these activities to the RICH backlog unless you feel it is appropriate.

Honing Activities for Agile Transformation

A key part of the Agile mindset is the Twelfth Principle behind the Agile Manifesto: “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.” This aligns with the notion of kaizen—the Japanese word for “improvement.” Agile embraces kaizen and enhances it to ensure continuous improvement by applying a reflect-and-adapt approach. Within the context of the RICH framework, once you have implemented the agile processes, methods, practices, tools, and mindset, it is not time to relax. Instead, it is time for the team to continuously look for opportunities for improvement within their work environment.

Even as early as the readiness activities, you will see issues, challenges, and roadblocks both locally and across the organization. Be ready to resolve or mitigate these challenges immediately. In particular, you will find challenges and room for improvement during implementation. Be flexible in whatever you decide and be ready to learn and adapt it over time to fit the team’s situation. What you thought would work well for a team initially may need to be changed. There may need to be additional education in certain areas. You may find that several of the practices need to be adjusted to better fit the team’s situation. You may find that you have to revisit the Agile values and principles.

Here are several suggested honing activities that can be applied. As usual, feel free to adapt this list of activities if it benefits the honing activities.

• Make use of periodic team retrospectives for improvement.
• Initiate periodic assessments to gauge adoption level and alignment with Agile values and principles.
• Hone implementation elements (framework, practices, education, tools, etc.) to fine-tune the adoption and team performance.
• Discuss consideration for automation and other factors with the objective of improving velocity.

Once you have reached the honing activities in the RICH framework, the team retrospectives will be a key driver for continuous improvement at the product team level. Honing activities at the organization level may be facilitated by the coach using assessment and survey mechanisms. However, I strongly encourage only showing the results of any assessment to the level of participants who contributed to it. Those outside this circle may use the results in a negative way and will not be aware of the full context of the results. For example, if a product team participated in an agile assessment, the results would only go to the product team members.

Are You Ready?

A vast quantity of material is readily available that focuses on how to implement Agile from a “doing” perspective. Yet there is a scarcity of material that focuses on how to achieve the Agile mindset. The goal of readiness is to condition the mind toward the Agile mindset and then incorporate this mindset into the decision-making process for your proposed implementation. With that goal in mind, I focus most of the rest of this book on readiness activities. Let the readiness games begin!