The Agile Transformation (By Aftab)

Before reading the post, I wanted to share with you how we, as Scrum Masters are always starting from Scratch (just like a new year)!

AGILE methodology is a practice that promotes continuous iteration of development and testing throughout the software development lifecycle of the project. Scrum provides a framework for managing agile development projects. It encourages transparency at all times, which helps reinforce the cycle of trust that must exist between development teams, management and the customer.

In a world of accelerating change, increasing complexity, rapidly changing technology, digitization and the internet, many organizations are still locked in the slow-moving, topdown and bureaucratic practices. They are finding it difficult to sense and respond to disruptive shifts in the marketplace. Their very capacity to survive, let alone thrive, is in question.

Leading a large-scale agile transformation isn’t about adopting a new set of attitudes, processes, and behaviors at the team level… it’s about helping your company deliver faster to market, and developing the ability to respond to a rapidly-changing competitive landscape. First and foremost, it’s about achieving business agility. Business agility comes from people having clarity of purpose, a willingness to be held accountable, and the ability to achieve measurable outcomes. Unfortunately, almost everything in modern organizations gets in the way of teams acting with any sort of autonomy. In most companies, achieving business agility requires significant organizational change.

Many large-scale agile transformations are struggling. Some have failed. Others can’t figure out why things aren’t working after multiple attempts. It’s easy to blame the people, the process, and the culture. And it’s especially easy to blame management. However, the underlying problem is that most large organizations weren’t built to be agile.

Agile transformation necessitates a fundamental rethinking of how your company organizes for delivery, how it delivers value to its customers, and how it plans and measures outcomes. Agile transformation is about building enabling structures, aligning the flow of work, and measuring for outcomes based progress. It’s about breaking dependencies. The reality is that this kind of change can only be led from the top.