Adopting Agile is Hard

Before getting into the details of our particular challenges, I wanted to acknowledge, for all of you going through this, that adopting agile is hard, perhaps one of the biggest professional hurdles I’ve faced in recent history. While I’ve been in the same industry for about 12 years now, I imagine this is about as close as you can come to switching careers without actually doing it. You think you know what’s going on, but the rug keeps getting pulled out from under you. However, I also like the term ‘adopting’ because this is similar to adding a child to your family.

When you have a kid, your life is no longer the same. You’ll sleep less. There will be lots of screaming, and you will have to clean up more crap than ever before. Moving to an agile process seems a lot like that. The hope is that once you figure it out, life is better and you wonder how you ever lived without it.

Even reading about agile can be as confusing as negotiating the parenting section of a bookstore. Want to know how to get your baby to sleep at night? Here are 20 books that all say something different. Want to adopt an agile process? Here are multiple options, each with different interpretations.

To be fair, the looseness of agile, and scrum in particular, is one of the things I like most about it, and what also causes the most pain. If you were to ask a personified scrum process what to do, the answer would likely be, “It depends.” It may be true, but it doesn’t feel helpful.

Agile is more of a philosophy than a process. It dictates very little. We have five scrum teams working concurrently and each one works a little differently. One team has a number of outsourced members across the globe. Two others are working on entirely new initiatives The last two are refining existing parts of the site, although they move from making small tweaks to significant additions or revisions. Some teams do more costing and planning for each sprint, while others are very loose. Each of these teams have developed their own idiosyncratic scrum process that works with their unique situation. This is one of the powerful elements of the agile methodology, the flexibility. It is also one of the biggest challenges. Teams must define their process for themselves. Scrum only provides a framework. Each team is trying to do what is best for their people and their project, but it can be very difficult to work across multiple teams that are working differently.

There seems to be a sense of the serenity prayer to it. Agile is a new process and will require a lot of change. However, realize what you won’t be able to change and find a way to work within those constraints. I appreciate that this process acknowledges the realities of organizations and attempts to work with them. I found Ken Schwaber’s book Agile Project Management with Scrum very helpful in demonstrating this. In this book, Ken presents case studies of teams in different circumstances at different companies. In one case study, knowing that the program management office required Microsoft Project files for status reporting, the Product Owner adapted scrum reporting to fit within Project’s framework. Rather than trying to get another part of the organization to adapt in a futile battle against the windmills, teams in this book found ways to improve their process while working with the constraints they had to live with.

So if this feels painful or impossible, that’s normal. It means that you’re going through change. Recently, our Program Manager and resident certified Scrum Master attended a conference with two major agile gurus. After listening to the other people describe their problems, he says that he came away feeling that we are doing quite well compared to a lot of other companies! Given how hard it has been for us, I really feel for those who are not quite as far along the path.

As we figure things out, I’ll share what I can. Until then, if you have any questions, I may respond with, “It depends.”

If there is something particular that you would like me to write about, visit the Suggest a Topic page. You can vote on existing topics or add your own. I’ll do my best to address them in a reasonable time frame.

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