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Project Management National Conference 2011 PMI India

AN OVERVIEW OF KEY CHALLENGES
TO OVERCOME, WHILE ADAPTING
AGILE METHODOLOGIES

Naveen Nanjundappa, PMP
Product Manager, Nokia India.

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Application of Select Tools of Psychology for Effective Project Management


Contents

1 Abstract..............................................................................................................................4
2 Introduction........................................................................................................................4
3 Agile Methodology............................................................................................................5
4 Agile adaptation Strategy...................................................................................................6
5 Key challenges while adapting agile methodologies.........................................................8
5.1.1 Challenge 1: “No plan” or “only plan” for agile adaptation........................................9
5.1.2 Challenge 2: “Training does all the magic”.................................................................9
5.1.3 Challenge 3: “Committed agile coaches”...................................................................10
5.1.4 Challenge 4: Agile brings “revolutionary” change the day it is started.....................12
5.1.5 Challenge 5:“Openness considered as threat to the position”....................................13
5.1.6 Challenge 6: Lack of “self-discipline and team work”..............................................14
5.1.7 Challenge 7: “Communication Gap” within organization.........................................15
5.1.8 Other challenges:........................................................................................................16
6 Conclusion........................................................................................................................16
7 References:.......................................................................................................................17
8 Author Profile:..................................................................................................................17

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1 Abstract

Agile Methodology is becoming popular across all industries for delivering
customer satisfaction and rapid development. Organizations are undergoing
agile transition in a grand scale. While new methodology promises a lot to an
organization and teams, adapting to new project management methodology
shakes the pillars of team’s comfort and destabilizes the project deliverables.
This paper outlines the key challenges and their solution areas while adapting
agile methodology in a grand scale and effective management of project during
the transition. These challenges may seem overwhelming; addressing them early
in the process will greatly influence the chances of successful transition. A few
challenges discussed are understanding agile and its manifestos, planning for
the change, playing with destabilized project deliverables during the agile
transition, training and coaching styles, overcoming individual emotions and
supporting team, understanding the myths of agile, working out the team
dynamics and people conflicts and celebrating the success.

2 Introduction

Nowadays many organizations are look forward for time to market with customer
oriented products and solution, user experience and product value has become
key factors for determining the success. While product organizations strive to
produce value driven products and customer satisfaction, the service
organizations continually work on providing solutions under budget and
schedule.

The world of product requirements and solutions change very often, it’s widely
accepted fact that the requirements from the stakeholders change during the
course of the project and there is either no time or heavy cost to adapt to these
new changes. Due to changing requirements, traditional lean project
management methods don’t show great results in software products industry.

As many organizations are adapting agile methodologies for their projects, Most
of these organizations look only at the successful project stories in agile; there
are organizations who are struggling to get better results after adapting to agile.
Adapting agile methodology is not easy as thought; most of the challenges
during the transformation go unanswered resulting in poor or bad project results.

A strategic plan is required when an organization plans to adapt agile
methodologies. This plan will not only help in smooth transition but also in
keeping the ongoing projects alive. This paper attempts to list a few key
challenges faced by most of the organizations during agile adaptation.

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3 Agile Methodology

Manifesto for Agile Software Development define as follows: “We are uncovering
better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through
this work we have come to value”

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Responding to change over following a plan

Principles underlie the Agile Manifesto are,

• Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software

• Welcome changing requirements, even late in development

• Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)

• Working software is the principal measure of progress

• Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace

• Close, daily co-operation between business people and developers

• Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-
location)

• Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted

• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design

• Simplicity

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• Self-organizing teams

• Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

Agile methodology has the iterative and incremental life cycle development. Agile
principles emphasize building working software that people can get hands on
quickly, versus spending a lot of time writing specifications up front. Agile
development focuses on cross-functional teams empowered to make decisions,
versus big hierarchies and compartmentalization by function. And it focuses on
rapid iteration, with continuous customer input along the way.

Today organizations using Agile report significant improvements and
transformations, in both productivity and morale.

4 Agile adaptation Strategy

A strategic change management plan is very important for successful
implementation of new change process. Phased change management approach
is recommended for agile adaptation, the transition is not one step process, and
it requires various stages and implementing these in phases will show better
results.

Figure 2: Phases in agile adaptation.

Identify

Analyze and Plan

Implement

Transformation

• Phase 1: Identify the need for agile adaptation and problems to
solve at organization

The need for Agile should be clearly identified. Understand the
problems first, before solving. What is working and what needs to be
changed within organization? Usually these details can be obtained
from internal discussion with stakeholders.

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• Phase 2: Analyze and plan a strategy

After identifying the need and problems to resolve, strategic plan for
transformation should be created, this plan will cover the areas of
change and how to achieve them.

• Phase 3: Implement agile process in few selected teams.

Agile process doesn’t work overnight and can’t be rolled out to all teams
at once. Often all agile coaches encourage and recommend
implementing agile in a few selected teams and then extending them to
rest of the organization.

• Phase 4: Agile Transformation

This is the phase when the all the teams in organization will adopt agile
methodology and the success and failures are investigated and
improved. The lessons learnt from the early adopting teams will help
other team adapt to the change faster and better, thus full organization
will notice the change.

Further one can refer to such examples for strategic plans by agile consultants
and coaches, various agile transformation plans I have come across are

• Enthiosys[1]“Engagement Models for agile transformations”

• CollabNet[2] “Path to an agile enterprise”

As proposed by Bruce Tuckman[3], the organization will undergo 4 phases during
the transformation. Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. Mike Cohn[4]
use ADAPT to describe the five steps necessary for any successful agile
transition: Awareness, Desire, Ability, Promote and Transfer. Similarly Veselin
Pizurica[5] describe how organizations undergo changes in 7 phases, resulting in
failure during agile transformation

• Wild enthusiasm- everybody goes to agile course, read few books about
agile, it looks that simple and obvious.

• Disillusionment - arguments and misunderstandings all over the place,
people go loose and you start seeing real characters of individuals.

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• Confusion - backlog is filled and flat, and folks just don’t know what to do first.
Some people resist writing docs, other want them, hardly things are “under
control”

• Panic - stakeholders start hearing only problems, sales guys are coming back
and asking for delivery date, and all that they can hear is epics, iterations,
story points

• Search for the guilty - by now, agile coach is already either out or scene or
incapable of handling the situation.

• Punishment of the innocent – process and change management activities.

• Non-participant in transformation – thus following back to waterfall, V model,
or whatever existed before.

5 Key challenges while adapting agile
methodologies

Any change causes uncomfortable feel and situations to employees and
organizations, many
organizations are still
in the early stages of
agile adaptation, it
might take months to
complete and
stabilize. During this
period, as often every
change has
challenging situations
to solve. Even
adapting industry’s
most popular agile
methodology run
through many of
these challenges.

Figure 1: shows leading causes for agile failure.

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5.1.1 Challenge 1: “No plan” or “only plan” for agile
adaptation

It is important for the organization to plan the change in phases and execute it
with experts. Agile methodologies keep heavy weight processes away but it
doesn’t support unplanned working. The whole process of implementing the
change shouldn’t be done with in-experienced coaches or without a plan.
However, having a plan doesn’t qualify for perfect transition unless it is
implemented, the plans that are only on papers, whiteboard are same as no plan

Impact:

Not having a proper plan to adapt agile at organization level will impact the
deliverables and project schedule of ongoing projects, the new change will stress
the team members to deliver and perform poorly. Due to the lack of check points
and goal, the developments made due to agile methodologies will not be visible.
Adapting agile without a plan will cost in term of budget and time for the
organization. Finally everything runs in a chaos and stress.

Recommendation:

Agile cannot be “effectively” adapted without proper guidance, the agile coach
play a major role for effective agile transformation. Having a phased approach for
agile adaptation with a strategic plan will help safeguard the ongoing projects
and also impart the necessary change in the organization. Thus my
recommendations are to,

• Create a formal transition plan based on the organizational goals and
projects.

• Involve expert agile coaches to plan the transition and execute them

Further one can be obtained if there is a regular follow up on the plan
incorporating the lessons learnt during early phases.

5.1.2 Challenge 2: “Training does all the magic”

Organizations believe that training on agile methodology does all the magic and
enhance the productivity. Agile team member training doesn’t make the team
adapt to agile methodology and deliver. Agile product owner is not the outcome
of training. The attitude, values, practice and acting agile way does the magic.

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On the other hand not having agile training will also lead to failure in
transformation.

Impact:

When the management or team feels agile training will make their teams “agile”
unnecessarily the pressure on the team increases and they fail to perform. Team
members will lose interest on agile and over expectations by the management
will disturb the schedule and quality of the project.

Recommendation:

Agile cannot be “effectively” practiced with just class room training, my
recommendations are

• Trainings areat most important and shouldn’t be neglected.

• The stakeholders, team members and higher management should undergo
agile training

• Conduct sessions to discuss the agile adaptation plan

• Consider the credibility of agile training experts and their support after
training to measure the success.

• Agile trainings are not just to bring change in the way we work, but the way
we think and change to agile mindset.

5.1.3 Challenge 3: “Committed agile coaches”

While good trainings are half the story, the practical implementation without
involving a committed expert coach doesn’t show good results. Due to the cost
involved with expert consultations, usually part-time/less committed/low
budget/inexperienced coaches are hired to execute the transition plans. Such
consultants don’t carry valuable experience to handle and mentor in large scale.
It’s not getting the coach on board, but getting committed coach that matters to
do the trick.

Agile coach should also be available full time for support till the transition is
complete. Training alone never make a master, to be a master one has to work
with experts. Agile transition plans is normally executed by people who are not
agile by their nature, but are assigned to execute it.
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Impact:

Inexperienced/uncommitted/low budget coaches might not dedicate their full time
and might not carry experience in handling unique problems of your organization,
thus having such people on board will cost the organization in terms of money
and time.

These coaches might

• Not help your organization with specific risks or unique issues

• Not even be available full time for support.

Overall, the agile adaptation plan will fail with a part-time/less committed/low
budget/inexperienced coaches.

Recommendation:

Consulting experienced and expert agile coach is a mandate before starting agile
adaptation. Agile is not for every organization or project, most of the expert agile
coaches bring along with them the skills to handle unique needs and goals of the
organization. Experienced coaches,

• Will help “tailor” the agile methodologies to best suit the organization
structure

• Don’t go by agile-book rules to solve the problems

• Being external to the organization will have better authority on imposing new
changes.

• Work with your teams and management and support throughout all the
phases of agile transition.

• I recommend working with experienced and expert agile coach.

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5.1.4 Challenge 4: Agile brings “revolutionary” change
the day it is started

Agile early adaptors get carried away with the success stories and expect
adapting agile will bring revolutionary changes from day one. Starting agile
adaptation with this mindset will add pressure on the team members and they
resist changing. It takes couple of iterations before the team is completely
functional to its best performance. Substituting agile title on current roles and
practices and hoping the new labels will somehow magically achieve new results,
by such efforts only agile name will remain and not the success stories.

Impact:

When the expectation to deliver value and productivity right from day one is on
top of everyone’s head, the actual values of adapting agile methodology will be
lost. Teams will work in traditional ways, with just “agile” Nomenclature. Standup
meeting, iteration planning and lessons learnt session will have no meaning.
Everyone will know that they are not working in agile mode, but none would be
bothered as productivity is still top priority.

Recommendation:

My recommendations are to,

• Agile Training to all stakeholders and customers.

• Management to understand the real need for agile transformation, and the
change can’t be expected on day one.

• Transformation plan to describe the schedule for agile adaption &
improvement areas.

• Agile is best adapted in “agile” way, start small and grow big.

• Most often change process is initiated top-down, which compels the team for
change. Take experts consultation before roll out.

There are no short cuts in agile adoption process; short cuts will simply lead to
failures.

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5.1.5 Challenge 5:“Openness considered as threat to
the position”

Openness is the key attribute in daily standup meeting, while working as teams
without individual identity, retrospectives, estimation and iteration planning.
Openness will help to narrow down the project impediments, but it isvery
effective in pointing out to the incompetence in development and business
needs. Thus implementing agile with closed culture is hard and a big challenge
by itself.

Impact:

• Team members feel unsecured to showcase their weakness, resulting in not
supporting agile transformation. People will hate to be pointed out for their in
competency.

• To hide the weakness, team members will tend to “give proof of their work”
than the results.

• Team members tend to showcase their individual preference over team’s
requirement, thus not completely supporting the agile process.

• People who are required to practice agile are not necessarily convinced with
agile.

• People in management positions will tend to resist the change thinking in the
new change they will not hold strong positions.

Recommendation:

Agile cannot be “effectively” adapted if agile practitioners don’t trust in the
process. The change should be imbibed in all levels of organizations. For
organization to transform into agile and perform better, I recommend it to

• Support and educate employees with agile mindset and open culture.

• To have authoritative product owner and management staff

• Propagate team work over individual identity and agile principles

• Rewarding work environment

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• Clear career paths

• Employee staff potential of working in self-organizing teams

5.1.6 Challenge 6: Lack of “self-discipline and team
work”

Working in agile doesn’t mean one lose their identity, agile team works in
coordination for success of the project. Thus lack of self-discipline and team work
will introduce new challenge in the process of agile transformation. Team
members need to recognize they have a role to play on the team and should not
stick to their defined job description.

Impact:

The impact of this is as highest of all if not resolved at the earliest, since agile is
fundamentally based on the mindset of team members, if they don’t support
100% to the agile adoption, and then results will never be seen.

• This might even lead to recession and role crunch within the team.

• Team members feel unsecured and not challenging at work.

• Standup meeting, reviews and retrospectives will only be a process at the
end of day without adding values.

• Loss of individual/team identity and contribution.

• Team members feel “micro-managed” due to frequent and regular
interactions.

Recommendation:

Agile is an approach based on key principles and relies on people’s ability to “do
the right thing” in order to deliver quality output on time, hence my
recommendations are to

• Build trust in team work and reward disciplined team members.

• Educating your users so they understand their new role

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• Not have compromise on 'agile' way of working, but tailored approach is
acceptable

5.1.7 Challenge 7: “Communication Gap” within
organization.

Collaborative and participative communication is another key to challenge, team
members most often hesitate to give feedback or comments during decision
making and management continue to “plan” for their business deliverables. Agile
methodology expects open communication. With communication gaps, the
responsibilities will float around without clear ownership.

Involving stakeholders/customers for frequent and regular feedback on the
featured developed during iteration might be challenging,

Impact:

Communication gap will lead to

• Agile roles and responsibilities not being clearly defined and communicated

• No clear ownership of responsibility and control.

• Missing coordination between distributed teams.

• No communication with stakeholders/customers last minute surprises.

Recommendation:

Agile is not management level change, it’s a change within the team and
individuals associated. A traditional top down approach for agile adaptation will
lead to resistance within the teams as they are naturally inclined not to change.
Effective communication is an important success factor.

Some recommendations are

• Participative culture, everyone involved share feedback/comments.

• Organization to define the roles and responsibilities in new structure and
clearly communicate them

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• Involve stakeholders/customers for effective planning and delivery of only
required product.

• Agile communication games during training

5.1.8 Other challenges:

• Project budget: Since in Agile the project iterations will continue as long as
the customer continues to identify high-priority, high-value work. Hence
organizations/managers will have to work on new ways of budgeting and
business deals.

• Stakeholder/Customer commitment: Most of the time, these people are
busy and will not dedicate time for review of features, thus show low
commitment for agile adaptation.

• Testing along with development: Engineers are not adapted to small
incremental development and testing.

• Handling Metrics and reports: Since agile teams doesn’t generate
traditional metrics and reports. Management staff will not notice agile as good
working model.

• Career growth plan and motivation: The role of line manager’s become
critical to keep the motivation and help with career growth plan of the team
members.

6 Conclusion

Agile processes have grown increasingly popular and organizations are on the
path of agile adaptation. During agile adaptation the organization and teams will
face many challenges, the final success of adapting to agile will significantly
depend on how the overall change management, challenges were handled and
how agile was introduced into the organization. Most effective and successful
transition happens when it’s done bottom up, where teams develop their perfect
“agile” working styles. Agile is not one stop solution for all, depending on the
organization and team’s needs it should be customized for better results.

Finally, adapting agile is easy, but developing “agile mindset” and being
successful is the not.

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7 References:

[1] http://www.enthiosys.com/problems-we-solve/agile-product-management/

[2] www.collab.net : white paper “Agile Transformation Strategy”

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman's_stages_of_group_development

[4] http://talk-agile.meTalk Agile Blog - Agile transformation challenges

[5] http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/ Mike Cohn, Adapting to Agile

8 Author Profile:

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Author is working at Nokia India, as product manager for Symbian video
telephony software products. He has worked in agile methodology,
capacity of scrum team member, scrum master and project manager
since 2004, proactively helped people and teams in Agile XP and Scrum
methodologies. As a mentor he has helped team during agile adaptation
and transformation. His current interests include agile project
management, agile adaptation and transformation challenges.

Organization: Nokia India Private Limited. Bangalore.

naveen.nanjundappa@nokia.com

naveen.nanjundappa@gmail.com

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