Innovating Agile Transformations

Photo by Roman Boed

My mentor once said, "the way to go agile is agile-ly," and it has stuck with me since. In helping organizations with their agile transformations, I notice that agile coaches often suggest the same approach. We're often responding to an executive's ask for higher quality, increased delivery, better business relationships, more customer satisfaction, etc. And our starting point is to provide training and then follow-on with coaching. It's a tried-and-true approach in many ways, and I wondered how else we might help organizations with change--what different and innovative ideas could be tried?

I posed this question at the Agile Coaching Summit in Chicago, and below are the results of our group discussion:

I love how varied the list is, and each of these ideas could work in the right context. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised today in an agile training class when two students named what INVEST stands for because they had seen it on a poster in the break area--sometimes the simplest things can surprise us with their results!

Thinking about change starts the change--it colors our perceptions, thinking, and language from that moment forward. Discussions deepen the change. Behaviors and actions make it real. And while training and coaching can be immensely beneficial in change efforts, it's worth exploring what other options are available.