Open Agile Adoption

February 21, 2014

Open Agile Adoption is an ‘open’ approach to adopting and evolving agile in a given company or group.

By ‘open’ we mean that we are engaging the people (who will be changing) in designing the change.

We do not mean total chaos.  Management might establish some ‘guardrails’ (eg, we will do Agile as defined in the Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles, but exactly how should we implement that and what other things should we do?).

The first practical concept is to think of ‘iterations of change’.  Maybe a 2-month timebox.  Maybe longer.

Then, at the beginning of each ‘change iteration’ we have an Open Space event where we invite all the right people.  And let them ‘figure out’ what needs to be figured out to make the next 2 months more successful.  Maybe the Open Space event lasts for 1 day. (We will describe Open Space more later.)

Probably that leads to specific small initiatives that are done during that 2 months.

At the end of the 2 months, we have another Open Space.  This acts roughly like a Sprint Review and Retrospective for the past 2 months. And like a Sprint Planning Meeting for the next 2 months of work on change.

What do we mean by ‘change’?  Well, everything. Fixing impediments, working on the cultural change, organizational issues.  Whatever it takes to get the most value from the change to Agile.

Little’s Second Law: People are remarkably good at doing what they want to do.

For more information on Open Agile Adoption, see here.

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