Category Archives: Change Management

How to adopt agile?

In the Agile Alliance LinkedIn group discussions [around March 2011], there was a discussion about “How to adopt Agile in my organization?” by Mark Lummus. This is a complex topic, with many things to say. Here is most of my first post (in that group) about this. There are many other things I might have […]

Implementing Scrum when not everyone is a believer

How do you implement Scrum in an organization where not everyone is a believer? Umm. This is a common question and a hard one, and yet also easy. First, one misconception is that Scrum is a religion that only true believers practice it. Scrum is actually empirical. Now, it should be said that Scrum (and […]

How to rollout Scrum – a summary

In the prior post, I noted that Tom Mellor had a basic objection to this question (How to roll out Scrum). Which was, and I hope I do not misstate it too much, don’t try to roll out something to an organization that does not really want it. He used the other pig metaphor, which […]

Is there hope?

There is an interesting discussion on the CSM LinkedIn group, about rolling out Scrum to an organization. See here. Tom Mellor gives a realistic but somewhat depressing prognosis for many Scrum implementations. Tom is a good guy and a friend. It is OK if he and I disagree a bit on this one thing? Below […]

The Dedicated Agile Champion job

If an Agile initiative is to succeed, one of the best patterns (cf. “Fearless Change” by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising) is for someone to be named the Dedicated Champion (their title for the position). (Note to senior managers: If you really want the change to happen, wait until someone volunteers to be Dedicated […]

Fearless Change

Mary Lynn Manns is visiting Agile-Carolinas in Charlotte next week. As many of you will know, Dr. Manns is the co-author of Fearless Change, along with Linda Rising. This is a great book about getting people to adopt a new idea (eg, lean-agile-scrum). So, I wanted to take this opportunity, in thanks, to praise the […]

Change and how we feel

Why is it that we change? And how do we feel about it? And how does change stick? My business is to change people, including myself. As a change agent, one is always interested to know more about why people change.  Maybe better: How do we get people to change, and stay changed? One idea […]

Change

Taylor Swift just won the Grammy, I think, for album of the year. Maybe a few other Grammys, too. Taylor Swift has a song out called Change. Maybe “old” now by music industry standards. Watch the video here. In 1988 there was a movie with Uma Thurman called “Dangerous Liasons.” OK, Uma Thurman was not […]

Hold the mirror

How do we get managers to change? You know, if it were not for them, everything would be just fine. [smile] We got this question in a class on Friday. (The question did not include the second snarky sentence, at least not explicitly.) My immediate answer, maybe an intuition, was to quote part of this: […]

The great persuader is you

Last night I was speaking to the Metrolina PMI chapter. Good discussion; lots of interest in Agile. My topic was: Winning With Scrum. So, on that quickly. My experience and my hypothesis is that Scrum can be more fun and can enable your team(s) to be much more productive. It is designed to allow you […]