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 to be 5 to 10 times more productive that you were as a team. On average, 5 to 10 times more than your baseline. (Yes, logically, if you were already well above average, for whatever reason, the bang might not be that great.)

At the same time, I do not wish to infer that Scrum (or Agile) is a silver bullet or magic pill. It is hard work, often somewhat painful, in terms of change, to do well. Some people don’t have the intestinal fortitude, and some people might be in one of the “wrong” Myers-Briggs boxes to be comfortable using it.

So, we are in for a short, tough economic time.
Scrum can help your team and firm.
Scrum can preserve your career.
If you put your heart into doing it reasonably well.

Enough of that for now.

One person asked me: “Well, I’d like to do it, but who is going to persuade my boss and my comrades and my company to let me do it?”

The short answer is: You.

Yes, I know this can be tough. Yes, even if you are very good, sometimes you will not succeed.

Usually, where there’s a will, there’s a way. (It’s a cliche because it is usually true.) And nobody else is as well positioned.

A couple of things:

• It is not one conversation, but a series of conversations.
• The influencing does not have to come out of your mouth or even be thought of as (all) coming from you, but you have to organize it and energize it.
• It is not just facts, it’s also emotion (yours and theirs). The most effective emotion is often “quiet” emotion. The other guy gets a sense that you really are determined to make this happen; it gives them confidence that you *will* make this happen.
• Stay yourself. People will not believe professional salesmen. If you are true to yourself, they will believe you, often enough.

Welcome to the most important business skill you will ever develop: Getting someone to buy-in to your good ideas.

Two suggestions:
“A Sense of Urgency” by John Kotter
“Fearless Change” by Manns and Rising

Go get ’em.

 

 

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