“Is Commitment a direction to be pursued as long as it works for you or a direction to be pursued until it works for you?” –Anonymous Getting executive commitment is crucial for Agile transformation success. The process is long and road mines will await you surely. It will be of utmost importance to have the executive team still supporting the initiative when things get tough and the pressure to get product out increases.
I have found that it’s not hard to “sell” Agile to the executive team: what is there not to like? The value proposition of Agile sells itself and all CEO hears from others outside the company is “you have to go Agile”. So on the face of it everything looks good and executive team is all in agreement that Agile is the way to go.
When I presented Agile to execs few months ago I took a different approach. Well, I had to do the selling part, not without it, but most important I have described all the challenges and obstacles we anticipate having in our way to become Agile:
1. Shared resources (PO/UxD/Architects),
2. PO availability to the team (considering other responsibilities of Product Manager)
3. Leading virtual teams
4. Too often/uncontrolled changes in direction
5. Inability to decide on priorities in timely fashion
…and the list goes on
One thing Agile does quickly and without a facelift is exposing existing problems in the organization, and when a company embarks on Agile transformation path these problems have to be dealt with, breaking status quo and being painful to resolve at times. For example, if the company has a problem on deciding on priorities prior to Agile, the problem will not be resolved just by going Agile. Agile will show the way if you will, but the company will have to address the issue immediately.
Although I still got a green light from execs, the real test of executive commitment will be when the push comes to shove.
