Ready? Set Goal!

For task force to be successful it has to have a clear goal. The goal is to assess feasibility of the change. This means the group will need to answer following questions:

Can agile address our problems? Remember, we are not doing the change for the sake of the change.

Are the benefits tangible? You should be able to look back and show that specific problems got addressed and you better off than you started.

Do benefits outweigh risks? Agile transformation is a change like any other organizational change, you should expect turnover associated with it, going slower before going faster and need to consider that many companies fail attempting to make such change.

Should we go by the book or pick and choose specific practices? There will be people (yourself included) who will be tempted by such approach, as it seems to mitigate some risks, but this needs to be carefully studied.

It’s important to understand that Agile is not a one size fits all, so no prescriptions for success could be found in the pure theory. Any organization attempting Agile transformation needs to become creative about addressing many challenges awaiting it. One great way of becoming creative is engaging with Agile practitioners and coaches, learning about their challenges and the ways they have addressed these challenges. Of course their situation and context could be very different from yours, but learning from their successes and failures could be very helpful.