Agile 2010 Presentation

Elizabeth Woodward — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:53:57 +0000

Using Scrum to Complement Existing Organizational Transformation Methods

As promised, I’m posting the slides that I (Elizabeth Woodward) co-authored with Helen McKinstry for our Agile2010 presentation and the associated exercises. The purpose of this session was to help participants to improve their success with software development transformation efforts by leveraging Scrum with Kotter’s 8 Steps for Leading Change. The transformation and community approach described in this presentation is exactly the approach that the IBM QSE Agile Community used to create A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum.

Our Abstract:

Like many other large-scale organizations, we have engaged in organizational transformation by using and adapting recognized change management principles. While relying on John Kotter’s eight essential principles led to some dramatic successes, we found that our own inconsistencies in how we engaged stakeholders and demonstrated short-term wins impacted the level of success. In this session, we will discuss how Scrum complements the eight steps of transformation, provide practical guidance in how to leverage Scrum and provide project examples that demonstrated the value of the integration.

Learning objectives:

Identify points in Kotter’s eight-step transformation process where Scrum can improve chances for success

Engage stakeholders from across roles, geographies, and business units to identify transformation challenges and prioritize user stories in a transformation backlog
Establish effective acceptance criteria for transformation stories to ensure business impact
Work with teams using Scrum to demonstrate short-term wins at the end of each time-boxed Sprint that will help accelerate transformation
Identify inhibitors through daily scrum and a cadence of reflections
Work with change leaders to facilitate transformation and remove inhibitors
Engage in daily scrums to synchronize transformation efforts across the organization

We hope you enjoy. If you have any questions, please contact evwoodwa at us.ibm.com.