Top 10 FAQ

What is Agile, Scrum and Lean?

“Lean” is a systematic, continuous improvement approach that focuses on eliminating waste from your processes. Lean is considered by many a parent to Agile methods. More on Lean. “Agile” refers to a group of methods that help you get the highest priority work done efficiently, with high quality and by building high performance collaborative teams. More on Agile. “Scrum” is an agile method that provides the Project Management processes needed to inspect and adapt and insure project success. More on Scrum.

Why Should I Adopt Agile Methods in This Economy?

Especially because of the current economic conditions, you cannot afford to not use Agile and Lean methods. Lean has been proven to help organizations cut waste in a way that still serves strategic growth. Agile has been proven to build small yet high performing teams that can deliver ROI for the customer. Read More

How Do I Know if Agile is For Me?

Do you have any customers that are not satisfied with the quality, date or cost of work you’re doing for them or would you like to improve their current satisfaction? Do you follow ‘heavy-weight’ processes that hinder getting the work done or do you not follow any processes at all? Would you like to measure ROI or gain visibility into current project development efforts? Do you wish you could get all the right business and IT folks to collaborate with each other? Are you interested in building self-organizing high performance teams? If you’ve answered ‘YES’ to any of these then Agile can help you.

How Do I Get Buy-in For Agile?

Our most successful Agile implementations have been blessed Top-Down from the executive and management level from Business and IT. We offer a free 2 hour lunch and learn customized seminar that can help give these folks the information they need to gain initial buy-in. Once they commit to giving Agile a try, they will help get the remaining organization buy-in needed. Contact us to schedule your free seminar.

What Projects Are Best Suited for Agile?

Good question! Well, if your customer is happy with the current process and results you have achieved and everything is going great, then there is no need for Agile or anything else for that matter. However, if you have the type of project that needs better visibility, cross team collaboration, frequent inspections of work, measurement of results, higher team motivation and empowerment then Agile methods suite your project! We’ve done software, hardware, upgrades, non-technical type projects using these methods. Contact us to find out how you can adopt Agile methods on your project type.

How Does My Role Change?

Well, this one will require a lengthy answer but here goes the somewhat summarized version.
If you are a Business Product Owner, you will be much more engaged than you were on traditional projects. You will have higher visibility and control over the outcome and in exchange, own the responsibility of making sure the team is delivering what you asked for and providing ROI. See our training on Overview of Agile for Product Owners, Effective Requirements Gathering
If you are a Project Manager now playing a ScrumMaster role, you will need to roll up your sleeves and work on a daily basis with the team to remove impediments, facilitate highly collaborative sessions, build self organizing and motivated teams, provide highly visible reports to sponsors and stakeholders. You will spend less time managing the project plan using the tools and more time with the team. The most significant change is that you will need to take your facilitation, leadership and soft skills to the next level. See our training on Mastering the Art of Facilitation, Becoming a Servant Leader, Effective Requirements Gathering.
If you are a Team Member (Developer, BA, Tester, DBA ..etc), you will need to learn how to work with a highly collaborative team on a daily bases. You will be expected to self organize your work, commit to what you can handle, be accountable for what you committed to, provide feedback to improve the process, change the ‘Tell me what to do’ attitude to ‘I’d like to sign up for X‘ or ‘How about if we do Y to reach our goals‘. You will be considered a Generalizing Specialist who is a jack of all trades, and a master of a few. Our core foundation team training is Real World Agile and Scrum. See our training on Agile Testing, Agile Engineering, Effective Requirements Gathering.
If you are in Management, you will be expected to support the ScrumMaster and the team by removing impediments, allowing the team to self organize and not co-managing the project, developing the teamwork, collaboration and self organization skills of your teams in addition to their technical talent. The most important change will be using a Servant Leadership style instead of the traditional Command and Control. See Executive Overview of Agile, Becoming a Servant Leader.
You can also review our ‘Agile vs Traditional Roles’ presentation.

Ok, I Want to Try This, How Do I Start?

Congratulations! the first step in adopting Agile is finding an Agile Evangelist in the company. We think YOU may have just signed up for that role! Just contact us and we’ll get you started. We have a simple and effective Agile Adoption Strategy we walk you through which typically starts with a free initial seminar to help gain buy-in. Give us a call (402) 212-3211or email us today to get started.

Can I Apply Agile for Non Software Type Projects?

Yes! Agile methods are a way of organizing work (any work really) and getting it done in priority order with high collaboration and visibility. They are also based on inspecting and adapting the process so it is continuously improving. Agile and Scrum have been most commonly used on Software projects but they can be successfully used to manage any group of work and build high performance teams. Also see Q5 above.

How Do I Choose What Training My Teams Needs?

You can check out our Training Roadmap by Role page that has our recommended learning path for each role. However, the easiest way is to let us help you put together a plan that works for your teams and your budget. Just contact us today to get a Customized Training Roadmap for your organization at no charge.

I’ve Been Doing Agile, How Can I Take It To the Next Level?

Most companies begin by adopting Agile and Scrum on specific projects. Once you’ve achieved initial success and buy-in you will find yourself wondering, what next? Well, you have to realize that Agile and Scrum are tools that help you achieve organizational agility and high performance. They are not goals in themselves. So your next steps maybe to:

Improve current engineering practices and automation; this will improve the quality of your output.
Improve team performance and build more soft skills (servant leadership, facilitation, conflict resolution, teamwork..etc)
Scale agile and scrum practices to larger more complex projects.
Perform a strategic leadership and high performance transformation throughout the organization.

We have designed some coaching services that can help you through this journey. Contact us today to discuss your specific goals.