I am going to share 3 key aspects which made a huge turnaround in transforming a typical waterfall to agile project.
Brief about the project
Building a cutting edge analytics engine for one of top 10 analytics company
Never outsourced before
Struggling with time to market
Need to incorporate frequent feedback from end user
New team, from different back ground
2 weeks sprint
Customer wanted ‘agile’
We had ‘great’ agile immersion program, team energized, ‘great’ agile tools ..
but after 3 sprints
Customer is unhappy, many escalations, strained relationship
Management ‘doubtful’ of the outcomes and output
Lack of confidence and backbiting in the team
As a program manager, after spending a week with each team
members, stakeholder and customer touch points … did go with 3 item agenda to change the mindset ..
Be truthful to yourself – be declarative , awareness of a safety net for being
truthful [ this helped in understanding learning curve, dependencies etc.]
Mind set for looking and being ‘detailed oriented’
[ this helped in doing a effective release and sprint planning]
How to have unconditional ‘collaboration’
– moving away from cooperative mindset, demolished nonsense of ‘daily standup’ established ever flowing communication mindset. Set up a collaborative Performance Appraisal system
These 3 practices embedded in every aspect of work and activates, customer was also communicated same..
After 2 sprints ..
Customer understood – what can be done and what cannot be done
Team knows what it takes complete user stories – better estimation
Effective communication started flowing- silent folks started communicate
Crux of the story - happy team, happy customer and happy management...
Regards
Prasad
