Should you adopt Agile all at once or incrementally?
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There is no "all" in agile. Agile is a state of mind, a continual striving to be better and better. As soon as you set out on that road, you're "agile". And there is no end point; every team can (and must) continue to improve. Don't measure your agile adoption by ticking boxes. Instead, daily and weekly solve your most pressing problem; continue to change, forever. If you do that, you're "agile" in the only sense that matters. |
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I would recommend adopting Agile at a comfortable pace, which usually isn't all at once. Start with the core principles of Agile that your team is interested in the most and learn to apply them really well. Once your team is comfortable with what they have tackled, then continue to gradually introduce more Agile practices. This keeps things at a nice even pace and rather than it feeling like a process change that can be cumbersome it feels like adopting a new tool. I would recommend at least setting a timeline out for your team though. Start by saying "We want to get really familiar with using a taskboard, and in 2 months we'll consider adding something new". |
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I am not certain how you would incrementally "ease" into a new process. Agreed "Agile is a state of mind", therefore once the decision is made, go for it. The reason is, players will go with what they know when given a chance. So, out with the old and in with the new. |
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I like to use ideas from Throughput Accounting to guide adopters in selecting the agile practices with the potential for the greatest positive impact. This implies adopting practices one at a time. That said, I want to avoid change fatigue, so I guide teams to adopt a small cluster of new agile practices at once, rather than one at a time. I still use Throughput Accounting and Discovering Bottlenecks to figure out where to focus the change. Most importantly, you need to work with the people to learn what will help them improve. I believe the theory that states that, in order to sustain improvement over time, we must take on significant challenges that are barely within/almost beyond our grasp. |
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I believe that there are a core set of agile practices that are necessary to get up and running. Many agile practices feel (and are) silly in isolation. But do you need to adopt ALL of the agile practices out there? No, that's silly as well as many of them are contradictory. I think you can roll it out a team at a time, but I'm finding out more and more that it can't be limited to the development team... that agile must extend throughout a company, especially through management. |
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