12 Questions to Ask Your Organization About Agile Adoption

While I talk to management teams, they ask me a common question: “Is Agile really successful?” Yes, Agile is a path to success — but are you ready to get on that path? Here are some quick questions to determine if you can adapt to Agile and be successful.

  1. Is your management team ready to forget most of the metrics they are used to? Agile delivers business value first, and keeps the practices to basic common sense. This will naturally remove most of your metrics information or it will become redundant.
  2. Can they rewrite the customer contracts with more collaboration and a value-based business approach?
  3. Is the organization ready to transform all departments (HR, Operations, Release, QA, and process groups) to support the Agile mindset and Agile practices?
  4. Can you change HR policies to support and evaluate the team instead of individuals? Can you let go of the thought of rewarding the “best in the team” and build the “best team” instead?
  5. Can you find candidates for the ScrumMaster role who have leadership qualities or Product Owners with business acumen and customer management skills?
  6. Are your project managers ready to sacrifice their command and control power?
  7. Can you form a team with cross-functional skills who will work collaboratively rather than in isolation?
  8. Do you have the right coach to help you assimilate Agile values and propagate Agile practices during transformation?
  9. Is your delivery team ready to embrace Agile practices and work as a team instead of as a group of individuals?
  10. Do you have customers or users with an Agile mindset?
  11. Does everyone involved in the organization accept, respect, and understand Agile and its practices?
  12. Lastly, is your management ready to wait until the team to gets to the performance stage after the transition is made?

If the answer to these questions is “Yes”, your organization will find success being Agile and using its practices, or else it’s sure that you will fail as others did. Success depends on your organization and employees. Agile is a thought process, an approach that delivers business value first during the development process using a common sense approach.

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