Background

All teams have a finite capacity for change and certain terminal speed at which they can successfully change without placing an excessive level of stress on the team.

Experience

A team with limited experience with major process change attempting to transition to Agile faster than its terminal speed was observed to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" by discarding or rendering dysfunctional many legitimate processes that were previously key to its effectiveness in a rush to re-invent itself. The result was a team that no longer knew how to reliably release quality software on a regular basis.

Smells

• Team members are skeptical about the transition strategy.
• Team members cannot explain how the team will get work done in the first week of the transition.
• Team members make comments that indicate that they feel overwhelmed by the rate of change.

Causes

• Management wishes to realise the benefits of Agile quickly.
• The organisation is unaware of the time and effort required to introduce Agile practices.
• The team misinterprets certain rules and/or roles associated with the Agile method to mean that they must abandon certain existing practices that may be necessary in their environment.

Consequences

• Confusion reigns!
• Key processes are abandoned or break down.
• Certain staff are sidelined and become frustrated.
• The team cannot reliably deliver quality software within iterations.

Guidance

Teams have a finite capacity for change that varies from team-to-team. Therefore, it is important to assess a team's capacity for change. This may be assessed by introducing discrete changes of limited scope and monitoring the team's ability to adjust to these and where its weaknesses are before choosing a transition strategy that accords with these constraints.

If you have had a similar experience or have a different perspective on this, please post a comment below.