ICYMI... The death of an agile transformation

#1

https://blog.agilecraft.com/blog/agileinfouracts

How many of us have lived this exact scenario? How can we prevent it happening again? Or are we powerless?

#2

When the founders, board, C-levels, or some combination of them have firmly made up their mind… it’s time to walk.

I was once brought into a company (by tech leadership) to do an agile adoption and the founders hired a new COO the same week… the COO eventually pushed me to the brink and I was “let go”… months later, so was he. The damage was done, I moved on.

#3

At least it was a quick death. Though the person should have left earlier. Unless it is your own company, you have to let go. I learned long ago that (1) it is ok to leave a company, (2) it is there job as a manager to build redundancy into the organization and (3) don’t worry about the company as they have already moved on also. I have seen so many people struggle with ensuring everything they worked hard on is taken care of. What they don’t realize is that hardly anyone will read their documentation and the new person will their own way.

A co-worker who I saw for all of 15 minutes, decided to stay home with her baby. She was working until the last minute that Friday. I told her go home and enjoy life with the baby. This place will manage itself.

At my last job they auto-disconnected me at 5:30pm and all I could say was they got what they got, because it seemed like they did not worry about that last little detail, so neither did I. Of course I got a call or two about how to do something, but that was it. We all move on.

Maybe this is one reason I like agile. There is little documentation because we all know no one reads it and has little or no value. Second managers have to learn to let go and let others manage their lives and workload on their own. We get away from the superhero mentality because there are a group of good people that can step in.

#4

Hmm, getting a 404 and the blog seems gone. Google cache has it though :wink:

Actually, the blog is there, though not linked from the main site: https://blog.agilecraft.com/blog

The post linked by OP is definitely gone though. Google’s cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QK9NPczbGW0J:https://blog.agilecraft.com/blog/agileinfouracts+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl

Interestingly, the author of the post is the Founder and CEO of Agile Craft?!