program selection system

Overview
Learn from our experience in executing Agile in a complicated and integrated organization and culture at The City of Calgary. This experience report will be of particular interest to large organizations and those in government. We are are going to describe the lessons learned from our journey from first deciding to look at Agile to actually executing and evaluating it. Our particular viewpoint will focus on how this played out in a government IT organization that is highly structured.

Cultural Context
• Team dynamics were focused on managing the team as opposed to leading it.
• Process and its complexity could obscure the end goals and motivations of a team’s effort.
• Highly defined roles for all team members at times hampered needed communication and collaboration.
• Client participation was challenging to get and keep past requirements sign off.
• Teams were not empowered to make the decisions that directly impacted them and how they worked on a project.

Lesson Learned
• How to work with service groups within our organization that were accustomed to predictive plans that defined when their services were required. (Infrastructure, Data, PMO).
• How we changed the physical environment to promote face to face communication. Learn how this resulted in a positive change in team dynamics.
• How early inclusion and involvement of our customer led to more effective communication and understanding.
• How we very early on recognized and then addressed the uncertainty and apprehension felt by the team and the organization when challenging the current culture.
• How and why we tailored a process for the organization and adapted it to work in practice.
• How executive sponsorship and support was critical to promote and explore techniques that otherwise would not have been an option.
• How we dealt with confusion on the new roles and responsibilities working within a culture that has very distinct, defined roles.
• The fact that we were unable to achieve completely cross functional teams. We will discuss why we were unable to do this and what we think the impact was.

You will want to attend because;
• You are a Leader in your organization trying to figure out how to implement Agile.
• You work in Government and want to hear some real life experience that might apply to your organization.
• You are New to Agile.