tips
“It’s not the pants, it’s the people in the pants”: Learnings from The Gap Agile Transformation
Tue, 2008-02-19 01:13 — Michael ElbazAfter 7 years of traditional IT delivery, Gap Inc. Direct decided to adopt Agile. This experience report discusses three key factors that contributed to our successful (and ongoing) Agile transformation: 1. Ambitious Pilot Project 2. Massive Investment in Continuous Integration 3. Rethinking our Assets
Executing Agile in a Structured Organization: Government
Wed, 2008-01-23 15:58 — Robyn Johnson, Michael McCulloughOverview
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.
