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Well, this is very hard. It is more frustrating with bigger companies. In one occasion, where they officially brought me in as an agile coach, I tried to at le
by struppi 9y ago
Well, this is very hard. It is more frustrating with bigger companies.
In one occasion, where they officially brought me in as an agile coach, I tried to at least achieve some local optimum with the team, because some big improvements were plain impossible. I occasionally talked to managers about all the walls we were constantly hitting, but the answer was always "we can never change that in this company". This did not stop me from mentioning the problems, though.
Most company actually hire me as a technical coach or as a developer. There it is easier: When changing the way the team works is not officially my responsibility, I will still mention things that could be done better. But when the company does not listen to me, it is easier to let go: Then I'll just focus again on helping the team dealing with their legacy code monster (or whatever else I was hired to do).
So, in short, my strategy of dealing with it: Never give up mentioning problems and trying to establish a culture of continuous improvement with small experiments. But don't get too frustrated when they don't listen.
Also, often they do listen, and things get a little bit better ;)
How do you deal with those situations? Do you have a different strategy? What could I try to do differently?
- solatic 9y ago> Never give up mentioning problems I've tried this strategy, but it just comes off as whining. People's reactions tend to be "we all know that's a problem, but what's the fix? None of us have any power to apply any fixes." The essential strategy to make a company more agile is to a) spend some time at the bottom, to understand how daily processes aren't agile and are broken up by the organization's silos, b) explain how the organization isn't agile to executives, until finally c) you and the executives talk to middle management together and start to take on the middle-management fiefdoms. The very good reason why Agile requires C-level support is because it often involves reorganization or firings at the middle-management level. You're never going to get anywhere complaining to people on lower levels, or to middle management, which is typically against changes to organizational structure. If the executives aren't on board ("we can never change that in this company"), leave and find another company.
- struppi 9y agoThanks for your insightful reply! b) works only when you are even allowed to talk to the exectuives ;) That's why I said it's more frustrating in larger companies...
- eru 9y agoI always talk to everybody. But then, I've only ever been an employee, not a consultant, and I picked my employers accordingly.
- eru 9y ago> I've tried this strategy, but it just comes off as whining. It helps to deliver some good results first. People take you and your opinions more seriously after.
- LoSboccacc 9y agoI used to work at a megacorp that pretended having stand up meeting seated was working agile. I just nodded, cashed the paycheck and still did great work. some battles I won, like moving a whole team to continuous integration or removing most of the manual busywork in testing, sometimes I just let bad stuff go because you can't always win and instead aimed for the second best option: dodge.
- ryanmarsh 9y ago> establish a culture of continuous improvement This is the thing in agile/technical coaching. Too many people focus on the process and dogma when what's really missing is an organizational habit around continuous improvement.