I see and hear it all the time: “Who needs an Agile Coach?”. Well, maybe you don’t – but most enterprises do. I cannot tell you how often I hear the groans and whimpers of new Agile teams trying to figure it all out on there own. Maybe they picked up a couple of XP books and decided to go solo. Or maybe a couple of folks went and spent their two days becoming ScrumMasters and now felt that the designation provided the knowledge and skill to fundamentally change the way their organization and team delivers projects. Perhaps someone high up attended a conference and couldn’t wait to dive into the Agile frenzy. They don’t all fail. Some teams emerge as success story. But more often than not, those teams that attempt to adopt agile without the help of an experienced coach are destined to suffer pitfall after pitfall; misstep after misstep; mistake after mistake. And yes – very many of them do fail. more »

I recently had a chat with a coworker about the rather inconsequential improvements in companies that had adopted Agile. While instances of significant improvements in team performance are numerous, cases where an organization as a whole has made noteworthy gains (2x-5x) are rare. I don’t know of many companies that have adopted agile on a large scale, made significant gains, and have been able to successfully sustain it for longer than 2-3 years. It is not often that the executives/senior managers feel very strongly about the gains that have been made at an organizational level. more »