Implementing Agile/Scrum At Fortune 500 Companies \ \ Oliver Nabavian IS 4600

Agile is Difficult to Implement in a Large/Corporate Environment Waterfall has been the standard for years and has been unsuccessful for software projects. It is easier to implement in new-smaller companies \ \

How to Adopt Agile Gartner Research “We will see the uptake of scrum in a wider usage platform, but this will ultimately fail for organizations that can’t/don’t make the required cultural changes to adopt agile” à Requires a massive overhaul of culture norms. Workspaces must be open to having a collaborative environment à Company must make proper investment in training their employees, invest in PM software à Sticking to the principles/rules of Agile will lead to long-term success

Going on the Lean Diet Capital One: Acquisition Department IdeasDeliver Result! à Goal was to shorten project length and cost. Limit redundancy and make teams more efficient à Slow moving process: Evaluate the issues in the waterfall process, what causes them. Then figure out where to go from there à Executive Support: Upper-management’s desire for efficiency drove the change. Requests from the Project Managers would be approved by management immediately à Create a model that can be transferred to other parts of the company à Create a collaborative work environment to foster teamwork and make agile processes successful

Steps Taken Capital One 12 3 The Team looked at all the tasks already implemented and what value they added. Testing Lean After seeing all the NVA tasks they had, the team followed Lean principles strictly and were able to cut NVA tasks to 50% Applying Lean Having an Iterative process will solve their problems long-term. Using Agile/Scrum CVA (Customer Value Added) BVA (Business Value Added) NVA (Non-Value Added): Executive Support Updated Workspace Collaboration 90% of tasks were NVA. In order to make lean work, number needs to be closer to 50%

The Fast Approach 3M Software Projects ChangeImprove Iterate à Developers backed the idea to adopt Scrum. Adopted methodology immediately in a new project. à First few sprints unsuccessful: Sent developers, PMs to Agile Conference. Hired Scrum consultant to evaluate their sprint. à Tweaked Sprint Lengths: Went from 2 weeks to 4 to 3 weeks. à Like project itself, adoption of scrum was iterative. à Invested in PM Software: Using Excel was not working.

Clashing with “The 3M Way” 3M New office setup took months to complete, still wasn’t perfect à à à à 3M is an Old Fashioned company. Cubicles, white and grey offices Corporate bureaucracy made it difficult for the team Ultimately, Executives helped and got new office approved

Conclusion Investment Strictly Follow Principles Executive Support/Culture Changes