A staged approach to agility enhancement

Without a focused, time boxed road map for the agile implementation, the agile implementation may not provide the real strategic business advantage to the organization. Based on my experience with agile teams from various organizations, I have coined the agile maturity model for implementing agile within organizations. The only objective of this staged approach is to provide a road map for organizations to mature their agility in the right path.

Level - 0

An aspiring organization, which is very new to agile project management practices. Most of the work happens in an ad hoc manner, or are based on waterfall, CMM, ISO etc.

Level-1 (Agile project management partial)

General awareness on the right agile management methodology is imparted to some teams, and they have started implementing tailored agile in their respective teams. Mindset still remains waterfall. Definition of done is ready for testing. Testing teams still work in the independent testing mode. Work allocation and tracking happens as in the traditional project management teams. Still they get some benefits.

Level-2 (Agile project management fully implemented)

At this stage, all the key agile project management practices given below are implemented.
• Product backlog
• User stories and estimation using story points
• Estimation using poker
• Acceptance test cases are written and documented before the sprint
• Sprint planning
• Work volunteering
• Daily stand up meetings
• Tracking Sprint board and burn down charts
• Sprint review meetings
• Lessons learned exercises
• Velocity calculations
• Role clarities scrum master, product owner, team members
• Tool usage for multi-location collaboration

Level-3 (Agile engineering practices implemented, Scaled)

At this stage the core engineering practices given below are adopted;
• Adherence to coding standards
• Create the unit test first
• Pair programming
• Integrate code at a time
• Integrate often
• Acceptance test automation

Level -4 (Agile HR practice implemented)

• Alignment of the HR practices to the agile values like commitment, focus, openness, respect and courage.


My agile journey 

• Designed and developed ‘Agile project management using Scrum’ program based on the Scrum guide and delivered the same for major multinational product companies as well as medium and small sized start ups.
• Worked very closely with large and medium sized organizations to transition their teams from waterfall to agile.
• At a healthcare product company we transitioned a team of around 100 professionals from waterfall to agile. I was in charge of the agile transition for their Bangalore and Chennai offices, reporting to their Global agile transition head. Was involved in strategy, training and on the job coaching.

• At a telecom product multinational corporation, I was instrumental in transitioning a team of around 60 engineers from ad-hoc agile implementation to good agile. Was involved in training and on the job coaching.
• Implemented agile project management and execution at a start up projects based organization, which has grown to a 400+ member organization subsequently.
• Implemented agile project management and execution at another start up, which has grown to a 100+ member organization subsequently.
• Implemented agile project management and execution for a team at another start up who are into data analytics.
• Implemented agile project management and execution for another project mased team of a medium sized org.
• Implemented agile project management and execution for another organization, a medium sized project based company

Delivered agile training to a large number of organizations, both large and small.

My Agile journey continues with my clients. If there are opportunities I am interested to associate with everyone who want to improve their agility. email abrachan@gmail.com