Rise and fall of an Agile company (try-out)

Benefits

• Get a view behind the scene of a mayor cultural change.
• See Agile in a bigger picture (also outside IT)
• lessons learned from this experience (e.g. did it deliver value to the company?)
• lessons learned from a consultancy company point of view
• Learn what I discovered to be THE crucial thing during this change. This reveals why it was difficult to build and easy to break down.

Learning Objectives

• Share experience on how we’ve build an Agile company. The Happy and painful moments but also the techniques used.
• We’re not alone, show that outside IT there are a lot of other emerging “movements” with the same values as Agile

Session Outline

The director of our IT consultancy company decided to drastically change the culture of our company. The command and control style didn’t make sense anymore for him. Together with a change agent he took the whole company on a journey towards another corporate culture. A company based on what we call Agile values.

We turned around the whole company, we needed to change the way of working, the recruitment process, the payment method, the appraisal system... The journey was bumpy and we had forces fighting us from the inside. Some people from the staff and consultants where clearly against the idea. Some people left, others joint us exactly for that. Also forces from the outside where active, being part of a European consultancy group based on hierarchy and micromanagement clearly did not help. Fortunately the group cared even more about money and that part was a success so we got away with it, at least for a while.

Until one day. The day the rules of the game changed and overnight the culture changed ones again. What we had build up during 8 years was destroyed. Now, two years later, the only thing that remains are the people that experienced it, learned from it and pass the message.

To have a full view of the situation the direction and change agent where interviewed. The result was used for a paper on organizational development.

About the Trainer