You finally received executive support to move forward with the agile transformation that you spent months trying to sell to them. The team is excited to start, and so are you. The department is large, approximately one hundred people, and there are several initiatives underway. You start to plan the transformation but feel paralyzed, as there are so many different ways to approach this. Panic ensues. Where should I start? What if I run into hurdles? How will I convince the teams?
You're not alone. Between 47% and 70% of organizational transformations fail to deliver their expected results. And in most cases, the failure isn't about choosing the wrong framework or skipping a ceremony. It's about underestimating the organizational change management (OCM) required to make the transformation stick.
Transformations stall when they're treated as process changes instead of people changes. Teams adopt new ceremonies without understanding why. Leaders sponsor the initiative but don't change their own behavior. Middle management carries the heaviest burden with the least support. The result: pockets of adoption surrounded by resistance, and an initiative that slowly loses momentum.
As agile coaches who have guided 100+ enterprise transformations, we see these patterns almost daily. Here are five tips we've found invaluable for getting a stalled transformation moving again.
Tip 1: Create a Transformation Backlog
Agile transformations are similar to any large company initiative and should be treated comparably. Sometimes this is forgotten and companies try to aggressively move forward without any planning. Imagine kicking off a six-month project without taking the time to identify, prioritize and break down the work. It probably wouldn't progress.
As such, one approach to get started is a transformation backlog.
Simply document the overall transformation goal that you are trying to accomplish, break it down into large pieces of work and identify some concrete action items to work on. This will help turn a large, daunting task into something manageable. Don't be afraid to experiment, the risk is low if the experiments are time boxed to short intervals.
The key is to start. And make sure the backlog includes items beyond process changes: leadership alignment conversations, communication plans, and feedback loops that address the human side of the transformation.
Tip 2: Make Impediments Transparent (Especially the Organizational Ones)
Agile will surface issues that have been hidden or avoided for years. Make these issues transparent and work with the team on removing them as quickly as possible. Form an Agile Transformation team, including representatives with influence to remove larger issues, and escalate impediments to them when unable to resolve within the team.
Many of the most stubborn impediments aren't technical. They're organizational: unclear decision rights, competing priorities across departments, managers who feel threatened by the shift in authority. These are change management challenges, and they require change management approaches to resolve. Ignoring them doesn't make them go away. It makes the transformation stall.
Manage the impediments in the same way as product backlog items: prioritize them, add details as they move up in priority, and break them down into tasks when ready to be addressed.
A Countermeasures Board is one approach for organizing impediments. It provides structure around what should be discussed and is helpful for capturing and organizing action items.
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Tip 3: Choose a Framework That Fits Your Teams
There isn't a "one size fits all" approach for agile implementations. When learning or reading about agile, it seems relatively easy in practice; however, when trying to implement quickly, it becomes apparent it isn't so easy after all. Every team has their own set of needs and challenges and the agile framework should be adapted to address them in the most efficient way possible.
Start with a lightweight framework such as scrum or kanban and commit to trying the framework for a period of time long enough to get into a rhythm and analyze what is and is not working. As impediments are addressed, the framework will be modified to meet the needs of the team.
For example, let's assume the team decided to start with scrum as their framework. In the daily scrum, one of the developers raised an impediment that they are stuck on design. Another developer offers to help; suddenly they are practicing pair programming, an XP practice.
The framework is the vehicle, not the destination. The destination is better business outcomes: faster delivery, higher quality, improved predictability. If the framework isn't moving the organization toward those outcomes, it's time to inspect and adapt.
Tip 4: Secure Executive Commitment Across All Three Levels
Another common concern is how to keep the business running while managing the agile transformation. In other words, how will we continue to deliver value to our customers?
Successful agile transformations are an investment. Before kicking off, ensure there is commitment from the executives to slow down the feature work so the team can focus on continuous improvement.
This commitment needs to exist at three levels of the organization:
- Organization level: Executives must align the transformation with measurable business outcomes, not just "go agile." Without this alignment, there's no way to measure progress or justify continued investment.
- System level: Collections of teams that coordinate together need shared goals and compatible processes. A single agile team surrounded by waterfall dependencies will always be constrained.
- Team level: Individual teams need the autonomy to experiment and the psychological safety to fail. That requires active support from their direct leadership, not just a mandate from the top.
Research shows that organizations with strong leadership support across all levels are 6x more likely to meet their transformation goals. 74% of successful transformations cite active organizational support as a key factor.
Virginia Satir's Change Model is a good reference for describing what the company may experience as they grow and change. Review the model with executives and explain work will slow down during the "Chaos" phase, but will start to pick back up during "Integration." Not only will the work pick up, but it is highly likely that performance will more than double, resulting in higher value in a shorter amount of time. Setting this expectation upfront, through deliberate change management, prevents leaders from pulling the plug during the natural performance dip.
Tip 5: Address the Non-Agile Parts of the Organization
How about teams that are not moving to agile, such as Legal, Operations, etc? Move forward with a framework (scrum or lean) and then as challenges arise when working with these teams, identify them as impediments that will be resolved by the teams.
This is where organizational change management becomes critical. An agile transformation that only addresses engineering teams but ignores HR, finance, legal, and operations will eventually hit a wall. The operating model itself, how work flows across the organization, needs to evolve alongside team-level practices.
Schedule recurring meetings to identify and discuss challenges and encourage the team to own the resolution of these items. This won't completely solve the problem, but it is a step in the right direction. Over time, these conversations reveal whether the stall is a team-level problem, a system-level coordination gap, or an organization-level alignment issue.
Is Your Transformation Stalled? Find Out Why.
If your agile transformation has lost momentum, the first step is diagnosing the root cause. Is it a team practice issue, a leadership alignment gap, or a missing change management strategy?
Our Path to Agility Health Check is an 18-question diagnostic built on data from 100+ enterprise transformations. It maps your current state against 9 Business Outcomes, including Speed, Quality, Predictability, and Employee Engagement, so you can see exactly where you're stuck and what to focus on next.
Related Reading:
- OCM Isn't a Phase. It's the Strategy. -- Why treating change management as a one-time activity is the most common reason transformations stall.
- Contact us about onsite coaching for help implementing any of these ideas.
- Learn more by attending a training.
References:
- Problem Countermeasure Board
- Virginia Satir Change Model
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