Introduction

Recently people have been asking me “So, when will you write a book?” Note that they are not asking “Will you write a book?” but more as a done deal that will happen sooner or later.

Writing a book is not a new thing for me. Did this 13 years ago and still proud of publishing 500 copies of “How to use AutoCad R1” that was sold out so quick I almost thought I will not keep a copy to myself. Didn’t follow up to publish more copies because at that time moved to Canada and I had other priorities to deal with.

Now, people are challenging me to write another book about what I do. I like it that they trust me and they think I am capable of it. So, here I go, I am accepting the challenge and I decided to kick-off a book on Leanpub.

In the spirit of Leanpub publishing, this will be written incrementally and so, I would love your feedback and any suggestion that will help me finish it right. Just quickly, where did the idea for this book came from and what is my goal with this book.

Where did the idea for this book came from? I am an Agile process coach. I can play the role of Project Manager, Business Analyst, Agile coach for Product owners and Scrum Masters and, I am “Decision challenger” for everyone on the team. I will bring here my experiences with teams new to Agile. The context is usually like this: A new Executive leader comes to a company and identifies that one area of the company is not achieving the expectations and is struggling to deliver. Usually this area is IT. The recent trend is to kick-off Agile transformations as the hope that will fix problems and will help these teams to deliver, increase the productivity and eventually help the company to be profitable. Trainings are the first tool on getting people to understand Agile thinking and the mechanics behind, usually lead by people with previous knowledge in Agile. What I have noticed is that, although in general (there are always some that resist!) people do understand what Agile is all about, they have a hard time to put it in practice. This, most of the times, is because, just like before Agile, they are asked to deliver projects that are big and expensive. They know how to deliver projects. They have done lots of those before. To run a project in Agile, it is difficult to understand how to change the old ways and how to deliver in an Agile way. Because they are not “armed” with the right “how-to”-s, they either fall into doing things the old way, or, they start complaining that “Agile doesn’t work for their environment and specific context”

My goal I want to put together some tools, tips and techniques to help teams new to Agile, from kick-off to success. The tools and tips are for everyone on the team, but sometime someone might be the leader or facilitator of them. On those cases, I will suggest those roles based on the strength of expertise. That said, these are tools that can be used even from teams that run Agile but are looking for new, different or better tools to improve their discussions and make better decisions.
I believe that when people are given tools to get the information they are looking for, they are less resistant to change the overall methodology used on a company and try something new. Although, for teams and companies that are moving to Agile, tools and techniques do help, the main driver is always the culture, the thinking and the continuous improvement.