This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Early Days: Gatherings
Try...Repeating large-audience introductions
When there are tens of thousands of people in a company, it is useful to convey a consistent introductory message to everyone. One technique is written material, but that is low-impact—few read it, and the nuance of "bringing Scrum to life" is lost.
Frequent one-day large-audience seminar introductions (say, 200+ people at a time) make a bigger impact—due to immediacy, Q&A, and especially the many 'discussions' that take place during coffee and lunch breaks. These seminars break the ice and add some steam.
Try...Open-Space Technology for early-days adoption
From India to Hungary to the USA, we have seen the positive impact of using Open Space Technology (OST) [Owen97] during the early days of large-scale Scrum adoption within groups. We usually serve as facilitator, starting by announcing the theme of "agile adoption at companyX," explaining the time-space board, and briefly sharing the OST principles and laws.
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OST is a meeting technique that encourages emergence and self-organization; it is highly complementary to agile principles and Scrum, and we encourage groups to experiment with it in multiple contexts: early days, Scrum-of-Scrum meetings, and more.
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Figure 11.4 OST early-days agile adoption events: Budapest and Bangalore
Try...Big gatherings to share stories & experiments
During the first few years of Scrum adoption at one of our clients, we helped organize an annual internal Scrum Gathering in which hundreds of people from around the globe came together to share stories and tips, listen to expert speakers, and so forth. This sustained and added momentum to the adoption.
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