I met a Malawian, a gatekeeper at a game reserve there, who was mauled during a lion attack. His face is terribly scarred and he’s missing an ear; but he’s alive.
That got me thinking about you. It’s likely you’ve been mauled too. Not by a lion, but by something more powerful and pervasive: Bureaucracy. And you’ve got the scars to prove it; yet somehow you’ve made it through.
Bureaucracy is the mother-of-all legacy systems. It directs what you do and how you do it. And if you want to overturn it, or simply change it a little, or arrest its operation for just one team, it won’t let you. I’ll bet it’s the single biggest impediment to your agile ambitions. But you’re correct to want to change it, because these days bureaucracy is not the best organizing principle we can think of.
Peace, then change
I know it’s a daunting challenge to change something that’s so entrenched in people’s thinking, in their styles, techniques, attitudes, expectations. But that’s the thing: Most people actually don’t think, they just do. Managing Agile is here to help you question the status quo so that your colleagues start asking why. Managing Agile can help you demystify and desensitize the interactions between traditional management and the agilistas.
Notwithstanding they work for the same company, each doing their best, equally responsible for creating stakeholder wealth, Business and IT often view the other as an enemy. This site will give you the information to disarm, to bring peace; then change. It’ll give non-partisan insights into what the other is feeling. It’ll help people see passed the comfort of bureaucracy to the riskiness of change.
Don’t wait for the lions to find you. They will; it’s inevitable if you stay where you are. Change. Get moving. Go looking for lions.
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I like the analogy
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Wish I had known about the gentle way to change people’s thoughts on processes, I seemed to have taken the bull in a China shop approach and rant and rave until something gave way. It seemed to work most times, but it builds animosity amongst your peers – and eventually they get thicker skins, much like the Rhino.
Having lived through that, I think that one should create the peace, then move to change. However, the peace comes after you have convinced most players/stake holders that the new way will be that much better, and normally after you have put your life on the line on it succeeding! I look forward to seeing the ways and means to create the peace – as it looks like the battle here is the peace and not the change!
Keep up the good work!
Malcolm