How to adapt change management into Agile projects?‍

Earlier, the software project management worked with the waterfall method. In the Waterfall method, we need to execute all the software development life cycles in one direction and there is no going back. Therefore, Agile was introduced with 12 principles and 4 values. One of the principles and values added for change.

In the principles, they have mentioned:‍

“Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.”‍

And in values, they have mentioned:‍

“Responding to change over following a plan”‍

This makes Agile friction free. The Agile environment lends itself to an ongoing change management approach during development projects.

With an Agile project management development lifecycle, the approach to change management also needs to become more effortless.

When we are supporting change using Agile, the project development process becomes more flexible and adaptable.

The most important reason for change is lack of understanding of and appreciation for change management because requirements' analysis do not happen properly. Agile project managers are not too different from other project managers, in terms of their focus on delivering successes on time, cost and scope, and for real results to be achieved, we still need change management to support adoption and usage.  

First, engagement between the Agile team and the change management resource is important to ensure that the technical side will not affect it. After that senior leaders discuss and find out a way to implement the change.

At PRODT, working on 'SCRUM' is one of the frameworks on Agile. SCRUM works on three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

For transparency, SCRUM has artifacts- Product backlog, Sprint backlog and Increment. Once transparency is achieved, the inspection then works and following that, SCRUM has events for inspection.

In adaptation, we always accept any change and all adjustments can be implemented in the next increment.

SCRUM can create a safe environment that enables teams to experiment, and most importantly, learn from their test results and continuously improve. Instead of doing an extensive phase of planning at the beginning and only testing at the end (like the waterfall approach), SCRUM provides a space for teams to try, test and innovate faster based on repetitive cycles of input from the customer. The team that plans sufficiently, has a reasonable hypothesis of what may work and what goes with it.