VOICES In the Trenches
Becoming Agile
One organization’s experience with adopting agile practices proves instructive—and profitable.
By Michal Raczka, PMI-ACP, PMP
Michal Raczka, PMI-ACP, PMP, is IT
director at Naspers Group/Allegro
Group, Poznan, Poland.
IN 2011, OUR ORGANIZATION, e-commerce
company Allegro Group, realized it needed a way
to quickly react to changes in the market. Our
waterfall process was not allowing us to do that, so
we started making our way toward agility. The
problems that cropped up and the lessons we learned
on the way can help other organizations embarking
on the same journey.
We started with a pilot project—our first Scrum
team. We soon experienced the “two clocks issue,”
in which the Scrum team was moving quickly,
but the entire organization
was not ready to make the
change. Part of the problem
was that we were unable to
communicate well. Years of
living in caves of specializa-
tion on different floors left us
unaccustomed to commu-
nicating face-to-face with
everyone—something that
agile requires.
What’s more, although
we said we were working
in sprints, our sprints were
just mini-waterfalls, and we
struggled to think in terms
of user value. Another
problem was the availability of our first Scrum
team members. Despite the
agreement that our entire
team would be dedicated
full-time to the project, we
faced a stream of requests
for help with other work.
Nevertheless, in spite of the pilot project’s
challenges, management decided that agile
should go company-wide. We found an experi-
enced agile coach and started training all levels
of the company. We began moving employees
from silos to teams. Within two days everybody
changed seats, floors—even buildings. Business-
people now sat with IT people. This presented a
huge administration challenge, but there were no
longer problems with communication or avail-
ability of team members.
PMO Challenge
Meanwhile, I faced the challenge of implementing
a new agile process in the project management
office (PMO). My method was to suspend all rules
and to give teams the freedom to find creative solutions. Every project manager was able to manage
the project using his or her own style—the only
requirement was to use the agile approach. After
one year, we agreed on one common process,
which we call the “agile project management process.” It is consistent with Scrum but modified for
the strong usage of project management.
During the transition, my organization realized
why it is so hard to achieve high agility. It is not
about doing agile; it is about being agile. At the
beginning we were focused on the mechanics of
Scrum/agile. But this accounts for only 20 percent
of the success—the other 80 percent pertains to
culture and people. We had to adjust our thinking
to be open to change, look for quick feedback and
act on it, and adapt to new situations.
Our journey is not over. Still, we have seen
remarkable success using agile: shorter time to
market, close cooperation between business and IT,
and more employee satisfaction. PM
