Where Do You Want to Go?

Continuous improvement is not about the things you do well ‐ that's work. Continuous improvement is about removing the things that get in the way of your work. The headaches, the things that slow you down, that's what continuous improvement is all about. —Author Unknown In This Chapter This chapter discusses the challenge of becoming an Agile enterprise. This involves thinking clearly about where you are, where you want to go, and what is in the way. We consider three different organization types, based on what we have seen in helping companies transition to Agile. Fundamentally, the transition involves continual process improvement. Takeaways Key insights to take away from this chapter include • There are many ways to achieve Agility throughout the enterprise. • If you have well‐established development teams, start by making them Agile; then improve the portfolio‐management team, all the while improving both how your teams work together and their technical skills. • If you don't have well‐established teams, reduce the number of projects underway so you can create teams focused on completing prioritized requests that can be validated by the Product Champion. Before you can decide on your path, you must know where you are and where you want to go. Where you want to go is probably clear: It is where most other companies also want to go. These include being able to do the following. • Identify the needs of the market. • Respond quickly to market changes. • Create software that is tuned to the market: high quality and focused on providing the most valuable features. • Create products (internal and external) that are long‐lived, easily extended, and easily maintained. To achieve this, Lean‐Agile suggests enterprises do the following.