AgileNCR 2010 conference was held in Gurgaon on 17th & 18th July 2010. This largest community driven conference was the Fourth edition of Agile NCR and was organized in collaboration with ASCI. This time the event was based on four major themes : 'Agile for newbies', ' Agile Adoption Challenges', 'Workshops and Software Craftsmanship', and ' Post Agile'

1. Agile 2.0 - Our Road to Mastery An Experience Report July 17 th & 18 th , 2010 Agile NCR, Gurgaon

2. All views to be expressed here are mine, and do not reflect my employer's views in any way.. Biju Bhaskar Email: [email_address] Blog : www.bijubhaskar.net

3. Agenda Quick overview of our agile journey till mid-2009 The Road to Mastery Agile 2.0 initiative Lessons learned from it

4. We’ve been doing Scrum for a long time..

5. We are good at it…

6. But as always, there was scope for improvement As Jim Collins says, “Good is the enemy of great!” We had good teams, but not great teams..

7. Here’s what our organization looked like at the middle of 2009: The Landscape when this story begins.. More than 40 Active Development Projects Geographically Distributed Teams Several Outsourced Development Partners Many successful Scrum projects Overabundance of awareness of Agile and Scrum All projects followed Agile practices

8. We realized that our application development teams were ready to move to the next level in our Agile adoption So what is next in our “Road to Mastery”?

9. What can we improve? Rhythm New technologies Sprint Length Feedback More Value Team Structure Prioritization Release length Staffing Support Meetings Engineering practices Transparency Sponsors Knowledge Less Waste Team Interactions and lot more…

10. After inspecting our agile adoption, we found that focusing on four key areas could help us take our agile maturity to the next level Pick the highest priorities… Better manage our stakeholder expectations Increase productivity of teams Reduce waste in our projects Improve project staffing

11. But first, get the right people on the bus… The most passionate folks in each area Folks who have been already doing some of this well in their projects Representation from all locations

12. Where do we go; what is our BHAG? The “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”

15. Our key takeaways were: We learned a lot… Good is the enemy of Great! Changing behavior can take years and so can an Agile adoption The change process needs to run on human passion A small high-performance team will be needed to inspire and guide any change implementation The top of the organization must support—and be supported

16. Our journey towards mastery continues… Email: biju_bhaskar@gmail.com