As many organizations are adopting more and more agile, a key question is emerging … how sustainable is agile in our organization? When the embedded agile coaches or consultants leave, will things go back to the way they were? How long will it take before agile becomes just empty rituals and checklists, like the other processes did? Will things go back to the way they were after our sponsor moves on? It is our experience that the sustainability of agile is deeply linked to how the organization “transforms” to agile. We know that transforming an organization to become more agile requires more than just process change. Rather, it requires a complete culture shift. Sustainable, effective agile transformations affect all the elements of culture such as, leadership style, leadership values, work structures, reward systems, processes, and of course the work habits of people. How to affect that culture shift is the key question we will discuss in the session. We will present two different common transformation approaches (organizational-led and process-led) and then describe a hybrid version called culture-led transformation that is designed to change critical organizational and personal habits to improve and sustain organizational agility.

About the speakers:

Ahmed Sidky, Ph.D. known as Doctor Agile, is a well known thought-leader in the Agile community. He is a transformation consultant for Fortune 100 companies, the co-author of “Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World,” and the co-founder of the International Consortium for Agile. Ahmed was selected to be on the steering committee of the PMI-ACP® Certification and the program chair for the Agile 2009 conference. He has been an invited speaker at numerous Agile Conferences around the world speaking on topics like, the agile mindset, how to create lean high performing habits within teams, and how to transform organization in a manner that achieves sustainable organizational agility.