Navigating Agile Adoption in Established Companies

Before you roll out Scrum, read this. These 9 lessons could make or break your organization’s agile transformation. At last night’s PMI Chicagoland Annual Business Meeting, David Schwab (William Everett) and Annie Reyes (CASL) shared how Scrum helped shift their organization from siloed planning to collaborative, high-impact delivery. Their nonprofit journey mirrors many of the same challenges and wins I’ve seen in the for-profit world. These lessons are universal—and essential for anyone navigating agile adoption. Here are 9 insights that stood out: ✅ Scrum isn’t just for tech. ↳ It brings speed, alignment, and coordination—even in resource-constrained, people-first environments. ✅ Scrum thrives in ambiguity. ↳ From program launches to cross-functional initiatives, Scrum aligns diverse teams—even when the roadmap is unclear or evolving. ✅ Culture first, then process. ↳ Scrum cannot fix dysfunction, poor leadership, or burnout. It needs trust, psychological safety, and purpose-driven routines. It will shine a light on dysfunction—organizations should be prepared to confront and learn from it. ✅ Start small, scale smart. ↳ Early leader buy-in and time to understand the new ways of working increases the odds of successful adoption across the organization. ✅ Don’t drop the whole playbook on Day 1. ↳ Jumping in with full Scrum terminology and structure can overwhelm teams unfamiliar with agile. Introduce it in plain language and build fluency over time. ✅ Invest in a quality Scrum Master. ↳ One of CASL’s success factors was having an experienced Scrum Master from the start. A trained facilitator is critical to guide, educate, and sustain the team’s momentum. I've seen organizations skip this step—and it significantly derailed adoption. ✅ “Blurry roles lead to blurry results” ↳ When everyone knows their lane, teams move faster, take ownership, and build momentum. Role clarity is critical to a successful rollout—people must not only understand their roles but also be coached to them. ✅ Agility is about people and mindset—not just tools. ↳ Change management and leadership are essential. Expect to spend time coaching your teams, guiding behaviors, and managing resistance. ✅ Retrospectives are the secret sauce. ↳ They create a safe space for feedback and empower voices across titles. These sessions increase engagement, build trust, and generate insights that fuel continuous improvement. The biggest lesson? Agility is about people. It’s not about the framework—it’s about leadership. Reshare to help other leaders navigate their agile transformation. What lessons have you learned when implementing agility in your organization? Drop them in the comments below. 👇 ♻️ Reshare to help other leaders navigate their agile transformation. ➕ Follow Morgan Davis, PMP, PROSCI, MBA Davis for practical insights on leading organizational change and building agile, high-impact teams.

Some company cultures are just not compatible with Agile. They treat Agile as a process that can be implemented, rather than a change in mindsets, behaviors, and most of all, values of the people doing the work. Someone up top has decided that we’d better implement this Agile thing. The PMO is assigned to “go figure it out” and come back with a plan. A few months later, Agile processes are feeling heavily bureaucratic or like a bunch of checkbox exercises. There is confusion about roles and responsibilities, and things are getting messy. The problem is that you're struggling to adopt Agile methodologies at the values-level, making it feel more like a set of rules to follow rather than a different way of working altogether. It’s like your company starts up an employee baseball tournament. Only, you’re not allowed to go outside. You have to play in one of the big conference rooms. Oh, and you have to use whatever equipment you find in the supply room. The solution is to start with the values and principles behind Agile first, not the processes. The fundamental values of Agile are often in direct opposition to the established culture of the company. But by addressing the cultural blockers up front, you’ll be more likely to move toward Agile ways of working. 1) Self-organizing teams. The team is the primary unit of an Agile approach, not the individual. Decisions are often made collectively. People can switch roles or overlap without needing any permission or supervision from outside the team. The rigid culture around role definition, incentive and reward structures, and decision making will all need to be modified FIRST before you can support self-organizing teams. 2) Building in smaller increments. Teams cannot know in advance everything they need to know in order to build a working complex system, which most products and applications are. Instead, they need to start with a rough idea that includes a vision, some clear objectives, and some general constraints. Executives attempt to exert a high degree of control over everything before embarking on a project that is large and complex. Leaders will need to change the way they think about planning and funding projects to be able to adapt to Agile ways of working. 3) Adapting to change. The heart of Agile approaches is the acceptance of unknowns, and the ability to change direction based on new information coming in as we go. This is another hard pill to swallow for rigid corporate cultures. Planning has been an important part of company cultures since the days of Frederick Winslow Taylor, and old habits die hard. Executives need to get more comfortable with embracing flexibility rather than adhering to a plan. We work with leaders to help them understand, appreciate, and adopt the changes of mindset, culture, and values necessary before or during big transformations. If you're stuck in the middle of a messy Agile rollout, give me a ping and we'll talk.

At Novartis, I once stood in front of 300 top executives. I explained why their IT organization felt "too slow" and how to fix it. Here's what I shared and what I'd do differently today: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱: For many executives, IT felt like a bureaucratic bottleneck: submit a request, wait endlessly, and finally receive what you asked for, but months too late. It was frustrating to be perceived as "too slow." But the real issue wasn't speed, it was the outdated approach to software development. For decades, enterprises (us included) built their processes around waterfall methodologies: rigid upfront planning that dictated funding approvals, team structures, and skill development. While we recognized this problem and attempted to adopt agile methodologies (we called it "agile ICE"), we just ended up with "waterfall in disguise." A surface-level change that doesn't address systemic barriers. 🟢 Here's how I'd tackle this change systemically today, drawing on my experience at Calibo: 👉 1. 𝗣𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁: Don't try to make everything agile at once. Start with greenfield opportunities - analytics, AI, commercial applications where you can have smaller MVPs. Avoid GxP's. Pick battles where agile can actually succeed. 👉 2. 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Stop relying on surveys asking "Are you being agile?", people always say yes. Instead, integrate with your development tools to see actual working patterns. Track sprint cycles, deployment frequency, and team maturity levels with real data, not self-reporting. 👉 3. 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀: This is where most agile transformations fail. If your budget processes take months, if infrastructure requests require two week wait times, if team changes need approvals from top leadership - you're forcing teams back into waterfall behavior regardless of training. 👉 4. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀: Instead of controlling every decision, give small teams the tools and environments they need to innovate independently. Create secure, compliant "innovation sandboxes" where teams can test, develop, and deploy without opening tickets or waiting for approvals. If I could go back in time I would focus way more energy on the systemic aspects of this transformation. Because the real challenge is not only proving that agile works or doing fancy workshops. It's also about dismantling the barriers that keep teams stuck in waterfall thinking. What's been your biggest obstacle in agile transformation? Share your experience in the comments! I'd love to discuss. P.S. Repost this to your IT-Network if it is helpful!