The one paper that made my day yesterday at agile 2007 was the story about how Salesforce.com implemented agile.

Though a young company, they found themselves stuck in quite formal, waterfall oriented environment about a year ago. They had data that showed a gradual decline in productivity within teams, and longer and longer between releases. Not a good position for an on-demand company!

So they dediced to do a lean/agile initiative. They layed out a plan, that included experiments and pilot projects, in a gradual transition, but they decided, mainly because their CEO, in favour of an approach where everybody would go at the same time. That way they would get results faster and avoid dissonance between teams working the new way and teams still in the old world.

After a tough period, with resistance and struggles, they are now in a much sweeter spot, and have seen productivity rise, as well as being in a mode where they deliver 4 versions every year, and as they said "nobody even considers moving the deadline" which would be very uncommon in the past.

They themselves attributed the following to their success:

• Executive commitment
• A dedicated, cross-functional rollout team
• Focus on principles over mechanics
• Focus on automation
• Radical Transparency
• Leverage existing agile training
  
  

By Bent Jensen