I have long espoused the Satir change model ("new things get worse before they get better"). I'm not so sure anymore. At Deliver Agile I talked to Arlo Belshee & Llewellyn Falco & they seemed to have great success with a Kaizen approach where it was only onward & upward. In our patterns class one of the "sidebar" lessons we teach are practices that are readily adopted. In all of these cases, the "J curse" is not present. The problem is getting the practices to be a habit.

 

I'm not saying the "getting worse first" doesn't happen. It usually does. But the question is why? While I greatly respect Satir's work, we're not doing family counseling (although sometimes it may feel that way :) ). The fact that I've had times with big shifts as well has always made me think that change in organizations is not well understood in the Agile space.

 

Our recent offerings on focusing on the work instead of the frameworks seems to mirror this as well. & when one thinks about it, it fits with a lot of the resistance ppl find their teams have with daily standups, retros & test-first. The way these are normally taught presents itself as extra ceremony &/or overhead. Something people should resist. I'll be posting more on this in the next few days.