How to Transform

In Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Gene Kim, and Jez Humble describe how to measure software delivery performance and the capabilities that impact it. This supplemental chapter briefly describes how to help your organization begin adopting the ideas from Accelerate and the common obstacles to growing a culture of continuous improvement.

Every organization is constantly undergoing change. The questions are: What is the direction of that change, and what are the system-level outcomes? Is our organization better able to discover and serve its customers, and thus achieve its purpose? Does the organization’s business model and management of its people provide for long-term sustainability? When it seems as if things are not going to plan, it’s common for leaders to roll out a transformation program. However, such programs often fail to achieve their goals, sucking up large quantities of resources and organizational capacity.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss common failure modes of such transformation programs and how to execute a successful one.