Have you ever tried to stop coffee and found it hard to or invested in some lifestyle goals but struggled to keep up after a couple of weeks?

It typically goes like this: 

The first couple of days go smoothly then you take just one cup, just one piece of cake and before you know it, you found yourself right back where you started.

Sounds familiar? 

We go through similar situations when we make attempts to transition from an old approach to delivering value to a new version. 

We saw a need for a new way of working, we long for the benefits, took the leap and said, “you know what? We are going Agile.”  We all shook hands and cheered to the beginning of something amazing. 

However, after a year, we seem to be right where we started; we seemed to be moving in circles and we say, “maybe Agile is not for us.”

Maybe.

Agile is not for everybody but if you are trying to compete globally and meet fast changing market demands, Agile is your best bet and it’s frameworks have been proven to work to create adaptive solutions to complex problems.

Change is tougher than we think it is.  

Old habits die hard so how do you cope with the withdrawal symptoms that come with moving to Agile?

Here are 5 ways to ease off the withdrawal symptoms that accompanies Agile Transformation from Waterfall:

1. It is a Journey: Understand that Agile transformation is a journey and it is never a smooth one but as long as we stick with each other, we will get better while we reap the benefits incrementally. 
2. Mirror not a Bullet: Whatever Agile Framework you and your teams embrace is not a quick fix to whatever problems you are trying to solve, they are simply mirrors that helps you see rooms for improvement and the onus is on the teams and organizations to make necessary adjustments for continuous improvement.
3. Reflect and be kind to yourself: Forgive yourself when you slip or make mistakes, the goal is not to avoid mistakes but making better ones.
4. Create Agile maturity models: Growth and change are in stages and the concept of agile is in incremental delivery, we can apply this to the way we make transitions. Set goals for the organization and teams and measure your progress and you go. An example is the crawl walk and run model
5. People trumps Processes all the time.

Thanks for reading, keep crating work that matters.