- These teams/units are typically less enthusiastic about the change - pilots are typically "cherry-picked" and are often the most capable and enthusiastic of the change while the rest of the organization is not
- Larger and more legacy systems/teams bring about different challenges the pilots did not face
- Limited capacity and budget within the organization to support the larger scale adoption resulting in less time spent with the team/units
- Executive deadline for the transformation looms closer, typically organizations are looking for organization wide results within a year or two
As an alternative to the piloting approach is a Kanban change management approach to transformations. The great thing about Kanban is that it allows an organization going through a transformation to adjust the pace of change from fast to slow depending on the tolerance of change within the organization. The only requirement is to ask each team/unit to follow a subset of the Kanban properties:
- Visualize what you do today
- Limit the amount of work in progress
- Improve flow
The J-Curve is the amount of disruption/pain an organization goes through when change happens. If you are starting/going through a Lean/Agile Transformation today, this approach is worth considering if you are facing a few of the challenges I discussed.
I'll blog more about the specifics for how we are applying the Kanban change approach in a current large-scale transformation in a later blog post.