How to Start Out With Agile
If so — how would you recommend starting out?
A: The basic idea to gradually implementing agile is not to gradually implement practices, but rather to gradually expand the definition of done. Agile practices are a consequence of expanding the definition of done. For example, a team will start out building "demoable" software every cycle. Eventually, that software will be of a quality that it is "potentially shippable" every cycle. And if the team and the organization continue to use an agile approach, eventually the software will actually be shipped/deployed at the end of every cycle. This can take a long time - years in some cases! Check out my Perfecting Agile blog post.
It is also possible to selectively choose various agile practices. There are a very basic core set of practices that must be used to call your work environment "agile" (and admittedly not everyone agrees on this core set). I have started a spreadsheet to allow teams and organizations to organize how they use agile - it is a comprehensive list of agile practices.
So, the basic way to start out is on a single team which uses the agile skeleton: doing work and demoing it regularly to stakeholders. Simple!
