Recently I was interested in a user group question about what is the actual cost of implementing Agile within an organization. I believe that using the term “cost” when it comes to Agile implementations may not be the right term and I would rather prefer “ROI”. However following is my take on what is the cost in implementing Agile within an organization.

From what I seen in Agile implementations I have been involved in and coached, the cost is mainly going to be in the buy in from all to adopt to Agile. What I have seen is moving an organization to be Agile is a cultural change rather then just doing Agile (which is some teams doing something like scrum or XP or kanban etc…).

The idea is as a whole, the organization becomes agile by having constant improving itself from the way they interact with clients to the development and everything in between. On paper everyone will say ‘YES’ let’s go agile, but when things get tough, people will always try to find some way of breaking the process. So their has to be commitment from all areas. This can not be commanded, it has to be accepted and adopted.

So simply we need to ask our self and our management, are we willing to really get in to being agile, then the cost comes down to ROI. That is the whole investment including

• Learning curve (investment of teaching employees about Agile and agile framework of choice)
• Slowdown in progress initially (impacts business and clients)
• Getting customer buy in
• Investment on tools (getting the right tools for the right tasks)
• Investment on coaching (getting a coach if needed)
• Monitoring and Improving every step of the way (there is an investment for making sure Agile sticks when the going get’s tough as well)

Note that Agile does not bring ROI immediately. It will be a slow progressing journey, which at the end will bring very high returns.