I was surprised that Arin Sime’s talk on getting traditional clients to work in an Agile manner didn’t absolutely pack the room. A client doesn’t have to be external; it could be internal as well. But maybe most people who were at Agile 2009 were already in teams that had made the jump from traditional processes.

</param></param></param></embed>

The talk itself was really well done. It shows that he has done variations of the talk already and included a slick hand-out which had all his main points on it. (And a list of this company’s upcoming speaking gigs which actually added to the layout.) I also really liked that he based his content on the results of a survey he conducted, not just on hunches and his own experience which added a layer of credibility.

The meat of his talk was 12 strategies for to use to convince organizations to adopt Agile on projects you are bidding for.

  1. Trial by Sprint
  2. Case Studies of Success
  3. Client/Customer Testimonials
  4. Find a champion in Key Stakeholders
  5. Use metrics of success
  6. Show how Agile combats common IT project failures
  7. Examples of industry/government leaders using Agile
  8. Compare to other methodologies
  9. Listen to their needs and address them
  10. Sneak it in
  11. Compromise
  12. Agile Project Management Office