Gaining stakeholder support

Agile and Lean practices require more frequent and closer interactions across the business functions, and the participants must have a stake in the success of a new product or product enhancement. In the traditional software development model, management and customer interactions were limited to initial requirements gathering activities and then minimally across periodic milestone reviews, phase gates, and late-stage user acceptance testing. Lean-Agile methodologies are much more demanding.

Agility benefits come directly from the frequent and continuous team and stakeholder interactions, with complete, accurate, and up-to-date visibility on all critical information. But how do the early adopters encourage others within the organization and their customers to consider such a change?

The early adopters may have some success in educating their executives on the benefits of Agile and Lean-Agile practices. However, based on personal observations and experience...