Changing Software Development: Learning to Become Agile

8.7. Models, Models, Models

We could go on listing further models of change: if you would like to know more, there are plenty of books on change that can give you an overview of more models. Then there are countless journal and magazine articles on change. Magazines such as the Harvard Business Review regularly carry studies of organization change and authors proposing new models to understand change.

In Chapter 7 we looked at a simple grid (Figure 7.4) that categorized change as incremental or radical, and internal or external. The models that we have looked at above can be mapped on to this – as shown in Figure 8.5.

Appreciative Inquiry fits best in the incremental/internal quadrant, but could find application elsewhere. It may be used to radically redesign an organization or combat an external threat. Used regularly, it represents a form of continuous improvement, by helping an organization to appreciate what it does well and use this as a force for change.

One quadrant, incremental change from external forces, lacks a model. Yet this might be the most common form of change: no matter how stable our internal environment, things are always changing outside. There's no model because this quadrant represents no control. Change is happening, but there's no coordinated response. Eventually, something will change to move us to one of the other quadrants.

Figure 8.5. Which change model?

The forces outside the company may become felt within the company. People inside will start ...