Changing Software Development: Learning to Become Agile

11.4. Outsiders

Sometimes, it's useful to bring in outsiders to help. Outsiders, whether trainers, consultants, facilitators or others, can't replace your own learning, but they can be very effective at helping seed learning and speeding things up. There's a long history of consultants introducing change – from the time-and-motion men who typified scientific management to the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) consultants.

Using consultants to bring about change in your organization is one model for creating change, but it's very different to the one considered in this book. This book focuses on how you can bring about learning and change within your own organization. Using consultants is different because consultants are by their very nature temporary. One day they won't be there, and you'll need to continue learning and changing without them.

Consultants aren't the only outsiders who can help your organization learn and there are a variety of reasons why you might want to make use of outsiders to help. This section considers some of the ways in which outsiders can help with learning and change.

In a large organization, the outsiders may actually work for the same organization. They may be dedicated internal consultants or they may be people from a different department. Small organizations may choose to build up a network of regular consultants, trainers and facilitators to create consistency. This approach will also benefit the outsiders, who will better understand the organization ...