Building Bridges—How Cross-Department Champions Drive Agile Adoption| Simina Fodor

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches
Episode: Building Bridges—How Cross-Department Champions Drive Agile Adoption
Guest: Simina Fodor
Release Date: May 14, 2025

---

Introduction

In this episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte welcomes Simina Fodor to delve into the intricate process of driving Agile adoption within a traditional corporate environment. The conversation centers around Simina's firsthand experience in leading an Agile transformation, emphasizing the importance of patience, collaboration, and strategic advocacy.

---

The Journey to Becoming a Scrum Master

Simina begins by recounting her transition into the Scrum Master role, highlighting an Agile transformation that profoundly impacted her career.

Simina Fodor [01:41]:
“One of the most important changes in my career was the Agile transformation I was part of, both the unofficial and the official transformation.”

She describes the initial resistance within the organization, which was predominantly accustomed to traditional project management methodologies.

Simina Fodor [01:49]:
“The organization wasn't that familiar or keen in terms of changing its ways and moving on to Agile.”

---

Starting Small and Building Support

Simina emphasizes the strategy of initiating change through small, manageable steps, aligning with Scrum principles of inspection and adaptation.

Simina Fodor [02:10]:
“I started small with talking to everyone that would listen about Scrum, talking to higher-ups, trying to spark interest in them.”

Her approach involved sharing success stories and use cases from various organizations, gradually fostering an environment receptive to Agile practices.

Simina Fodor [02:35]:
“I was doing knowledge sharing type of sessions where I would walk through different use cases from other companies that have had success in terms of implementations.”

This persistent effort over several years laid the groundwork for official discussions about Scrum and Agile frameworks within the organization.

---

The Role of Champions and Leadership

Host Vasco Duarte introduces the concept of focusing on change champions—individuals already supportive of the transformation efforts—to act as multipliers within the organization.

Vasco Duarte [05:11]:
“If we focus on the people who are already supporting the change, we have the opportunity to have a much bigger impact because they become what I would call multipliers.”

Simina concurs, elaborating on the significance of leadership support and networking in sustaining the transformation momentum.

Simina Fodor [07:07]:
“Having those change agents that you mentioned is crucial because if you have one person willing to support an idea in a higher position, it definitely helps.”

---

Identifying Readiness for Change

The conversation shifts to recognizing the right moment to push for Agile adoption. Simina identifies subtle indicators of organizational readiness, such as leadership's willingness to explore more efficient methodologies and the need for quicker product-market fit responses.

Simina Fodor [07:45]:
“Leadership was really important in this scenario, and networking of course is important as well.”

She highlights the importance of aligning Agile benefits with organizational goals to garner broader support.

Simina Fodor [09:24]:
“People need to see the potential impact of that change. Like what's in it for me? Because everyone is willing to do things if they gain something from it.”

---

The Importance of Impact in Driving Change

Simina underscores that demonstrating tangible benefits is essential for securing buy-in from all organizational levels. Without clear advantages, resistance to change is likely to persist.

Simina Fodor [09:50]:
“Unless you're willing to bring something new to the table or some improvements, people need to see the benefit of that.”

This perspective reinforces the notion that successful Agile adoption hinges on showcasing its value in enhancing productivity, metrics, and overall organizational performance.

---

Key Takeaways

1. Start Small: Initiate Agile transformations through manageable steps, aligning with Scrum's inspection and adaptation principles.
2. Build a Coalition of Champions: Focus on empowering and collaborating with individuals who are already supportive of the change to act as multipliers.
3. Leverage Leadership Support: Having allies in leadership positions can significantly facilitate the adoption process.
4. Demonstrate Clear Benefits: Clearly articulate the advantages of Agile practices to garner widespread organizational support.
5. Exercise Patience: Recognize that large-scale transformations take time and persistence, especially within established corporate settings.

---

Conclusion

Simina Fodor's insights offer a pragmatic roadmap for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches aiming to drive change within their organizations. By emphasizing the importance of starting small, building supportive alliances, and clearly demonstrating the benefits of Agile practices, leaders can effectively navigate the complexities of organizational transformation.

Simina Fodor [09:57]:
“People need to see the benefit of that. Otherwise, they're just going to say, no, we're not championing the idea altogether.”

This episode serves as an invaluable resource for those seeking to understand the nuanced dynamics of Agile adoption, providing actionable strategies grounded in real-world experience.

Transcript

[Fran]

Have you ever wondered what it really takes to make Agile work well? At the Global Agile Summit, we're bringing you real life first person stories of Agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action. Whether you're a leader, a product innovator, a developer, you. You'll hear practical insights from those who've done it. They'll be telling their own stories from the stage. I'll tell you more about this at the end of this episode, so stay back and listen to the full detailed description of what we have in store for you at the Global Agile Summit. But if you can't wait, you can go right now to globalagilesummit.com and check out our full schedule for now onto the episode. But I'll see you at the end of this episode with more details on the Global Agile Summit. Talk to you soon. Hello everybody. Welcome to our Wednesday the Leading Change.

[Host]

Episode this week with Simina Fodor. Hey Simina, welcome back.

[Simina Fodor]

Glad to be here, everyone.

[Host]

So Wednesday is change day here on the podcast. So we want to explore a change process that you were involved with and walk us through all of the steps, kind of tell us the story of how that process got started, what were the things, the techniques, the approaches you used during that process, and help us understand the lessons you took from that change process that you still apply today.

[Simina Fodor]

Sure. Well, I'm going to go back a little bit to the story from Monday how I actually became a Scrum Master, and I'm going to expand a little bit on that. So one of the changes that stuck with me, and still to this date is one of the most important, important changes in my career, was the Agile transformation that I was part of, both the unofficial and the official transformation. I was part of an organization, a corporate type of setting, and at that point in time, while I did have an official project manager role, the organization wasn't that familiar or that keen in terms of changing its ways and moving on to Agile. So, so what was my impact and my actual involvement with this is I started small. Just as one of the principles of SCRUM is basically to inspect and adapt, I did just the very thing that I was trying to promote. So I started small with talking to everyone that would listen about Scrum, talking to people like higher ups, trying to spark interest in them, trying to present them the benefits, trying to present use cases from other organizations, from other companies, not only from the city that I was living at that point in time, but also from the country and from Europe as well. And I was doing everything that I could to internally promote the change. It took several years until we actually got to officially talk about Scrum and about Agile and the different frameworks that we had out there. But by starting small and slowly building on top of that, I learned that it was the key to success. So I wasn't being pushy. I didn't have an hidden agenda trying to relate to, I don't know, a certain part of a certain member of the leadership team. Rather, I was trying to build bridges. So I was talking to people from different departments that I knew had had the say in terms of how we were doing things in the company. I was doing knowledge sharing type of sessions where I would be walking through different use cases from other companies that have had success in terms of implementations. And that actually led me to the point where when conversations started from an official standpoint, I was the go to person because I was already familiar within the organization. I was that one person that always talks about Scrum and always talks about benefits that I was asked to unofficially go through an exercise. We had a team that started with a daily standup. They did their task board in Excel, not the most friendliest tool that you could think of, but it served as a proof of concept that we could implement this or a more broader level on the organization level. We took some of the learnings that we had from that experience with the equivalent of a retrospective, took some of the learnings and we tried to come up with a program that eventually got implemented. It was that part of my transition as well. Transitioning from the traditional project manager role to the Scrum master role. That also impacted me in terms of my career path and overall my career. And the key takeaway from this is, of course, patience. Things don't change overnight when you're talking about big organizations. You have to have patience, you have to have champions, people that do believe in your ideas and that do support you when it comes to corporate type of settings.

[Host]

One thing that is maybe even a little bit counterintuitive with the champions is that very often in change, we try to focus on helping the people who resist the most to change. Right? Like we kind of try to, I think we could call it push the change, but instead if we shift our focus and if we focus on the people who are already pooling the change, we have the opportunity to have a much bigger impact because they become what I would call multipliers, right? These are people who want the change and they just want support to be able to do, even if it's just in their little corner. Like when you started, right, you were one of those people that wanted the change and because of that you were creating that energy, that direction, that impetus that ultimately also, you know, affected others. And they decided, okay, yeah, this is the right direction. And then they came to you, right, and they asked you help in that process. And I think that that's also an important aspect, especially for change agents in organizations. It's really important to focus on those that are already ready and want to be helped because they will act as a multiplier, they will bring change to others without us having to do the pushing in terms of getting change into the organization.

[Simina Fodor]

Definitely couldn't agree more.

[Host]

And when you think about this story, when you reflect on what were the, let's say, the key moments. So you talked about, at some point the organization was ready to start moving into Agile. And I imagine it wasn't only you who was talking about agile in the organization. I mean, you haven't shared, but I imagine it wasn't only you. How did you identify that point? That point when you felt, okay, the organization now is ready?

[Simina Fodor]

There were little signs, so to say. So I wasn't by myself. You were right. We definitely, we kind of came together like a community of practice type of organization. So I basically convinced other people to champion the move with me in different parts of the organization, in different departments. And the little steps or the little signs that I'm mentioning about are so in terms of willingness from the leadership team, the fact that they were starting to discuss about other ways we could be doing things more efficiently, and it was especially about product market fit and the fact that we needed to respond much quicker than you would in a normal waterfall approach. Because if you think about traditional project delivery type of approach, you, you develop things, you test them, but until you actually have a release, there may be months, even years from for bigger organizations. So that's how I saw the little things and the little signs in terms of timelines and changes and things like that. But leadership was really important in this scenario and having those change agents that you mentioned, because if you have one person that's willing to support an idea and they're in a higher position, like either a change management board or some sort of a member in the leadership team, it definitely helps. And networking of course is important as well.

[Host]

Yeah, and networking, of course. But it's really important to realize that our goal or our not necessarily the goal, but kind of the way we affect change within organizations is really to find different allies and create that alliance or coalition of people who want to bring change. And some of those people need to be in positions that can affect the decision making process. Right. They don't necessarily need to be the ones pushing it, but if they are not on board, if they are not wanting that change, then it's going to be very hard for us to get that whatever change that needs to happen higher in the priority list. Because there's always a lot of stuff that is competing for attention and priorities in organizations today.

[Simina Fodor]

Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why it's really important to discuss about impact. So the fact that we're doing a certain change, people need to see the potential impact of that change. Like what's in it for me? Because everyone is willing to do things if they gain something from it. So it's the same with any change in any organization. Unless you're willing to bring something new to the table or some improvements, whether that's in terms of productivity, numbers, metrics, revenue, anything, no matter what it is, people need to see the benefit of that. Otherwise they're just going to say, no, we're not champion the idea altogether.

[Host]

Absolutely.

[Fran]

But that was a great story.

[Host]

Thank you for sharing that, Simina.

[Simina Fodor]

My pleasure.

[Fran]

Hey Fran, thank you for staying here is all you need to know about the Global Agile Summit. If you've ever suffered or know people who are suffering from agile fatigue, this event is for you. Agile fatigue is that feeling that settles in when we can't really see a light at the end of the tunnel. We get discouraged. Especially when conversations revolve around the same old frameworks, the same old buzzwords and theories. We don't feel that energy anymore. Well, the Global Agile Summit is a different kind of event. We're bringing you real life first person stories of Agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action and transform the way you work. The Global Agile Summit will happen In Tallinn, Estonia, May 18th. That's the workshop day. Then 19th and 20th, the conference day. And Tallinn, Estonia is one of the most innovative tech hubs in Europe. The Global Agile Summit is hosted together with Latitude 59, which is kind of a citywide celebration of software startups and groundbreaking ideas. And we'll have a shared ticket for you to attend those events as well. So who will be speaking? Well, we've got an incredible lineup of thought leaders in software and agile. For example, Clinton Keith, the person who wrote, literally wrote, the book on game development with Scrum and is busy bringing Agile to the world of game development. You must check his session. The very famous and well known Jurgen Apello, author of Management 3.0, will be talking and exploring about AI's impact on leadership. We also have Goiko Adsic, who's taking an unconventional look at product growth with his Lizard Optimization keynote. Other speakers include, e.g. sig Sven Dietz, who's challenging everything we know about software development by ditching, literally ditching contracts and estimates. Can you imagine his teams deliver software before their competitors are are even done with a contract negotiation? How agile is that? But there's more. We'll cover engineering practices in our developer track with talks on for example AI assisted test driven development, developing products in minutes with a different approach to how we develop, configure, deploy platforms and much more. We also have a product track where we cover cutting edge ideas around product discovery, delighting customers with product delight frameworks. We'll have a talk about that. And we also have an Agile Business track where we will talk about, for example Open strategy, a very agile approach to managing organizations and delivering software faster to clients faster than you can even write a contract.

[Host]

Literally.

[Fran]

I mean, I already told you about Svendeet's story is amazing. It definitely is a must see. I'm sure you'll be inspired and get a lot of ideas for your own software projects and software delivery. Now, whether you're a business leader, a product innovator or a developer, you'll definitely find value in our three focused tracks. That's Agile Business for those working with businesses and organizations, Agile Product for product managers, product owners and innovators and Agile Developer for the builders making Agile work in practice. The coders, the testers, the designers, the producers, the Scrum masters, you name it. If you join, you will meet over 200 agile professionals from all over the world. People who just like you, want to grow, want to share and want to learn by challenging the ideas that don't work anymore. At the Global Agile Summit, you'll get new connections, fresh ideas and the energy to take your own Agile to the next level. And who knows, maybe even find your next career opportunity. So don't miss out. Check out the free full program and grab your ticket [e-mail] I'm really looking forward to seeing you all in Tallinn, Estonia in May.

[Host]

I'll see you there.