Agile Australia 2011 Series - Skunkworks budget

This is a teaser topic to tell you that some things will be easier if you get some budgetary discretion. You can then try some neat agile stuff like tackling some technical debt, training some of your allies in Agile or sending them on courses or to conferences. You might find your skunks budget is in fact your training budget. Perhaps your IT team work on a utilisation rate that means that you have some discretion to work on personal interest projects or self development; can you harness it with some like minded folk who want to try agile?

If you have formed your agile interest group, can you gather them together for some extra-curricular work and try some new practices, TDD or continuous integration for example?

You could shell out and start agile on your own home grown project by investing $25.82 on system cards, sharpie permanent markers and Blu Tack. Who in your department will wander over to your card wall and start asking questions about what you are trying?

In my experience workers taking initiative to try something new and innovative for their company will be encouraged for their efforts, particularly if you’ve ‘skunked’ the money out of nowhere and can demonstrate some value in return.

If you feel frustrated that you want to try some new things for your Agile Transformation but you have no cash at all, use that frustration to ask yourself, how can I find some budget to do this that will make it a no-brainer for my boss to agree to it?