Notes:
One successful project doesn't change an organisation and this was no exception. Progress slowed down for two reasons.
The first reason is one likely to be common to other organisations: it wasn't clear to management (or developers) what had contributed to the success of the project. This led to a lack of support for some of the changes because they require effort for which the payoff is delayed.
Another factor that reduced buy-in to the new methods was that credibility was reduced because the pilot project wasn't typical in a number of ways. Two of these were in the size of the project (in terms of functionality, timescale and cost it was small) and in term of the scope (it wasn't a “greenfield” project – it was replacing an existing system).
These problems would have been easier to manage if our efforts hadn't been diluted by the second thing thing. Management!
Last year departmental management enabled us to proceed without interference. However, the problems of the software development group finally became apparent to management outside the group itself. And seeing a problem they decided that they set about introducing their own, conflicting, solution.