I’ve been thinking about the problems of applying XP to whole organizations. Turns out this is ground thoroughly covered by the lean production folks.
Here is a paper I found helpful: www.nwlean.net/no_harm.zip The premise is that every step of the transformation must pay for itself.
Getting people to understand that their problems are tractable can be hard, I’ve found. Rob Mee was talking to a guy about TDD on a gig of ours recently. "Sure, yeah, TDD is a great idea." "Why don’t you do it?" "It’ll make us go slower." "But it makes you go faster." "Yes, of course, but it’ll make us go slower." "But it’ll make you go faster" *iterate N times for annoying large N* "Okay, it makes people go faster everywhere but here."