Agile and Beyond 2017

“My Agile is better than your Agile.” It seems like every day, I witness a Twitter war between two thought leaders criticizing one another’s framework. Ironically, these frameworks are simply a set of practices that apply the same set of values and principles. Don’t get me wrong, I am not minimizing the value of a framework. Many of them have been created by some of the great thought leaders of our time. They have provided us with a wealth of tried and true practices, all of which reside in my Agile coaching toolbox.

The truth is frameworks and practices are simply a means to an end, better business outcomes. CEOs are not interested in Scrum, SAFe, or Kanban, but rather customer satisfaction, time to market, reliability, and innovation, to only name a few. As practitioners, I included, we tend to get hung up on the framework, allowing it to drive outcomes. Instead, we should be applying an experimental approach in which we enable the desired outcome to drive the practices we adopt.

Over the past few years, books like The Lean Startup (Ries), Lean Change Management (Little), and The Lean Enterprise (Owens/Fernandez), have influenced me to take this somewhat backwards view to Agile transformation and organizational change. I have had my share of successes and failures as a change agent, but I am finding more success with this approach, and it just feels right. The purpose of this presentation is to help others see change initiatives through the same lens.

As Agilists, we need to be adaptive and maintain an open mind. Organizations are complex adaptive systems, each unique with its own set of challenges, values, and objectives. There is certainly not a one size fits all approach for organization Agile adoption. To add to the complexity, every Agile team within the system is different in its own sense, each having slightly different goals.

Given the enormous complexity, where do we start? The answer is not Scrum, but rather outcomes.

Learning Objectives for Attendees:

1. Agile is a mindset, based off of 4 values, defined by 12 principles, manifested through unlimited amount of practices, that enable business outcomes
2. There are number of different frameworks offered by the Agile community, not just Scrum
3. Review the a high level business outcome(s) that each framework is tailored to such as customer satisfaction, time to market, employee satisfaction, reliability, flow, adaptability, and predictability
4. Share a “practice catalog” that I have built over the years that consists of practices across multiple frameworks and which outcomes they contribute to
5. Given the uniqueness of each organization, framework practices should be continuously experimented with within the team and the organization until the right blend is found to meet their desired outcomes.

After being educated on the high level business outcome that each framework is tailored to help achieve, the presentation will include an exercise in which the participants will be tasked with building an organization team structure given a set of unique objectives and business outcomes.