PUMA - Entreprise Agiletechnologies or methods, twenty years are necessary for their maturity and their acceptance. As early as 1999, in Organization Modeling, it was demonstrated

Agile Tactic & Strategic Architecture

PUMA

Architect of a generation

of high-performance enterprises

Jean-Pierre Vickoff

Teamlog


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Jean-Pierre Vickoff, Teamlog www.Entreprise-Agile.com 2

Agile tactic & strategic architecture

Just like the Taylorism of the Industrial Revolution, Agility is proving itself to be the organizational theory of the immediate future. Its emergence comes from the largest movement of deregulated exchanges ever initiated: globalization.

The first companies to ensure operational mastery of the Agile paradigm globally throughout the organization will win the information systems battle, and, at the same time, the economic war.

Agility, dynamic of a changing world

The emergence of a globalized and digitized economy positions the temporal dimension of performance as the determining vector in an extreme search for strategic differentiation.

We live in a violent world. Violent as the war that our societies wage on the commercial level. This violence, which seems new to us, corresponds to a worldwide recalibration between the poorest and the richest countries. In this great shifting of sands, industrialized countries have a lot to lose. The only question is to know up to what point, how, and in how much time.

The Agile movement emerged at the end of the 80s and naturally led from the need to respond to these relations in conflict. This historical reference is not insignificant. In fact, according to the Gartner Group’s model of appropriation of emerging technologies or methods, twenty years are necessary for their maturity and their acceptance.

As early as 1999, in Organization Modeling, it was demonstrated that the characteristics of an organization such as Agility, quality, and performance of execution come from patterns and alignments between different organizational domains represented by the IS, the processes, as well as the quality and motivation of the human resources. The search for mastery of these characteristics represents the departure point for the trend of “organizational modeling.”

For directors, increasing reactivity imposes itself because, as Microsoft points out, “Agile enterprises are ahead in terms of vision and organization.”

The concerns of the 2000 and 2010 decades focus on complexity and on method. The Agile movement asserts itself.

Human capital is the determining element of the Agility of data processing (49%), almost twice as important as the processes and the systems. Competencies, attitude and state of mind would thus be the most important factors in Agility. This information and these figures show it: beyond the quality of the expression of


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requirements and control of projects, what is most essential in the use of an incremental iterative method based on the user, is the dynamism which it brings to the organization, parallel to the acceptance of the change that it supports.

At the same time, Gartner proposes us a model of evolution of our systems where the time allocated to enterprises to put into place a response to change is reduced drastically (Figure 1). It appears as a Vortex of Reactivity perfectly expressing the Agile constraints of the RTE (Real Time Enterprise).

Figure 1. — Vortex of reactivity by Gartner

Organizational Agility is a change to the collaborative paradigm, a change to management style, a mode of survival of organizations. Its emergence is as inescapable and as poorly understood as climate change or the growing scarcity of fossil fuels.

Therefore, the new "learning" or "progressive" company lives at the rhythm of its projects and the confrontation that is imposed on it; the energy resulting from this dynamic ensures its predominance (Figure 2).

The forerunners understood it - all the determining parameters of a major change are aligned to announce the arrival of strategic differentiation and a time of great organizational and technological ambitions. "To anticipate, propose, win in comparison, induce desire, inspire confidence, deliver, and satisfy" are the key words. "Technological surveillance, benchmarking, CTI, CRM, ERM and other supports of the widened economy" are the technical answers. Projects become multi-domain, multi-responsibility and multi-competence. IT workers and organizers will soon live in a wonderful epoch if they equip themselves with a small amount of methodology to control the dangers they face.

A principal part of the response is the Agile way of thinking which, responding to the needs of the opening of the world, is not concerned about the past and what currently exists, because it aims at the immediate future. It has as its vision and its target the ideal solution that it imagines by anticipating the state of the art. But obviously nothing could be so simple. It is thus necessary to take into account some constraints and some further elements, such as know-how and the engagement of men. Because, like the devil in the Divine Comedy says, "all is in the details".


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Figure 2. — Rhythm of a “learning organization

Agility and Flexibility (Lean)

The search for optimization and flexibility has become a major concern for all sectors whether they are industrial, commercial or even service. Therefore, certain top companies try to approach Agility in a similar way in their objectives and in some aspects but use a very different approach in their concrete relationships to human resources: flexibility or Lean. The differences relate just as well to the real motivations as to the very nature of the engagement.

In the first place, Lean is a vision of management resting on a culture of collective intelligence applied to a search for centered continuous improvement mainly to the quality of service offered to the customer. In the second place, Lean is concerned with the value brought to the shareholders and to the interest of the work offered to the employees. These last two points are not secondary in themselves, but they necessarily arise from the impact of the first.

In practice, the principles of Lean include giving responsibility to human resources to promote their potential in order to improve the quality of their work and their productivity. On this point, at its root, Lean is in perfect agreement with the Agile movement for which the development of personnel represents the primary key to the appropriation of all forms of improvement

The most elaborate operational form of the Lean concept is the TPS (Thinking Production System) of Toyota. In reaction to the limits of Taylorism, TPS brings in concepts of reactivity thanks to taut flows of Kanban and the quality of production. At the base of this performance is a multiskilled workforce carrying out varied tasks and is thus more motivated.

Adaptable to all economic sectors, Lean was initially established in the automobile industry. Since then, taking into account the success that is due to it, Lean finds more and more applications in other sectors (aeronautics, textile, supermarkets, etc).


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According to the detractors of TPS, the most harmful point is the internalization of the production targets, which comes from the acceptance of more intensive collective work. A trade unionist gives this vision of it: “teamwork has nothing to do with more pleasant work carried out in solidarity all together. It’s a system of exploitation, where the employers' requirements of increased productivity and intensity are internalized by the group.”

Lean, and Agility, are not just simple techniques of improvement but total management methods. Their objective is to maintain organizations under creative tension to always generate more value by eliminating waste. According to the experiences of those who have applied them successfully, these approaches are as much about attitude as about know-how and are based on discipline, which can only be obtained by practice and persistence.

Agility and flexibility are concepts that could appear close in theory. However, these two approaches present notable differences in the reality of their implementations as much on a philosophical level as on that of the underlying human relations, and on the level of the real implementation practices.

If Lean is often associated with flexibility in industrial production, it is not the same for Agility, which naturally emerged from a search for improvements in application development directly resulting from the collective intelligence of the teams that practiced it.

The Agile movement would certainly not appreciate the amalgam of its values associated with the constraints imposed by the industrial world on the productivity of its employees. Even if it appears that in these two approaches the teams organize themselves with the aim of achieving their goals, the Agile teams have the privilege of determining their output themselves.

In any event, there is not much to be compared between the mass productivity of manufacturing and the relatively craftsmanship-style industry of an IT development. All the more so as in this last case, Agility often applies to the determination of a variable level of quality according to the stakes of the application and the risks of the project. This difference must be analyzed in a concrete vision of reality, because the universality theorists will not hesitate to show the opposite.

These thoughts are not a total rejection of the practices of Lean, quite on the contrary, but constitute a simple warning: one should not assume approaches that are simply similar are identical.

Powerful methods of improvement of productivity based on Lean such as the "Toyota Production System" proved reliable but if they do well at taking into account the human aspects of productivity and integrating the impact of new technologies, they are not directly usable in the specific context of application development.

The winning companies of the industrial world applied Lean successfully to controlled industrial processes in various sectors. It still remains difficult to imagine heavy, complex administrative organizations (and often voluntarily complex) deciding to really implement this method.

This statement does not prohibit trying to introduce a little Agility on the managerial level and some good collaborative practices at the operational level, because one should not fight the culture of this type of organization, but use is as a lever for change and make it evolve progressively. In this way, change is no longer feared, but on the contrary accepted as a component of daily reality.


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The Agile Enterprise

An Enterprise is functionally Agile when its operational components collaborate in formalized synergy to anticipate or capture change in order to compensate for it dynamically, then to integrate it.

Agility, a paradigm for a new vision of an organization, asserts itself as an alignment and coherence tool between internal forces and external challenges that give dynamism to an enterprise. In practice, Agility takes form as a “services” orientation and its principles are the inseparable conjunction of three vectors:

� the rational motivation of human resources,

� continuously configured processes,

� the intensive use of new technologies.

Figure 3. — Dynamic of Agility

Agility asserts itself therefore as the dynamic of a reactive organization that is always learning. Hyper-Agility is found at a higher level of projection. Achieving it requires an operational form of pro-activity. It is put into place via the rational anticipation of an immediate future in which the interest of emerging evolutions is evaluated in the form of a balance between catalysts and inhibitors (see the detail within this document). PUMA’s ambition is also to provide a tool for this search.

Collective intelligence and complexity of detail

Today’s organizational systems, following the example of daily life, are complex, sometimes voluntarily so, and insidiously complicated. Instead of simplifying them immediately, which would not even lead to a Utopia, it is necessary to use the power of collective intelligence in order to control them.

Continuous process optimization projects are, in this sense, powerful means to obtain competitive advantages at the best price. The principle gets its force from the


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practical knowledge of the employees at the base of the “pyramid,” whose voluntary participation in a systematic search for improvement is solicited.

Deployed well, this technique optimizes all the sectors of the enterprise. In this search for productivity, when the rules of continuous optimization are truly and completely implemented, the organization has an exceptional tool for the resolution of "complexity of detail."

The detection and the resolution of problems can then be applied to a multitude of minor dysfunctions, which generally escape the notice of the higher levels, taking into account their low visibility.

For this reason, in an Agile organization, coordination respects a form of democracy where knowledge is complementary and active knowledge-sharing is part of the search for collective performance. In a flat hierarchy, authority appears to be erased, whereas, in actual fact, this management structure imposes its rigor naturally and reduces the amount of energy engaged.

Agile structures for a moving future

In the attempt to simplify our complex societies, it is necessary to keep ourselves from falling into the trap of easy and reductionary comparisons. However, if it was necessary to take as an example a sector of activity where incessant change reaches its height, it would be without contest the IT sector that would be the most pertinent choice. The observation of the fabrication of the components of our computers and then their assembly allows us to understand concretely the importance of Agility and industrialization when these two aspects must find a simultaneous application.

As a teaching exercise, all managers should put together their own computers after having bought the parts. This operation would permit them to naturally project themselves into the mindset that an Agile company director should have. Or at least give him the tactical vision at the level of standardization that his own production of goods and services should offer to be able to be qualified as Agile.

The important thing in this metaphor remains the concept of reliable and standard elements making it possible to really ensure in the end the assembly of a computer that could be very much personalized, as long as the requirements started out with a concern for differentiation. This example plunged us to the heart of high-tech/high-touch. Whether that relates to goods or services, the metaphor of the computer can indeed apply to any type of operational unit. It represents a tactical vision of operational excellence.

Vectors of Enterprise Dynamics

A well performing Company is "service oriented". The source of its actions is in alignment with the requirements of its customers. Its means are the performance and the quality of its processes. As for the concept of agility, it sticks to a set of values optimizing the implementation of the components of this goal.

In order to be Agile, the company must continuously control the dynamics of the evolution of its business process, human resources and information system. At this level, agility requires a projection into the future which must be instrumented via formal techniques, such as rational anticipation. This practice makes it possible to anticipate the dimension of emerging technological or functional developments and their foreseeable impacts on the components of the organization.


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To understand the architecture of the company on the basis of formal modeling is an essential precondition to any form of action in the process field. On the other hand, it should be obvious that it is useless to seek the key of evolution in an approach centered on the structure of the IS. The answer is not in the structure but in the dynamics of the process.

More precisely in a double dynamics:

� the first, in the present, is an immediate reaction of operational adaptation of the process ;

� the second, in the immediate future, is a rational anticipation of technological and functional developments.

The first concern of the Agile enterprise is to strategically model customer requirements. This formalization includes the state, at present and in the immediate future, of the technological solutions likely to trigger an operational response. The second necessary tool is a modeling of the business process. It makes it possible for the organization to formalize the processes having to support its missions. It is only then that the concept of technical architecture appears which is applied to an information-processing system or to an industrial production system. On this last point, regarding information systems, the two currently dominant technological orientations are: processes instrumentation (BPM) by means of an independent functionalities orchestration engine, as well as the architecture of design and implementation of these functionalities (SOA).

In the world of architectural framework buzzwords reigns the greatest inaccuracy. The absence of global vision in the case of the data processing specialists is certainly the cause. Their proposals are currently limited to technical or applied aspects of an information system. This vision of urbanization that they describe as “Company” disregards the modeling of competencies, motivations and types of collaboration authorized with human resources and neither does it imply an anticipatory model of the environment in evolution.

Action Space and Temporal Aspect

Moreover, even at the level of the IS, the approaches are dramatically static and mono temporal. At same time, for the Company to be Agile, it must operationally combine the tensions created by the differences between a present of constraints, a past of structures and a future of emergences. In a simple and exhaustive answer, the Process for the Urbanization of Agile Methods (PUMA) materializes the action space where these multiple tensions are being expressed, managed and anticipated.

In this approach, the dynamics of company evolution are structured in 6 models (that improve upon the "Gartner Architecture for Real Time Reactive Exchange" reference structure.

The model also includes 9 interactions whose presence confers dynamism and Agility to the ensemble.


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Architecture of an Agile Tactical Unit

Figure 4. — Architecture of an Agile Tactical Unit

A dynamic o f the ensemble

Here is a summary explanation that allows for understanding of the 9 interactions that make the 6 domains dynamic.

The circuit begins at the very heart of the business by the activity of the MA-6 module (Process Operation). The processes can be manual or automated; industrial or administrative. As long as problems do not emerge, the processes are run as they are. The processes are controlled by module MA-3 (Process Monitoring and Continuous Optimization Model). The controls can be manual or automated (BAM).

In the case of an unexpected incident (machine error, software bug, unexpected client request), as a first step, employees immediately have autonomy of action in the resolution of the malfunction (for example: exceptional case processing in order to satisfy the client).

As a second step, the problem is transferred. In the case of a software bug, for example, this would be towards MA-1 (Business Projection, Resources and Supporting Technologies Model) for a corrective maintenance action. In another case, for example a new client request, towards MA-2 (Technical and Functional Anticipation Model) where the possibility that the problem, which for the moment corresponds to an isolated incident, signifies an emerging need, will be studied.

After analysis, the treatment of the signal may consist in a simple action of adaptive maintenance by MA-1 (Business Projection, Resources and Supporting Technologies Model) or a prospective study which will later perhaps lead to the development of new tools or new processes (still by MA-1), then the organization of their deployment by MA-5 (Information Systems and Technological Systems Model) as well as the preparation of human resources for their use by MA-4 (Adaptation of Competencies and Collaboration Types).


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Once these new tools and their operators are operational, they will then be deployed in the module MA-6 (Processes Operation Model). In this way the iteration will be completed.

It is evident that it is the organization of the deployment of this Architecture that gives it its Agility. This means, therefore, that an autonomous and rational engagement of human resources is just as important as the formalization of processes and the capacity of the enterprise to carry out its projects.

It is also the quality of the communication tools that mean interactions can be qualified as Agile.

Ul t ra L ight Governance

The functionalities of the 6 modules and the 9 interactions naturally offer coverage close to the principles of information technology Governance, but expanded to the entire enterprise (excluding financial and security aspects).

This simplified vision suits organizations that do not want to initiate heavy and complex controls while still wanting a clear vision and a reasonable mastery of their processes.

Although norms dictate what an enterprise requires, but not how to obtain it, the “PUMA Ultra Light Governance” action system includes these two aspects.

Thus, PUMA would be a form of Ultra Light Governance, whose simplified vision will be appropriate for organizations that could not, or would not, like to initiate complex and heavy controls while aspiring to reasonable control of their processes.

Architecture of an Agile Strategic Unit

When the first architecture of an Agile company was defined and published on the Agile Alliance site by Jean-Pierre Vickoff, its powerful simplicity classified it at the level of an operational vision of the production of goods or services. To supplement this tactical vision, a strategic vision of Agility should be formalized.

Strategic Agility was then defined as a model for a mission brought about via a differentiating vision. The concrete implementation relies on a group of tactical architecture elements operated within a standard framework of production (UDDI : Universal Directory Discovery and Intégration, SOE : Services Oriented Enterprise).

Starting from the principle of a metaphor as a simple tool for facilitating the understanding of an abstraction, the Agile enterprise architecture proposes to organizations the tools for a true simplifying solution without which optimal performance could not exist.

From the angle of defining the means, if I.T. is the most evolving of current techniques and if service-oriented architecture (SOA, treated in a separate chapter) is the most evolved and Agile end result, why not steer our organizational systems in this direction?


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Figure 5. — Example of the Architecture of an Agile Strategic Unit

The Theory of Agile Quality

Agility is also often confronted with the concept of standards of quality. The comparative definition suggested by PUMA is as follows:

� Traditional quality imposes an obligation and a formalization of means but does not specify exactly for which result.

� Agile quality proposes an obligation for the result but requires autonomy for the means.

At the heart of performance

In industrialized countries, globalization is synonymous with delocalization of production. Industrialists justify these operations by the difference in salary cost from which they profit in developing countries. It is thus by the suppression of hundreds of thousands of jobs each year that industrial desertification is carried out.

The pursuit of performance is the only way open to our companies. At the heart of this challenge is the data-processing tool whose enlightened use must enable us to still resist for some time by increasing our level of productivity and quality. The search for the suitability between offer and requirements will lead us to the ultimate personalization of products that only perfect automation makes possible (high-tech & high-touch).

Globalization is certainly the most recent attempt to elevate towards humanism individuals who are prisoners of their borders and their limits. On the other hand, it is necessary to understand in order to act in order not to become the great losers in this evolution; the movement, after sweeping away borders, will sweep away enterprises, men, and perhaps even nations, if not what we consider civilizations.


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During the industrial revolution, Cartesianism found its mechanical end in the Taylorian vision of an extreme redistribution of production operations. It is not unfair to write that Taylor constrained men to adapt to organizations. In a global, and therefore holistic, vision of a complex world in accelerated evolution, organizations are called to mutate or disappear. On the other hand, men must survive them. Confronted with this challenge, in a global response, industrial societies facilitate the emergence of a new way of organizing: Agility. Based on the generalization of diverse forms of collective intelligence, it will revolutionize the current framework of managerial and unionized expression and more generally the engagement of workers confronted with the survival or disappearance of their jobs. Instructed and trained, conscious of the challenges of an evolving world, these partners of the new enterprise will self-motivate to ensure that tools are high-performing and long-lasting, as they have always partly, but this time are concretely the owners of these tools. The new organizational paradigm of the immediate future is agility.

Agility will force organizations to adapt themselves to the men who compose them. In the end, man will also change in his relation to the structure employing him, but he will understand the reason for his evolution and will be an actor in it.

There is a long way to go before arriving at an optimal system in the majority of organizations. By dissecting in detail the techniques put into place by the Agile movement, some will be disappointed not to discover anything totally new or miraculous. In fact, good sense reduces the most theoretical concepts of Agility to simple improvements in managerial practices.

But, beyond a progression in the state of the art, what is essential in these changes is the rhythm they lead to in our reflections. A rhythm of engagement of human resources. A rhythm of phasing and the temporal dimension of projects.

In an environment of accelerated evolution, the dynamics issues from facilitated communication, from rethought organization, and more fluid information systems enters in synergy and imposes itself as the energy of rhythm.

Rhythm of change, winning rhythm, Agile rhythm.


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Sommaire

Agility, dynamic of a changing world ......................................................................2

Agility and Flexibility (Lean) ...................................................................................4

The Agile Entreprise ..............................................................................................6

Collective intelligence and complexity of detail ..................................................6

Agile structures for a moving future ...................................................................7

Vectors of Enterprise Dynamics .........................................................................7

Action Space and Temporal Aspect ...................................................................8

Architecture of an Agile Tactical Unit .................................................................9

Architecture of an Agile Strategic Unit .............................................................. 10

The Theory of Agile Quality ............................................................................. 11

At the heart of performance ................................................................................. 11

Illustrations

Figure 1. — Vortex of reactivity by Gartner ...............................................................3

Figure 2. — Rhythm of a “learning organization ........................................................4

Figure 3. — Dynamic of Agility ..................................................................................6

Figure 4. — Architecture of an Agile Tactical Unit ....................................................9

Figure 5. — Example of the Architecture of an Agile Strategic Unit ........................ 11


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History of PUMA

In September 2001, Jean-Pierre Vickoff, one of the pioneers of the Agile way of thinking in the I.S. field and its French-speaking initiator, writes the first communication regarding PUMA. Its translation is then expedited to the American and English universities

In December 2001, “Développeur Référence” (IDG) uses the PUMA graphic design (Proposition for Unifying Agile Methods) on the cover of an issue that devoted its main feature to the rough outlines of this novel Agile vision. The communication is then taken up in 2002 by numerous publications, including: ADELI, “Forum Logiciel”, LMI, etc.

At the time, PUMA already expressed its vision of Agility as follows “After having determined the major portion of the common practices and the differences in practices of each approach, the unified Agile method is composed of an optimal selection of common practices to which it is convenient to judiciously add specific practices in function of the context.”

Since then, Jean-Pierre Vickoff has enlarged the scope of PUMA (now the Proposition for Unifying Agile Methods) by adding two outer layers to cover the entirety of the organizational adaptation aspects as well as the anticipation and optimization of processes. Because, without taking these points into account, there are no enterprises or organizations that are truly Agile.

Representing a significant advance and an enlargement of the scope of organizational agility, the principles of PUMA are the subject of several publications in French and in English on the site Agile Alliance.


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Concerning the use of the PUMA method, its author Jean-Pierre Vickoff as well as TEAMLOG, the company with which he collaborates in creating TMF (Teamlog Methodology Framework), wish to render the theoretical principles accessible to the entirety of the profession by regularly publishing, via the media and the Web, on its structure and its practices by the intermediary of professional organizational principles www.Entreprise-Agile.com

© Jean-Pierre Vickoff. The text and graphics in this document have been registered and copyrighted by the author Jean-Pierre Vickoff, as well as by the medias who initially distributed them. You may copy and distribute, without alterations, all or part of this document in any format, commercially or non-commercially, on the condition that this licence and copyright notice are reproduced on each copy, and that you do not add any additional restrictions. You may also, while respecting the author's ownership, quote brief passages.

Documents

PUMA - Entreprise Agiletechnologies or methods, twenty years are necessary for their maturity and their acceptance. As early as 1999, in Organization Modeling, it was demonstrated