Disciplined Agile IT Governance: Motivate and Enable over Command and Control

© Disciplined Agile Consortium 1

Disciplined Agile IT Governance

Motivate and Enable Over Command and Control

Agenda

•  What is Lean IT Governance? •  Why Lean IT Governance? •  What is the Lean Governance mindset? •  How does Lean IT Governance fit into your

overall corporate governance strategy? •  Why do traditional governance strategies

fail? •  How do you govern agile and lean delivery

teams successfully? •  How do you govern the rest of IT in an

effective manner? •  Towards agile metrics


Some Bold Claims Regarding Governance

Claim #1: Agile teams are being governed today

Claim #2: In many organizations the governance strategy is badly misaligned with agile

Claim #3: You deserve to be governed effectively

Claim #4: When you provide a coherent governance strategy

to senior management you are much more likely to be governed effectively



Defining Lean IT Governance

Disciplined Agile Consortium: Lean IT Governance is the leadership, organizational structures and streamlined processes to enable IT to work as a partner in sustaining and extending the organization’s ability to produce meaningful value for its customers © Disciplined Agile Consortium 5

IT Governance Institute: IT Governance is the leadership, organizational structures and processes to ensure that the organization’s IT sustains and extends the organization’s strategies and objectives.

Gartner: IT governance (ITG) is defined as the processes that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. IT demand governance (ITDG) is the process by which organizations ensure the effective evaluation, selection, prioritization, and funding of competing IT investments; oversee their implementation; and extract (measurable) business benefits. ITDG is a business investment decision-making and oversight process, and it is a business management responsibility. IT supply-side governance (ITSG) is concerned with ensuring that the IT organization operates in an effective, efficient and compliant fashion, and it is primarily a CIO responsibility.

Governance Addresses a Range of Issues

•  Team roles and responsibilities •  Individual roles and responsibilities •  Decision rights and decision making process •  Governing body •  Exceptions and escalation processes •  Knowledge sharing processes •  Metrics strategy •  Risk mitigation •  Reward structure •  Status reporting •  Audit processes •  Policies, standards, and guidelines •  Artifacts and their lifecycles

6 © Disciplined Agile Consortium

Does Your Organization Have a Governance Strategy in Place?

Yes - Formally Defined, 48%

Yes - At Informal Level,

30%

No, 19%

Don't Know, 3%

© Disciplined Agile Consortium

Source: 2017 Agile Governance Survey

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Why is Governance Important?

•  Sustain and extend your IT strategies and objectives, which in turn should reflect your corporate strategies and objectives

•  Determine how the organization will execute its strategy by selecting and prioritizing the most valuable initiatives to undertake

•  Empower teams to carry out their work •  Help to ensure that teams:

–  Regularly and consistently create real business value –  Provide appropriate return on investment (ROI) –  Deliver consumable solutions in a timely and relevant manner –  Work effectively with their stakeholders –  Work effectively with their colleagues –  Adopt appropriate processes and organizational structures –  Present accurate and timely information to stakeholders –  Mitigate risks


We’re In a Different Environment

The farther to the right an organization, the greater the chance they’re focused on governance


Moore’s Adoption Curve

The Lean Governance Mindset

•  Lead by example •  Be a servant leader •  Motivate people to do the “right thing” •  Enable people (make it as easy as possible) to do the “right thing” •  Communicate clearly, honestly, and in a timely manner •  Streamline collaboration •  Transparency enables effective governance •  Trust but verify •  Mitigate risks, don’t just review artifacts •  Learn continuously •  Consider the short and long term •  Be a great host


How does Lean IT Governance Fit In?


The Scope of Governance


Corporate

Information Technology (IT)

Delivery/ Development Data IT Finance

Security Infrastructure and more…

A you governing a solution delivery team?

Are you governing all of IT?

Are you governing your entire organization?

Governing IT © Disciplined Agile Consortium 14

Can We Govern Agile Teams in a Traditional Manner?


Comparing Agile and Traditional Approaches to Governing of Agile Teams (Scale: -10 to +10)

-4.7

-6.2

-1.7

-2.6

-4.1

-2.1

4.5

1.2

2.8

3.9

4.3

3.4


Decreases Morale

Reduces Quality

Wastes IT Investment

Decreases Productivity

Lightweight Heavyweight

Improves Productivity

Increases Quality

Promotes Wise IT Investment

Improves Morale

Agile Traditional

Focused on Business Value

Not focused on Business Value

Source: 2017 Agile Governance Survey http://Ambysoft.com/surveys/

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Why Traditional Governance Strategies Won’t Work For Agile Delivery Teams


Traditional assumptions that conflict with agile: –  You can judge team progress from generation of artifacts –  Delivery teams should work in a serial manner –  You want teams to follow a common, repeatable process –  Projects should be driven by senior IT management

Would You Know if Your Teams Were “Faking” Governance Artifacts?


Governing Disciplined Agile Teams


DAD Milestones

Milestone Fundamental Question Asked

Stakeholder vision Do stakeholders agree with your strategy?

Proven architecture Can you actually build this?

Continued viability Does the effort still make sense?

Sufficient functionality Does it make sense to release the current solution?

Production ready Will the solution work in production?

Delighted stakeholders Are stakeholders happy with the deployed solution?


“Standard” Agile Practices that Support Governance

•  Coordination meetings •  Iteration demonstrations •  All-hands demonstrations •  Retrospective •  Information radiators •  Active stakeholder participation •  The role of Product Owner


Disciplined Agile Practices that Support Governance

•  Risk-value lifecycle •  Explicit light-weight milestones •  Enterprise awareness

–  Follow enterprise development guidelines –  Work closely with enterprise professionals –  Follow roadmaps

•  Development intelligence via automated dashboards

•  IT intelligence via automated dashboards


Strategic Scaling: The Agile IT Department


IT Governance

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You need to look at IT Governance is a holistic manner for it to be effective. Governance is built right into the Disciplined Agile 2.0 process blades


Towards Agile Metrics


Some Principles for Agile Metrics


Automate wherever possible

Trust but verify

The primary use of agile metrics is for the team to self organize

Context counts – Each team will have a unique set of metrics

Don’t manage to the metrics

You can still “roll up” metrics even without a standard

Stay tuned for our Disciplined Agile Metrics webinar in March 2017…


Principles of Agile Governance

Collaboration over conformance

Enablement over inspection

Continuous monitoring over quality gates

Transparency over management reporting



Got Discipline? DisciplinedAgileConsortium.org

DisciplinedAgileDelivery.com ScottAmbler.com


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Scott Ambler + Associates is the thought leader behind the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) framework and its application. We are an IT

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context of your business.

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Disciplined Agile IT Governance: Motivate and Enable over Command and Control