effective agile adoption

effective agile adoptionToronto CTO GroupNovember 16, 2015

@leanintuit @dwhelan

of change initiatives fail70%

@leanintuit @mikeeedwards @dwhelan

the change world has said for decades that 70% of change initiatives fail

30% succeed1995 Kotter: 30%1998 Turner and Crawford: 33%2005 Procsi: 29%2008 Mckinsey: 30%2011 Standish Group: 34%

Hammer and Champy 1993Beer and Nohria 2000Senturia 2008http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/markhughes-060910.pdf


well, actually they say 30% of changes meet the expected outcome, but failing 70% of the time is a better way to scare clients into buying their change framework and tools.success is not binary

9 Year Barriers to Agile Trend from Version One State of Agile Survey


dont worry, youre not alone, we all suck at going agileapparently we have learned nothing in 10 years.Lack of Management Supportteams are moving along but then bump up against management systemsmanagers are understandably challenged by agile due to focus on self-organizing teamsLack of Skillreducing, likely due to more training, user groups, conferences etc.General Resistance to Changethose people wont do what we want!people resist change when they feel no control over it - OD well knownneuroscience tells us that we interpret change as dangerFailure to Change Cultureculture => people in the organization and they way those people interact - how we do things around herepolicies, how we react to problems (prod bug)a lot of models/talks on how to change culture - hint - start with yourself and leaders!will follow the same attributes of the strongest leaders - Schneidermanagement debt - Re-engineering Alternatives - Schneideragile change efforts focus too much on trying to tackle culture directly

what transformation meansShared Values(culture)StrategyStructureSystemsSkillsStyleStaff


HR

Change

Agile

Agile Pilot Team


Organizational Debta result of how we grow our organizations.

HRAs our organizations grows managers do too much work and less with their people so introduce an HR group.HR introduces policies.

ChangeAs we continue to grow our old structures no longer serve us well. Again, our people are often too busy to tackle this directly and anyway we want to bring in the experts. So we bring in some change consultants. They have to figure out and introduce more rules and policies to make the company more effective. (Reorgs happen every couple of years.)We are fighting specialization with more specialization - Jason

AgileWe should really go agile They create a pilot team but do not remove any of the existing constraints.As the teams form and succeed they start to run into the policies and impediments from previous changes so we form an Agile steering group, Agile PMO or Agile Governance team to figure out new policies to work in an agile manner.

Bottom LineWe deal with organizational challenges (specialization, policies and rules that arent working for us) by introducing more specialization and rules & policies within our organizations.

buildfeature

what customers wantrequest


Mike starts

requirements

what customers getrequest

feature

analysis

design

code

test

deploy

Handoff

Handoff

Handoff

Handoff

Handoff


Each handoff serves as potential gap.

Misalignment happens when the organizational structure is not aligned with the espoused theory of the organizations purpose.- Craig Larman, Creator of LeSS


Often companies will claims to have the purpose of serving customers but when you look closely you see that customers just want great products and services. They dont care how we organize internally. Most of our internal organization is to serve the inward focused goals of the company not the customer.

Introducing agile with this misalignment in organizations will severely challenge the teams. We feel that this misalignment is an underlying root cause of most of the barriers to agility mentioned in the VersionOne surveys.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them


1. change organizational structure



culture follows structure

TRANSFORMATION!


e.g. Communitech - large organizations, banks, retailers and moving them into organizational structures that promote innovation

this is disruptive (shock therapy - clean break). Smaller MVCs may be effective when the organization is capable of adapting incrementally

culture follows structure

TRANSFORMATION!

ANDAND


focus on skills over titles (talks to customers, sell stuff, market stuff, build, test, keep team happy)

We dont need to focus on transforming the organization. With pilots, SMs and low-level managers are not positioned to be able to spin up a different organization within an organization.

a new old way of organizingHorizon 1Horizon 2Horizon 3StabilityExperimentationInnovation


create a petri dish

Horizon 1

Horizon 2

SAFe, Agile pilots,Scrumify existing teams,mandated innovation time

Horizon 3

Create a new company inside the existing company that WILL NOT conform to any existing organizational boundaries!


organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.- Melvin ConwayConways Law


Often companies will claims to have the purpose of serving customers but when you look closely you see that customers just want great products and services. They dont care how we organize internally. Most of our internal organization is to serve the inward focused goals of the company not the customer.

Introducing agile with this misalignment in organizations will severely challenge the teams. We feel that this misalignment is an underlying root cause of most of the barriers to agility mentioned in the VersionOne surveys.

2. build capacity to deliver



building technical debt


https://agileexecutive.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/technical_debt_slide.jpgbuilding technical debt



3. lead with an agile mindset



agile fluency


http://blog.crisp.se/2015/11/10/henrikkniberg/what-is-an-agile-leadercreate alignment


I want faster, better, cheaperHow can I test in an Agile way?How can I write code in an Agile way?How can I gather requirements in an Agile way?


Declan

what can I do?


tools to support changelean coffeeshare informationchange canvasperspective mappingblast radius



share information


change canvasleanchange.org/alignment


EXECUTIVESMANAGERSTEAMS/STAFFPERSPECTIVEDATA

SUPPORTING THE CHANGEHOLDING BACKTHE CHANGE

THEME 1THEME 1Iperspective mappingleanchange.org/perspectivemapping


blast radiusleanchange.org/blastradius

CUSTOMERS

Processes Affected

PRODUCT 1

DEV

QA PROCESS

STATUS REPORTS

PILOTTEAM

OPS

DEPENDENTTEAM(S)

People Affected

Directly Affected

In-Directly Affected

Observers+Movers-Immovables

Moveables++-

MARKETING

-!Hard to change

Easier to change!


tools to support changelean coffeeshare informationchange canvasperspective mappingblast radius


but not easy


Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo middle- and first-level managers and specialist positions & power structures.Larmans Law:Your only impediment to transformation.


inspiration


referenceshttp://www.slideshare.net/dwhelan/navigating-organizational-change

leanchange.orgleanintuit.comadecadeofagile.comhttp://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_91.htmhttp://www.craiglarman.com/wiki/index.php?title=Larman%27s_Laws_of_Organizational_Behavior


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effective agile adoption