Agile Transformation Basics
- Transfer
Hello everyone!
I want to share the translation of a brief, but quite sensible cheat sheet for Agile transformation.
The original article is here .
To achieve success in today's market situation, companies must quickly deliver to customers a high-quality product increment (product increment - “a tangible result of a single sprint” (for example, a new product feature, application prototype, etc.) - te-st.ru/2017 / 07/04/12-terms-of-scrum ).
It is equally important to be flexible and be able to respond to feedback received from customers. This means a transition to a flexible strategy from the currently prevailing traditional approach to organizing, managing and financing work.
For small companies, Agile transformation is likely to be straightforward, since the implementation of this strategy can be implemented simply by bringing everyone together in one room and agreeing among themselves.
However, in large organizations with a complex structure and a heavy “inheritance” in the form of an outdated technological architecture, the transformation must be carefully planned and organized to be sure that the efforts and investments made in the change process will create value for the business and really lead to that the company will become flexible and adaptable to change.
Agile transformation is the work of reorganizing a company, as a result of which it will be able to work on the principles of Agile.
What is this article about:
By and large, Agile transformation is a story about how to create teams, form a backlog and regularly supply increments for tested and working software. On a larger organization scale, this is creating a network of loosely coupled teams, coordinating dependencies, working with negative consequences, quickly launching a product on the market, and also measuring the bandwidth of teams rather than their performance.
The point of Agile transformation is precisely to remove the obstacles that impede all these actions.
The starting point of an Agile transformation is understanding where your company is at the moment and where you need to move. To answer this question, it is necessary to deal with two concepts.
First of all, you should consider the values of your company in the context of planning. What is more valuable to you - predictability of delivery or ability to adapt to changes? For most companies, both are valuable, and this leads to negative consequences.
The more you tune the system to predictability, the more difficult it is to change it. And conversely, the more you attach adaptability to a system, the less predictable it is.
The second thing you should seriously think about is the value of your product for the client in terms of planning. Are you trying to understand what your client needs (we call it an open ecosystem - emergent ecosystem), or are you only focused on fulfilling your obligations (we call it a closed ecosystem - convergent ecosystem)?
We have built a 2x2 matrix, four sectors of which will help you understand where your company is today and decide which way you need to move in order to get the business benefits that you are targeting.
The path to an adaptively open company often goes through the predictability and convergence sectors, then through the adaptively closed sector (convergence-adaptability), and only then reaches the adaptively open part of the matrix (adaptability - emergence).
The whole process is built around the formation of teams, the definition of a management model based on Agile principles, and the selection and adoption as starting points of those metrics that are
important for the company - they will be used to measure and track improvements.
Your Agile transformation strategy will ultimately depend on your company's value system and your customer value system.
The most important thing is to understand how to plan correctly so that the transformation provides regular incremental deliveries of business value. The goal is to change the way things are done. Perhaps you are already moving from the practice of the "big bang" - rare and large releases - to regular and small deliveries. Transformation management needs to be done exactly the same.
Despite the fact that the Agile transformation of one company is not like the others, usually all companies go through the following steps:
Step 1. Form a team of leaders.
Agile transformation will require the introduction of changes in all elements of the business, and therefore, management support will be needed. Make sure that the top managers are with you at the same time and are aware of what will happen.
Step 2. Define a vision of the final state
Of course, we need an understanding of where we are going before we begin to move. However, as pragmatists, we understand that the plan will undergo changes, because it includes working hypotheses about the structure, management and metrics, which we will constantly refine during the transformation. There are well-known team building practices in large companies and the coordination of these teams to ensure their performance.
Step 3. Draw a transformation roadmap
With which team, resource or group to start the transformation? Which unit will continue this process? And who will support him then? We must tell the company what we are going to do, how long it will take, and what we expect to receive in return for our investments. We call the groups that undergo transformation, expeditions, and the intermediate results that they achieve are called basecamps.
Step 4. Create a flexible plan for 90 days. A
team of transformation leaders meets to plan, measure success, and adjust the plan if necessary. The main goal of the team is to have a flexible 90-day plan and a rather non-standard idea of what will happen. A 90-day plan is like flexible release planning or PI planning.. The plan will list all the processes in the company that will be affected by the transformation over the next 90 days.
Step 5. Perform an intermediate check of the results every 30 days.
Like the sprint cycle, you need to periodically evaluate the progress of the transformation, conduct retrospectives and adjust the process.
Step 6. Adapt and learn
Review your vision of the final state based on how your understanding of success in the Agile transformation process evolved.
Step 7. Link your actions to the results.
The main reason you started the transformation process is to achieve the best business results. We begin to justify investments by hypothesizing, conducting experiments, demonstrating results and changing strategies depending on what we learn. Given that you will not know in advance all your actions during the transformation, your goal is to correctly build the sequence of results that you need to achieve, and also make sure that the actions you perform correspond to those results in the business that you want to achieve.
Step 8. Link Transformation Results to Business Objectives
You need to track system improvements down to tangible business benefits, and regularly demonstrate to the management the positive dynamics of key business metrics. The main goal is to visualize the explicit and obvious connection between the invested money and the measurable results achieved.
Step 9. Manage communications
Regular and transparent communications about the successes and challenges faced by transformation leaders will create a positive atmosphere and give you energy. Such meetings are often held in the form of a general meeting, a round table with leadership and other types of information meetings.
Step 10. Keep all process participants safe.
Tell all participants in the transformation what benefits they will receive from it and what place they will take in the new structure of the company. Provide transparency, accountability, and measurable progress for everyone.
For a successful transformation of a large and complex company, an Agile transformation roadmap is absolutely essential. The “somehow-figure-out-on-the-go” approach will simply not work here. In our experience, successful transformations take place on this road map:
At the initial stage, you need to look at your company as a whole and determine the business goals of the transformation. The vision of the final state will determine the scenario for the formation of teams, the sequence of actions, determine the management model, and also create metrics and strategic tools for determining the basic level of performance and measuring improvements.
As a result, the company will prepare the first expedition and launch a pilot project that will help determine the base camps needed to implement the changes.
This phase includes the formation, preparation and training of teams - expeditions that are effectively moving forward, which are constantly progressing, moving from one base camp to another. As the teams mature, the final state is reached, basic metrics are collected, improvements are regularly measured, and information about them is openly distributed.
At this stage, the structure, management and metrics will begin to consolidate into a single whole, and an internal set of best practices will begin to form in the company. During this period and as the transformation process progresses, centralized documentation of these practices will become invaluable to your company. You will need to create educational and informational materials, “cheat sheets” on the transformation process. It will also be useful to develop methods and strategies for adapting coaches within the company, regularly conduct organizational certification and work with negative consequences.
Posted by Tim Zack, a born IT professional, has been marketing technology for over 10 years now. Tim's competencies cover strategic planning, UX, analytics, marketing automation, content marketing and search engine marketing. One of its advantages is experience in various industries.
I want to share the translation of a brief, but quite sensible cheat sheet for Agile transformation.
The original article is here .
To achieve success in today's market situation, companies must quickly deliver to customers a high-quality product increment (product increment - “a tangible result of a single sprint” (for example, a new product feature, application prototype, etc.) - te-st.ru/2017 / 07/04/12-terms-of-scrum ).
It is equally important to be flexible and be able to respond to feedback received from customers. This means a transition to a flexible strategy from the currently prevailing traditional approach to organizing, managing and financing work.
For small companies, Agile transformation is likely to be straightforward, since the implementation of this strategy can be implemented simply by bringing everyone together in one room and agreeing among themselves.
However, in large organizations with a complex structure and a heavy “inheritance” in the form of an outdated technological architecture, the transformation must be carefully planned and organized to be sure that the efforts and investments made in the change process will create value for the business and really lead to that the company will become flexible and adaptable to change.
Agile transformation is the work of reorganizing a company, as a result of which it will be able to work on the principles of Agile.
What is this article about:
- What is the point of Agile transformation?
- Transformation strategy
- 10 Steps to a Successful Agile Transformation
- Agile Transformation Roadmap
What is the point of Agile transformation?
By and large, Agile transformation is a story about how to create teams, form a backlog and regularly supply increments for tested and working software. On a larger organization scale, this is creating a network of loosely coupled teams, coordinating dependencies, working with negative consequences, quickly launching a product on the market, and also measuring the bandwidth of teams rather than their performance.
The point of Agile transformation is precisely to remove the obstacles that impede all these actions.
Transformation strategy
The starting point of an Agile transformation is understanding where your company is at the moment and where you need to move. To answer this question, it is necessary to deal with two concepts.
First of all, you should consider the values of your company in the context of planning. What is more valuable to you - predictability of delivery or ability to adapt to changes? For most companies, both are valuable, and this leads to negative consequences.
The more you tune the system to predictability, the more difficult it is to change it. And conversely, the more you attach adaptability to a system, the less predictable it is.
The second thing you should seriously think about is the value of your product for the client in terms of planning. Are you trying to understand what your client needs (we call it an open ecosystem - emergent ecosystem), or are you only focused on fulfilling your obligations (we call it a closed ecosystem - convergent ecosystem)?
Our coordinate system
We have built a 2x2 matrix, four sectors of which will help you understand where your company is today and decide which way you need to move in order to get the business benefits that you are targeting.
The path to an adaptively open company often goes through the predictability and convergence sectors, then through the adaptively closed sector (convergence-adaptability), and only then reaches the adaptively open part of the matrix (adaptability - emergence).
The whole process is built around the formation of teams, the definition of a management model based on Agile principles, and the selection and adoption as starting points of those metrics that are
important for the company - they will be used to measure and track improvements.
Your Agile transformation strategy will ultimately depend on your company's value system and your customer value system.
10 steps to Agile transformation
The most important thing is to understand how to plan correctly so that the transformation provides regular incremental deliveries of business value. The goal is to change the way things are done. Perhaps you are already moving from the practice of the "big bang" - rare and large releases - to regular and small deliveries. Transformation management needs to be done exactly the same.
Despite the fact that the Agile transformation of one company is not like the others, usually all companies go through the following steps:
Step 1. Form a team of leaders.
Agile transformation will require the introduction of changes in all elements of the business, and therefore, management support will be needed. Make sure that the top managers are with you at the same time and are aware of what will happen.
Step 2. Define a vision of the final state
Of course, we need an understanding of where we are going before we begin to move. However, as pragmatists, we understand that the plan will undergo changes, because it includes working hypotheses about the structure, management and metrics, which we will constantly refine during the transformation. There are well-known team building practices in large companies and the coordination of these teams to ensure their performance.
Step 3. Draw a transformation roadmap
With which team, resource or group to start the transformation? Which unit will continue this process? And who will support him then? We must tell the company what we are going to do, how long it will take, and what we expect to receive in return for our investments. We call the groups that undergo transformation, expeditions, and the intermediate results that they achieve are called basecamps.
Step 4. Create a flexible plan for 90 days. A
team of transformation leaders meets to plan, measure success, and adjust the plan if necessary. The main goal of the team is to have a flexible 90-day plan and a rather non-standard idea of what will happen. A 90-day plan is like flexible release planning or PI planning.. The plan will list all the processes in the company that will be affected by the transformation over the next 90 days.
Step 5. Perform an intermediate check of the results every 30 days.
Like the sprint cycle, you need to periodically evaluate the progress of the transformation, conduct retrospectives and adjust the process.
Step 6. Adapt and learn
Review your vision of the final state based on how your understanding of success in the Agile transformation process evolved.
Step 7. Link your actions to the results.
The main reason you started the transformation process is to achieve the best business results. We begin to justify investments by hypothesizing, conducting experiments, demonstrating results and changing strategies depending on what we learn. Given that you will not know in advance all your actions during the transformation, your goal is to correctly build the sequence of results that you need to achieve, and also make sure that the actions you perform correspond to those results in the business that you want to achieve.
Step 8. Link Transformation Results to Business Objectives
You need to track system improvements down to tangible business benefits, and regularly demonstrate to the management the positive dynamics of key business metrics. The main goal is to visualize the explicit and obvious connection between the invested money and the measurable results achieved.
Step 9. Manage communications
Regular and transparent communications about the successes and challenges faced by transformation leaders will create a positive atmosphere and give you energy. Such meetings are often held in the form of a general meeting, a round table with leadership and other types of information meetings.
Step 10. Keep all process participants safe.
Tell all participants in the transformation what benefits they will receive from it and what place they will take in the new structure of the company. Provide transparency, accountability, and measurable progress for everyone.
Agile Transformation Roadmap
For a successful transformation of a large and complex company, an Agile transformation roadmap is absolutely essential. The “somehow-figure-out-on-the-go” approach will simply not work here. In our experience, successful transformations take place on this road map:
Where to start: form a vision of the final state
At the initial stage, you need to look at your company as a whole and determine the business goals of the transformation. The vision of the final state will determine the scenario for the formation of teams, the sequence of actions, determine the management model, and also create metrics and strategic tools for determining the basic level of performance and measuring improvements.
As a result, the company will prepare the first expedition and launch a pilot project that will help determine the base camps needed to implement the changes.
Transformation begins: pilot project and launch
This phase includes the formation, preparation and training of teams - expeditions that are effectively moving forward, which are constantly progressing, moving from one base camp to another. As the teams mature, the final state is reached, basic metrics are collected, improvements are regularly measured, and information about them is openly distributed.
Maintaining Continuity of Change
At this stage, the structure, management and metrics will begin to consolidate into a single whole, and an internal set of best practices will begin to form in the company. During this period and as the transformation process progresses, centralized documentation of these practices will become invaluable to your company. You will need to create educational and informational materials, “cheat sheets” on the transformation process. It will also be useful to develop methods and strategies for adapting coaches within the company, regularly conduct organizational certification and work with negative consequences.
Posted by Tim Zack, a born IT professional, has been marketing technology for over 10 years now. Tim's competencies cover strategic planning, UX, analytics, marketing automation, content marketing and search engine marketing. One of its advantages is experience in various industries.