- Deciding to become agile is way easier than succeeding is it.
- Understand culture is critical to success
- Doug Rose - Leading Agile Teams
- Agile is a big organiational change (not something a few developers practice - because then you just get pockets of agile)
- All focus is saying "become more agile", but if we are to break up team's daily work we really have to know "where are we going?". Companies are trying to be more agile, but few can give a satisfactory response on what organization will look like as it embraces the agile mindset.
- Agile is a mindset
- Misconception: agile is just a new way to do things. Scrum or break down user stories, etc. However, it's a change in mindset
- Change in perspective on how you do your work.
- Best place to start is Agile Manifesto - many of the frameworks predate the manifesto.
- Core agile values at odds with company culture is THE MAIN REASON why agile transformations fail. Thus, the transformation is a long path.
- Different cultures:
- Control Culture:
- Leadership: Auhtoritarian
- Management Style: Conservative
- Organization: Strong Hierarchy
- Expectations from Employees: Compliance
- Authority: Role
- Decision Making: Push for certainty
- Change strategy: mandated
- Prevalant and one of the most difficult cultures to change.
- Competence Culture (2nd most common):
- Leadership: Task
- Management Style: Distribute Tasks
- Organization: Matrix
- Exepctations from employees: independence
- Authority: Expertise
- Decision Making: Analytical
- Change Strategy: Goals
- Cultivation Culture (rarest):
- Leadership: Empower
- Management Style: People driven
- Organization: Circular
- Expecations from employees: grow and develop
- Authority: Charisma
- Decision Making: Participatory
- Change Strategy: Embrace Change
- You need to:
- Understand what it means to be agile
- Understand organization culture
- Now need to make change to culture (Book: Fearless Change - Introducing new ideas - good for non execs)
- Control Culture:
- Use feature teams, not component teams. A feature (value to be delivered start to finish) rather than a component (e.g. database work)
- In lean agile, "best practice" is only applicable in limited and constrained set of circumstances.
- Because not all changes are improvements, we need to make it safe to fail. A failure should not be an issue. If it's unsafe to try because of consequences, then we will be conservative and we will improve slowly.
- Understand speed and acceleration to value. Economic outcome. (Fixing something 10 USD/minute that takes 1 minute vs. 50 USD/minute that takes 10 minutes). Thus, calculate: Cost of Delay Divided by Duration (CD3), in the first scenario the cost acceleration is 10/1=10 vs. the second 50/10=5... so the first one is quantifiably better to tackle first. It's not just about cost/value.
- Learn to say no, or "not yet". Say no without offending people.
- Teamwork, Connections, People - bringing back the focus to the triangle
- Mindfulness:
- Agile: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Agile: working software over comprehensive documentation
- Agile: customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Agile: Responding to change over following a plan
- Moving beyond agile frameworks
- Agile 2.0
- Mindfulness
- Purposefully paying attention
- Being aware of the present moment
- Introduce awareness between stimulus and response
- Understand the greater goal
- e.g. gravity payments, Apple, Google, LinkedIn.
- The only way to maintain competitive advantage is to "Attract, develop and retain taleneted employees". (Hoffman)
- Work at full potential: 25%
- Do what's necessary: 50%
- Room for improvement: 75%