Agile Introduction for Leaders

Learning Objectives • Gain an understand of what is driving the need for

agile

• Learn the fundamentals of agile: values, principles and practices

• Learn what managers and leaders need to do for agile success

– Assess teams readiness

– Learn eight risk points

• Discuss Radical Management as a flavor of agile specific for running an operation

Agenda • Why is Disruption the new norm

• Looking at why leadership and workers are so ill- prepared

• Old rules driving project success are breaking down

• Agile breakdown (high-level and quick)

• Leaders Agile tool kit

– Self organization

– Radical management

– Lean Start-up

DISRUPTION Section One

Enterprise Challenges Driving Disruption

• Speed – Rapid pace of disruption and change

– Can’t handle change, lose and lose quickly

• Productivity Challenge – Key to profitability in slow growth environment

• Finding Competitive Advantage – Customer knowledge (internal and external)

• Product Creation hit or miss – Three elements of product creation

• Competitive understanding, organizational capabilities, creating value

• Growing, Managing and Retaining Knowledge Workers – Generation “Y” dilemma (Millennial)

What we want: life to be easier

But the Reality is!

Something to Consider… “The Black Swan” impact of the highly improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb ISBN # 978-0-8129-7381-5

Black Swans being unpredictable, we need to adjust to their existence

(rather than naively try to predict them). There are so many things we can

do if we focus on what we don’t know…We will see that, contrary to social-

science wisdom, almost no discovery, no technologies of note, came from

design and planning—they were just Black Swans. The strategy for the

discovers and entrepreneurs is to relay less on top down planning and focus

on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities…free markets work

because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trails and

error…the strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible…

IMPACT ON HOW WE MANAGE Section Two

Bad Leaders/Disengagement

• From CLO Magazine, April 2014 “When the Boss Needs People Skills”

– At least 50% up to 70% of managers fail

– Only 30% of US workers are engaged

– Nearly 1 in 5 are actively disengaged

• New reports say 80% are disengaged

• “Engagement is the single most detrimental problem in business”

– Engagement affects customer ratings, profitability, productivity, turnover, safety incidents, absenteeism and theft

• Adding up to an estimated $300 billion in lost revenue every year

Characteristics of Knowledge Workers and their Work

Knowledge Workers

• Higher than average intelligence – Most likely smarter than leaders of

the company

• Do not want to be micro-managed

• Have some type of management experience

• Have some type of project experience

• Lack business financial skills (accounting side of business)

Their Work

• 24 by 7 meaning some level of work is always there

• It is creative

• Subjective, success / measurement is not black and white

• It is team orientated

• Time sensitive

• Usually part of a project or change initiative

T-SHAPED WORKERS Section Three

Why We are Here: Major Disruption in Workers Needed

It took 77 months to get to pre recession employment levels with the last recession, it normally takes 18 months

The % of management positions has decreased from 28% of the economy in 2000 to 24% in 2010

Positions requiring creativity and problem solving have increased by 4.8M from 2001 to 2009

Knowledge workers are engaging in creativity and problem solving, and they have specific skill requirements

T-Shaped: What Workers need to Become

\\“T-Shaped Professional

www.tsummit2014.org

Managers and Leaders need to Become…

…Managers and Leaders not measures, reporters, and doers

What is going to be demanded:

– Ability to grow people

– Break down barriers and road blocks

– Set vision and define direction

– Set goals

– Communicate goals / adjust vision and direction

– Reset goals

AGILE Section Four

How do I get what I want from my efforts?

Where does software development fit?

New Project Law: s + s + $ ≠ how Agile sees project world

Schedule: Scope: Budget:

‣ Project delivered within the timeframe originally identified

‣ No date slips

‣ Every milestone achieved

‣ Everything originally requested is delivered

‣ Everything delivered works perfectly as the customer requested, no bugs

‣ Did not spend a single cent more than originally estimated to spend

‣ Did not need any additional resources, hardware, etc. throughout entire project

on time all scope within budget

≠

happy customer

+ +

What is Agile?

• It’s a way of working differently • Set of guiding principles • Resulting in a set of practices

• Iteration • User stories • Burn down chart

• Practitioners have productized them into flavors: • Scrum • Lean • Extreme Programming • SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)

The Foundation…

What is Agile? Guiding Principles

Waterfall vs. Agile Basics

Important Observation

VS. Plan-driven Development Adaptive Development

Agile Mindset

Agile is really a mindset… a different way to think about the work.

DSDM.org, 1994

DEFINING AGILE Why does Agile work?

Agile Readiness Assessment

Traditional Models Agile Model

Punish Problems Problems are Treasures

Best Practices Shu-Ha-Ri (Continuous Improvement)

BDUF (Big Definition Up Front) JEDI (Just Enough Definition Initially)

Silo’s and Specialization Blur the lines – We’re all team members

Command and Control Self-organizing teams, Servant Leadership - Empowerment

Work the Plan The Plan will Evolve

Individual Performance Team Performance

Check Quality Out Build Quality In

Death March is a Tool Maintain a Constant Pace

Shoot for the stars and hit the moon Only commit to a realistic amount of work

PM is One-Throat-to-Choke Team Accountability

A Project Manager Assigns the Work Team Volunteers for the Work

Choose the familiar way to communicate Choose the most effective and efficient way to communicate

Focus on getting tasks done Team has full ownership of the Goal

Sequential Development Iterative and Incremental

22

Why Agile?

Agile Practices / Concepts

• Product Owner / Scrum Master

• Daily Scrum aka Daily Stand Up

• Agile Planning / Estimating

• Sprint aka Iteration

• User Story

• Task Board

• Burn down / Velocity

• Retrospective

The Mechanics of Scrum

Product

Backlog

2-4 Weeks

Daily

Sprint

Backlog Product

Increment

Product Vision /

Roadmap

Product

Release

Retrospective

Process Overview

Agile Benefits

Agile Development Value Proposition

Agile Development Traditional Development

VISIBILITY ADAPTABILITY

BUSINESS VALUE RISK

Copyright 2004 - 2006 VersionOne, LLC

SELF-ORGANIZED TEAMS Section Five

Self-Organized Teams

What is it in Reality

• A way to organize a group

• Allows decision making / problem solving to happen at the source of the work

• Increases empowerment which should increase productivity and morale

• Significantly disrupts traditional management

• Some call it Holacracy

How is Autonomy Driven, Two Way Street?

• Shared Guiding Principals

• Common goals

• Communication

• Trust and Accountability

• Self-Esteem

• Great resource – ZAPP! The Lighting of Empowerment:

How to Improve Productivity, Quality and Employee Satisfaction

(Byham & Cox ISBN 10:0679400427)

Self-Organized…Being an Adult?

• Being treated like an adult

• Acting like an adult

– Adult definition

• N: One who has attained maturity or legal age

• Adj: Fully developed and mature

– Adulthood

• The state (responsibility) of a person who has attained maturity

• All ties to autonomy

Agile Risk Points 1. Workers don’t have the skills to self-organize 2. No change management plan in place, specifically

around communicating the whys and hows 3. Weak business unit engagement leading to no

Product owner 4. Product Owner designate has no authority 5. Iteration cycles pushing way past the maximum 4

week length 6. Teams fixates on perfecting each build, get mired in

mud of rework 7. Team never properly learns story point estimating 8. Team doesn’t learn how to change from role to work

based planning

AGILE FLAVORS FOR MANAGEMENT

Section Six

Radical Management

• Agile Moving to Leadership and Management

• Basically a Productized Version of Agile for Managing, Based on Agile Guiding Principals http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/09/the-best-kept-management-secret-on-the-planet-agile/

• Five Foundational Principals of Radical Management

1. From maximizing shareholder value to maximizing custom delight

2. Manager from controllers to enablers

3. Work organized bureaucratically to work organized around customer outcomes

4. From straight economic value to that plus transparency, continuous improvement and sustainability

5. From top-down command communication to conversations

Radical Management: Seven Principles of Continuous Innovation

1. Focus work on delighting the client

2. Do work through self-organized teams

3. Do work in client driven iterations

4. Deliver value to clients with each iteration

5. Be totally open about impediments

6. Create a context for continuous self-improvement

7. Communicate through interactive conversations

Lean Start Up

• Based on the iterative approach • More tests, less structure around tests

• Let market provide feedback • Continuously improved or kill based on feedback • Be comfortable with failure, learn and adapt

• Incrementally invest • Provide month to month operating capital only • Wait for initial round of funding until product as been

proven out

• Can do this in large companies (intrapreneur) • Why does this approach work

Learning Objectives • Gain an understand of what is driving the need for

agile

• Learn the fundamentals of agile: values, principles and practices

• Learn what managers and leaders need to do for agile success

– Assess team’s readiness

– Learn eight agile risk points

• Discuss Radical Management as a flavor of agile specific for running an operation

Thank you!!! I appreciate your time.

David Mantica

President, ASPE Training