organizational benefits from agile and scrum adoption

An Intertech Course

What is Agile?

and why is everyone talking about it?

Employee Engagement

Copyright © Tom Salonek and Intertech, Inc. • www.Intertech.com • 800-866-9884 Slide 2

Lonnie Weaver-Johnson, CST

• Local Certified Scrum Trainer & Agile Coach

• Agile practitioner for 10 years

• IT professional for 20+ years

• Former IT Leader at FIS, eFunds, & Deluxe

• University of MN

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What is Agile?

• A new way of working which requires leaders to empower small teams

• Teams work autonomously while they engage with their ‘customer’ to get work done

• Work is done in priority order without disturbance from outside influences

• New values, principles, and practices• Scrum is most popular

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Benefits IT leaders, their customers, and the staff

• Improved quality & speed to market• Increased motivation, accountability, and productivity of

IT teams• Increased visibility, flexibility, and predictability

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Agile outside of IT also has benefits

Examples of these organizations include:• Churches, family chores, and building a house• NPR uses agile to create new programming• John Deere uses agile to develop new machines• Saab uses it to produce new fighter jets• Mission Bell Winery uses it for wine production,

warehousing, & running its senior leadership group

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Why Does it fail? Leaders...

• Lack training and they don’t really understand the approach

• Mistakenly continue to manage in ways that run counter to agile principles, which undermines the effectiveness of agile teams

• Launch countless initiatives with urgent deadlines rather than assign the highest priority to two or three

• Leaders spread their people across too many projects

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Apply Six Tips to Make it Work

• Although they have the best of intentions, leaders erode the benefits that agile innovation can deliver

• It requires behavior and culture change – that’s hard• Apply the following six tips to make it work

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Tip 1: Learn How Agile Really Works

• Agile isn’t anarchy nor is it “doing what I say, only faster” • Agile Manifesto & the Twelve Principles• It comes in several varieties, which have much in common

but emphasize slightly different things• Examples: Scrum, Lean, Kanban

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Tip 2: Understand Where Agile Works Best

• The problem is complex• Solutions are initially unknown • Requirements are likely to change• Work can modularized • Close collaboration with customers • Creative teams are allowed (vs. command-and-control)• Great for product development functions, marketing

projects, strategic-planning activities, and supply-chain challenges.

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Tip 3: Start Small and Let the Word Spread

• The most successful introductions of agile usually start small

• Let a pilot team work out the kinks• Identify an Agile Champion• Be supportive, educated, and let the team run

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Tip 4: Allow “Master” Teams to Customize Their PracticesJapanese martial arts students, learn a process called shu-ha-ri• shu state they study proven disciplines• ha state, where they branch out and begin to modify

traditional forms• ri, where they have so thoroughly absorbed the laws

and principles that they are free to improvise as they choose

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Tip 5: Practice Agile at the Top

• Some C-suite activities are suited to agile methodologies • Senior executives working as an agile team learn to apply

the discipline achieve far-reaching benefits• Strategy development, cultivating breakthrough

innovations, and improving organizational collaboration

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Tip 6: Destroy the Barriers to Agile Behaviors

• 70% of agile practitioners report tension between their teams and the rest of the organization

• More teams fail than succeed • Identify and address the impediments to a successful

transformation• Be aware of Drucker’s Cuckoo effect

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Five Ideas for Getting Started

Idea 1: Get everyone on the same page. • Same list of enterprise priorities - If a new mobile app is

the top priority for software development, it must also be the top priority for budgeting, etc.

• Everyone, not just IT, gets training

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Idea 2: Don’t change structures right away; change roles instead• Highly empowered cross-functional teams do need some

form of matrix management• Different disciplines learn how to work together

simultaneously

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Idea 3: Name only one boss for each decision Be clear who is responsible for what.ID who:• Forms the cross-functional team• Will play what roles• Will be the supporting senior executive to identify the

critical issues and design processes for addressing them

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Idea 4: Focus on teams, not individuals.• Shifting metrics from output and utilization rates (how

busy people are) to business outcomes and team happiness (how valuable and engaged people are)

• Do recognition and reward systems that weight team results higher than individual efforts

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Idea 5: Lead with questions, not orders.• Rather than give orders, use Socratic questioning• Guide with questions, such as “What do you recommend?”

and “How could we test that?”• Grow functional experts into general managers• Eliminate silos battling for power and resources in favor

of collaborative cross-functional teams

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In Summary

• Many organizations are reaping great benefits from Agile • Read a few articles to decide if it is something you’d like to

take on• Start small• Seek the advice of a coach • Seek out leadership training• Remember - happy teams get more done!!

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Additional Resources

• Lonnie Weaver-Johnson, CST – local trainer• Scrumalliance.org• Harvard Business Review and Forbes have numerous

articles on agile• https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile• Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Amount of Work in Half

the Time, by Jeff Sutherland• Essential Scrum, by Ken Rubin

https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile