Here’s the deal…
You know there’s a better way. You believe your team and organization can be better, deliver more customer value, and engage the workforce more effectively. Is this a pipe dream? Even if it’s not a pipe dream, is it sustainable, scalable, and repeatable? Is there anything you can do from your position in the enterprise? The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is ABSOLUTELY! Whether you’re consulting with a team, managing a team, or running a large organization, there are building blocks that can be put in place to enable this journey.
To make it work, three core ideas must come together, and your organization may already be progressing on one or more of them.
1. Embrace Agile Delivery Frameworks
Leveraging a consistent approach to agile delivery is crucial. Perfecting agile to the point of preventing progress is a common pitfall. Agile emphasizes getting to market, iterating, and learning. Make sure you don’t lose sight of that.
Key Considerations:
- Empowered Decision-Making: Ensure there’s an empowered individual who can make decisions about priorities and adapt over time. This role, typically filled by a Product Owner, must have the authority to pivot based on feedback and changing market conditions.
- Transparency and Accountability: Maintain transparency in execution with timely reviews and team support for prioritized outcomes. Use regular sprint reviews and retrospectives to foster open communication and accountability.
- Skills and Team Dynamics: Equip your team with the right skills and a willingness to succeed in delivering quality products. Encourage continuous learning and skill development, and support team members in their growth.
Start with these basics. Clear competencies, accountabilities, roles, and focus enable the team to build within their environment. Adjust tools, language, and processes iteratively as needed. This is how your agile journey unfolds.
2. Establish Clear Accountability with an IT Product Model
Clarifying accountability boundaries within your technical solutions brings clarity to both teams and the organization. An IT product model, whether value stream-driven, capability-focused, or functionally based, is essential for eliminating redundancies and ensuring efficient resource use.
Steps to Implement:
- Assess Core Capabilities: Assess core business capabilities and apply a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive (MECE) lens to eliminate overlaps or omissions. This ensures that every capability is accounted for and no effort is duplicated unnecessarily.
- Define Accountabilities: Define five key accountabilities: business roadmap, technical roadmap, total cost of ownership, production stability, and governance model. These accountabilities should be clearly communicated and understood by all team members.
- Maturity Tracking: Start with fundamental practices across these accountabilities, even at a basic level, to spark organizational improvement discussions. Use maturity models to track progress and identify areas for improvement.
By tracking maturity and product accountabilities, you can initiate this journey with a single product or function. This focused approach allows for manageable implementation and scaling as the organization matures.
3. Foster a People-Centric Model
Aligning team members with enterprise outcomes, their daily work, and their mastery is critical for success and sustainability. Recognize associates for their contributions, whether through financial rewards, enterprise visibility, or non-financial compensation. A people-centric model ensures that employees feel valued and motivated to contribute to the organization’s goals.
Approaches to Consider:
- Non-Financial Rewards: Use non-financial rewards and the status-power-access-reward model from game theory to start without taking extraordinary risks. Recognition can come in the form of public acknowledgment, additional responsibilities, or opportunities for professional development.
- Iterative Recognition Methods: Once established, iterate with more sophisticated recognition methods. Financial rewards, career advancement opportunities, and enhanced benefits can be introduced as the system matures.
Starting small and iterating is key. This approach allows for manageable change and continuous improvement, fostering a culture of recognition and appreciation. This is how the journey unfolds.
Overcoming Barriers and Measuring Success
Barriers such as enterprise planning processes, organizational design, and compensation philosophies are real but surmountable. Start locally and drive change through these strategies for improvement.
Measure Progress:
- Flow Metrics: Understand and track flow velocity through flow efficiency, flow time, and flow load. These metrics provide visibility into the process and help identify bottlenecks and areas needing improvement.
Learn more here: 4 Key Flow Metrics and how to use them in Scrum's events | Scrum.org - Probabilistic Forecasting: Building upon Flow Metrics, including LEAN methods into the mix and using simulations based on historical performance allows for improved forecasting.
Learn more in this whitepaper. - Continuous Feedback: Implement continuous feedback loops to gather input from team members and stakeholders. This feedback is crucial for making informed adjustments and ensuring that the changes are effective.
To succeed, garner support from your team, partners, and a self-assured belief in better outcomes. Building a coalition with like-minded partners accelerates and enhances change. Engage with business teams, human resources, and finance to build a supportive network.
Taking Action
Ready to embark on this journey? Here’s how to start:
- Leverage Agile Investments: Leverage existing agile investments within your organization and focus on the fundamentals for a professional approach. This includes adopting frameworks such as Professional Scrum.
- Clarify IT Product Boundaries: Clarify IT product boundaries, focus on the five accountabilities, and empower Product Owners. This ensures that everyone knows their roles and responsibilities.
- Commit to Recognition: Commit to recognizing associate contributions across success elements, even with simple methods initially. Regular acknowledgment and rewards build a positive and motivating work environment.
Investing in and driving this change is worth the effort. It requires persistence, risk tolerance, and transparency. The potential upside for your team and organization is immense.
Start small, demonstrate success, and expand. This change is within your grasp.