In this little blog I want to share a simple canvas that I use to kick-off agile adoption and answer the following questions:
- How to co-create an Agile adoption plan with clients?
- How to get started with an Agile adoption?
- How to ensure progress during the adoption?
Where to start
A way to start an adoption is to do preparation and planning. But before I can start, my clients expect me to write an adoption plan. Do you also have to write Agile adoption plans…? Over the years I wrote quite some adoption plans for my customers. All those plans turned out to evolve around the same topics over and over again. In the adoption plans I answered questions like
- What is the objective of the adoption?
- How do you know you are making progress?
- Which Agile engineering practices do you need?
- How do you start?
- What is the role of management?
- What organisational design changes are needed?
and more ... After writing quite a few adoption plans I got tired of writing them. To make things easier for myself, I summarised the main adoption topics and main questions in a canvas. Eventually this canvas writing thing got out of control and resulted in a book called EMERGENT, which covers the canvas and more things on Agile adoption. There is also a recording (https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/704/How-to-Build-the-Right-Thing) of me talking about the canvas.
Overview of the Agile Adoption Canvas
I use the canvas with my clients to co-create and grow their adoption plans. As a group, you move through all of the building blocks to create an initial plan. You start with the business objectives and end with Expert Coaching.
Below a quick summary of the canvas building blocks.
BUSINESS OBJECTIVES - BUILDING BLOCK
What are our business objectives? Why are we doing this? A common purpose of an adoption is to become a learning organisation. And for most people that is too broad and vague. It is better to find something more concrete that engages people. We know that people engage when there are clear and supported objectives to strive towards. Therefore, I like to determine and communicate the objectives of the adoption initiative. Below are some objectives I have experienced with my customers.
- Reduce release cycles to deliver new features faster
- Reduce cost by producing the same with less people
- Increase agility to react faster to market changes
- Increase employee engagement & job satisfaction
- Increase revenue
- Increase customer satisfaction
For change to happen and to survive the resistance that will emerge you can use a change vision; and a vision story to communicate that vision. A vision story that goes from where the company was, to where the company is now, and finally to where the company needs to be in the future.
MEASURES - BUILDING BLOCK
How do we measure progress towards our objectives? Are we moving in the right direction? Engagement of people is fuelled when there is frequent and clear feedback on progress towards the objectives. The measures building block is about constructing the feedback indicators. In the measures building block, you define how the company is going to assess success, measure progress towards the business objectives and learn. The EBMgt measures are a good starting point.
LEAN LEADERSHIP BUILDING BLOCK
How does management lead the transformation? What organisational re-design is needed? In the Lean leadership building block you address organisational re-design for optimising learning, flexibility and shortest lead time.
- What is it about the company’s working agreements, policies and organizational structure that has to change?
- What is it that you need to do to be able to move to Lean leaders ,coach people and to manage knowledge creation?
- What are the changes that need to occur for people to focus on creating customer value and see high performing teams as a key asset?
Culture is about the way we do things here; and we know that culture follows organisational structure. Change is about learning; and we know that learning starts when there is a change in organisational structure. Therefore, assess your current structure and way of managing and decide what organisational redesign is needed.
CUSTOMER DELIGHT - BUILDING BLOCK
How do we co-create our innovative solutions? Are we building the right thing? The Customer Delight building block describes how you are going to engage with your employees and your customers to understand their needs and build the right product and the right Agile process.
- What do you need to do so the employees feel comfortable to innovate their ways of working and the company can learn how to be Agile?
- How are you going to collaborate with your customers to get innovative insights and create the right solutions for their problems?
You can understand your employees and customers by co-creation and collaboration using for example serious games.
AGILE DEVELOPMENT - BUILDING BLOCK
Do we build the thing right? For a change to take place you need to be very explicit and concrete about what practices people can to do in order to change their way of working. Clear examples and tips about how other peers are successful is a great enabler for change. The Agile development building block is about providing these examples. It is about the practices you can use to shorten the validation cycle. Only through technical excellence and developing high quality product can you achieve the necessary quality and productivity improvements. The Agile practices differ from industry to industry. You can find a list of Agile practices for software development in the Agile Alliance Guide to Agile Practices at url: http://guide.agilealliance.org
EXPERT COACHING - BULDING BLOCK
What coaching and mentoring support do you need?
This building block describes what help you could need to run the change initiative. What internal or external coaching or mentoring do you need?
Supporting Workshops and Practices
For each building block there are a number of workshops, practices and principles to help you. I will discuss some workshops formats in upcoming blog posts.