Patterns for Agile Change: Blog 3, The Dot on the Wall

Opening Story: 

The CIO stands-up and presents to the Technology group: "We’re going to adopt Agile across the company. Our goal is to achieve stage 4 Agile Maturity as defined in your packs and on the slide here. We’re investing in you our people. We’re bringing in some coaches to help us get there and this is our top priority this year…."

Some weeks and months later… The teams have achieved stage 2 Agile Maturity but will not achieve stage 4 by the end of the year. The problem is that business as usual activities are getting in the way, and we’re all focussed on customer deliveries and bigger projects, so the Agile stuff is taking a back seat.

Summary:

Make sure everyone understands the direction and strategy of the company, and that the Agile journey has been shaped to achieve that goal.

Context:

It is not uncommon when people start out on an Agile change journey that everyone wants to set the goals and targets for the Agile adoption. What’s the goal for our Agile adoption, how will we know we’re going in the right direction, when will we be Agile? Agile metrics, scoreboards and other artifacts are created.

However, the Agile adoption is not the destination, it’s the journey. Agile is a means of achieving the company’s goals.

Problem:

Running an Agile transformation initiative with the goal of becoming Agile does not directly serve the customer, shareholders or company as a whole. Agile transformations that are focussed on achieving agile metrics mean little to the wider, overall business.
Agile is a means of achieving business goals, i.e. increased revenues/profit, increased customer satisfaction, new product development, increased quality of service or product, faster time to market etc. To make the most of an Agile transformation, and ensure everyone is bought into the changes required to achieve it, everyone has to understand the ‘dot on the wall’.

What is the thing we are trying to achieve as a business, can we distill this into a single message?

Then, moving towards the dot on the wall is the goal of the Agile adoption and the means by which its success can be measured.  

Forces:

A silo’d organisational structure impedes collaboration through the value stream.

An executive board that works as a committee rather than a team impedes the company’s ability to articulate a vision, strategy and the dot on the wall.

A lack of education and understanding of Agile, places it in the realm of IT and something they’ve got to deal with, rather than a means for the company collectively to achieve it's goals. 

Essence of the Solution:

The role of the 'Executive' is to provide the vision, articulate the strategy and execute its delivery on behalf of the owners/shareholders. This 'intent' needs to be distilled into a single measure of success (the one thing we're all aiming for) - the Dot on the Wall.

It is then incumbent upon those 'tasked' with delivering an Agile transformation to fully understand the business' intent and create an Agile approach that will best meet those needs. Then measure the success of the transformation on its ability to deliver the Dot on the Wall.

The vision, strategy and measures of success need to be understood by everyone: Shareholders, Executive, Leadership, Employees.

It is not an Agile metric! E.g. number of people trained in Scrum, or number of teams at stage 3 of maturity model.

Once the direction for the company is understood, shape the Agile change programme to best meet that objective, by addressing the challenges related to achieving the Dot on the Wall. This approach could mean that the starting point is Infrastructure or Service Operations? 

Ensure everyone is ready to measure the success of the Agile programme based on the progress toward achieving the company's strategic objective.

More about the Solution:

Requires the pattern: Transformation Backlog in order to understand how to achieve the dot on the wall.

The ability to achieve the goal depends on the pattern: Murmuration for engagement and communication across the company.

Resulting Context (positive & negative consequences):

Positive consequences are that everyone across the entire company understands the company’s direction and how moving to Agile methods will help them achieve it. Investment in Agile tools, practices and techniques, as well as architectural or infrastructure changes are more readily approved as they are aligned to 'the Dot on the Wall'. 

Negative consequences are that the agreement on the direction of the company cannot be made, schisms at board or leadership level impede the ability to define a clear goal for the company. The Agile transformation proceeds at a department level and is perceived as one of a number of projects in the portfolio subject to the usual project investment processes - this leads to a dilution of the Agile change, or a lack of investment for more 'pressing' items. 

Known Uses:

For people ‘tasked’ with transforming existing businesses with >50 people.

Companies with multiple streams of revenues

Companies with multiple staff locations.

Not usually needed for start-up businesses.