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The why and how of Agile Transformation

The why and how of Agile Transformation

First, what doesn’t work (or at least it fails more often than it succeeds), transformation (Agile or otherwise) as project:

Using a shallow and dysfunctional version of a model that was already tired 20 years ago [1], linear plan meets adaptive challenge in a complex environment. Seriously? I’m not sure which is the saddest thing – that its failure modes are so painfully familiar, or that they’re so avoidable:

Instead of obsessing over how to overcome resistance, stop provoking it! Instead of imposing change, make it a process that is open in a big way to meaningful participation and creative collaboration.
Wrong solutions aren’t a problem if your experiments are:
small enough to fail quickly, cheaply, and safely
framed to generate learning about real needs, succeed or fail
Instead of being driven by solutions – with energy wasted on the consequences of commitments made in the past – organize around outcomes, getting quickly to the point where you can confirm that they are already beginning to be realized
Instead of a depressing sequence of failed ‘agile’ process change projects– each of which on its own risk fatigue – normalize a continuous style of change, baking it into everyday ways of working. This is actually what allows agility to emerge in an organization.

None of this is hard. Despite its record of failure though, that linear model has familiarity on its side, not to mention generations of managers being taught that this how things are done “properly”. Thankfully, credible alternatives do exist however.

The defining characteristic of this approach to Agility is that it is outcome-oriented. Just about every part of it deals in some way with outcomes: identifying them, articulating them, organizing them, working out how they might be achieved, etc etc. Let’s visualize that process.

I will describe Agile Transformation in 10 steps. That might sound worryingly linear, but there’s some structure to it:
Steps 1-4 are happening frequently, at different levels of detail, and to varying degrees of formality – in fact those are just some of the ways in which agile transformation scales (the topic of another readout). Together, these steps represent a coaching pattern (or routine, or kata if you like). It’s not just for practitioners – I teach it to participants too, introducing a more outcome-oriented kind of conversation into organizations that may have become over-reliant on solution-driven conversations.
Steps 5-9 are about managing options, a continuous process punctuated from time to time by more intense periods of activity.
Step 10 could just as easily be numbered step 0 – it’s about the Org’l infrastructure necessary to sustain Agile transformation.

Steps 1-4: An Agile transformation pattern that anyone can practice

Step 1: Bring the challenge close to home

The pattern starts with some kind of generative image, the organization development (OD) community’s term for “ideas, phrases, objects, pictures, manifestos, stories, or new words” that are both compelling in themselves and are capable of generating a diverse range of positive responses

This Agile transformation approach provides a number of these starting points:
The organization’s Agile ‘True North’ detailed in a separate readme)
The prompts of one of the assessments; the delivery assessment in particular has 43 of these, a few of which are prioritized by people individually in a workshop or in 1:1 interviews or small groups
Potentially, any of the outcomes generated through this process overall

Sometimes these generative images may seem out of reach, but nevertheless, reflecting on them is typically a positive experience, sometimes even cathartic. The invitation is simple:
“What’s that like? How is it different to what you have now?”
“What’s happening when this is working at its best for you?”
“X months down the line, what will you be celebrating?”

Step 2: Identify obstacles

Again, a simple question:
“What obstacles are in the way?”

Step 3 (optional): Clarify

Deep diagnosis at this stage tends not to be productive. Sometimes however it can be helpful to clarify a little, when obstacles seem vague and/or overgeneralized, or when they seem to prescribe a solution already:
“What kind of X?” (the X here referring to an obstacle)
“What’s happening when X?” (ditto, this question being helpful for finding the real obstacles that motivate prematurely-specified solutions)

Step 4: Outcomes, more outcomes, and yet more outcomes

From our generative image, a generative process, one capable of producing lots of output! It starts with a classic coaching question:
“What would you like to have happen?” (for an obstacle)

Moving deeper into ‘outcome space’:
“And when X, then what happens?” (the X here identifying an outcome noted previously)

Clarifying, exploring locally, or preparing to take conversation in different direction:
“What kind of X?”
“What is happening when X?”

See separate readme for an introduction to how they work and a video. What we have here is a highly repeatable agile transformation pattern adaptable to a wide range of contexts. And as we practice it we’re teaching leaders of every kind how to speak the language of outcomes toward Agility.

Steps 5-9: Managing options

These steps are about managing the bigger picture (sometimes quite literally):

Step 5: Organize (Agile Transformation Roadmap)

Here are two possible visuals of the generated outcomes: the Options Orientation Map (based off Wardley mapping) and something akin to a User Story Map, with outcomes prioritized in columns:

Step 6: Prioritize, just in time

When – by design – everything is changing, it’s better to give yourself options than to decide and specify everything up front:

Step 7: Choose the right kind of approach

Outcomes don’t just vary by size or difficulty, they differ fundamentally:
Outcomes that need the minimum of ceremony, because everyone can easily agree what needs to be done
Outcomes that can be delegated to someone with the necessary expertise
Outcomes for which multiple ways forward can be identified, yet (paradoxically perhaps) it’s clear that the journey will involve twists and turns that are hard to predict
Outcomes for which it’s hard to see beyond symptomatic fixes

If you’re thinking Cynefin at this point, well spotted! (See additional readme’s for the details on Cynefin.)

Step 8: Generate options

Where you want innovation, create the opportunity to generate multiple options for the outcome or outcomes currently under the spotlight, and as diverse as you can make them. If you have a framework in mind and it has good options for your current challenges, include them! (We’re framework-agnostic, not anti-framework!)

Step 9: Frame hypotheses, develop experiments

Not every outcome is best approached this way (see step 7), but where uncertainty is high, frame your chosen option as a hypothesis, then develop it as an experiment

Keeping the show on the road

Step 10: Rinse and repeat

So often said, and so often ignored! Whenever you hear “change cycle” or “improvement cycle”, it’s important to ask about the mechanisms in your organization design (structure, process, leadership behaviors, etc) that will sustain the process. That’s a question we know to ask, and we have some helpful patterns to suggest when the current organization design is lacking.

Among other things, we’re looking for at least three levels of feedback loop:
The day-to-day meetings whose purpose is to help people make informed choices about what to do, where to collaborate, and when to seek help
Operational review meetings that:
Step far enough back from the day-to-day to scrutinize progress (or lack thereof) in terms of both speed and direction
Create expectations of continuous and impactful experimentation
Cause learnings to be aired and spread
Strategic review meetings that reconfirm key objectives (calibrating the level of ambition appropriately), and ensure the right levels of commitment relative to other goals

One way to visualize the strategic calibration part is as an “aspiration gap”, the area in red below between the outcomes being worked towards and the overall challenge that seeded this process.

Sometimes the aspiration gap is so big that it isn’t even recognized – not seeing the wood for the trees, so to speak. With too little ambition and too little coherence across the options under consideration, both energy and alignment are lacking. Continuous improvement initiatives are prone to this; their failure modes may be different from those of the linear change project but failure here is still uncomfortably common.

Conversely, when the aspiration gap is small, there may be too much focus on an overly specific objective, leaving few options available outside a prescribed path. You’re into linear planning territory again, and we know how that goes!

This is why those three feedback loops are so necessary. Almost by definition, agile transformation needs daily conversations. For it to be sustained, it also needs a tangible sense of progress and periodic reorientation and recalibration.

If there’s anything hard about it, it is simply that it’s a departure from that familiar but tired old linear model, the one that we all know doesn’t really work. So dare to try something new!


last updated september 2019