The AgileSparks Way implementation approach - Initiate & Plan, Kick Off, Stabilize, Recharge, Improve
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Plan & Initiate: Plan and Prepare for Agility

  1. Initial meetings with leaders.
  2. Thinking/Planning Assessment and Focus Management Workshop (usually 2 days)
  • Map the group goals and current situation, set the goals for the new process
  • Introduction and discussion of key Lean/Agile solutions with a focus on the group’s context and goals
  • Understand how Agile approaches can help the group reach its improvement goals (discuss small batches using Agile Requirements, Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, Agile releases, Lean Startup approaches, commitments in Agile, etc.)
  • Design the high level process approach to delivery and improvement for the group and understand its implications and implementation steps
  • Establish the vision for the journey
  • Build buy-in among the leadership team for the need and the approach

Key Deliverables:

  • List of pains / opportunities
  • Goals
  • Common language
  • Management/Leadership buy-in including willingness to put in hard work and make some compromises as part of a non-trivial journey
  • High level plan for the journey and more concrete plan for Kickoff and first 100 days of the implementation
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Kickoff: Achieve Basic Agility

Key Deliverables:

– All initial process and building blocks deployed and can be observed in operation
– Organization is starting to learn the new way of working and gets ready to stabilize

– Established key metrics/indicators we will monitor to help guide the Agile journey to achieving the desired outcomes

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Stabilize: Reach Competent Agility with the Current Process

Key Deliverables:

  • Reached the agreed upon goals
  • Reduced significantly the identified pains
  • Current process feels reasonably ok, feeling we are after the initial storming.
  • Can sustain current process/practices even without support/coaching
  • Can expect limited amount of further improvement/tweaks will happen without support/coaching
  • Have updated goals/pains to work on in the Improve phase
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Recharge Organizational Energies for Further Improvement

“Digest” the new process and maintain stable operation

Key Deliverables:

Recharged energies and now ready to take significant improvement steps

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Improve: Competent at Adapting/Improving

Key Deliverables:

  • Continuous improvement ability – can expect continued stream of significant evolutionary improvements without external coaching
  • Reached the agreed upon updated goals
  • Achieved significant reduction in level of pain in areas identified at the end of Stabilize.
  • Organization is familiar with – and knows how to use – a set of key improvement techniques and tools to continue their ongoing improvement journey.
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Closure: Learn from the Journey

Key Deliverables:

– Lessons for future change initiatives
– Identified next steps to ensure continued improvement
– Identified and implemented mode of external coaching support/maintenance
– Identified opportunities to leverage agility elsewhere in the organization

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Maintenance: Keep the Fire Burning

Key Deliverables:

– Periodic meetings with role players, to support and keep energy levels high
– Support improvement initiatives
– Health checks to identify areas that need attention

Metrics/KPIs – Measuring progress on the Agile Journey

A key question along the journey is “Are we there yet?” or even “Are we on the right track?”

In the Initiate and Plan stage we identify goals/desired outcomes

In the Kickoff stage we establish key metrics/indicators – whether qualitative or quantitative – to accompany each goal/desired outcome

While these are customized for each journey, we’ve helped people through enough journeys/transformations to actually notice patterns that can be a good starting point for the customization process. This slide deck describes this set of metrics/indicators

 

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