The AgileSparks Way – Our Implementation/Transformation Approach
Kickoff: Plan and Prepare for Agility
- Initial meetings with leaders.
- 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
Initial setup: 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
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
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
Accelerate: 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.
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
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