In our last capsule we have reviewed the second step of our path: “Creating and Launching Initiatives”.

Now, in this capsule, we will go to the third step of our path: the “Execution and Maturity”, of the teams and the environment. It integrates the next activities:

The first activity is the release planning

• Release plan, backlog, key assumptions and issues, delivery & opportunity frames are made here.
• Release planning is the starting way for a team to build a successful product: the focus is to learn fast, with a big vision and small steps.

The second activity is the “Product Review, Inspection and adaptation”, which is related with:

• The expectations management, inspect and adapt the process, to improve it, in order to impact the product that we are building.
• Remember that the Product that we are building is composed by several living hypothesis that we must fit, all the time with the client so that we need to realize it with the Business Owner som they know the product growth phase and the right expectative about it.

And the third is the “Team and product maturity”, which consist on:

• Team building, Team stabilization and Agile high performing team. From this moment on, one of the objectives to achieve, is the maturity of high-performance teams:
• They are highly motivated teams that create products with superior goals than those stablished, thus, we will have the standing up, stabilization and optimization of them, it is very important to have experienced agile coaches in these tasks so that they focus on team maturity acceleration.
• A priority is to create sustained peace of the team in a transparent environment.

Remember that some of the steps related to create high-performance teams, are the next ones (according to Tuckman, Dexter & Leoncini)

• Level 1: Guidance.
  • As a team we ask ourselves: Why I’m here?
• Level 2: Building trust
  • Where as a team we ask ourselves: Who are you?
• Level 3: Goal clarification.
  • We ask ourselves: What we are doing here?
• Level 4: Commitment.
  • As a team we question us about: How are we doing?
• Level 5: Implementation.
  • We ask ourselves as a team: Who does what, where and when?
• Level 6: High Performance.
  • As a team we define our: Own way of working.
• Level 7: Renovation.
  • The question is: Why continue?

Here is where specific frameworks by role can be very useful to close on an accelerated way the gap between the first step and the seventh step, Remember that we all time are in the forming state, we need to convey on that to the team so that they understand which as team changes in its composition those changes, guides us ever to reinforce newly these levels, remember that we will never be permanently on the 6th step, we are all the time at the 7th step and this process of team building is a nonlinear process, it can give us surprises.

That’s all for now, in the next capsule we will go to the fourth step of our path: Demand and Capability Management.

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In our last capsule we have reviewed an approach of the current state assessment and a prioritization of the initiatives.

Now, in this capsule, we will go to the next step of our path, and we will review the landscape of creating and launching initiatives.

In this step, we will focus on the next three things:

The first is to perform an inception workshop x initiative, to

1. Define and prioritize the product initial scope, to gain clarity about what you want to build and what the priorities are.

Some of the stuff that we go deep inside is the next:

 The second activity is the creation and launching of teams, which consist on,

• People, dedication and formal assignation inside de company.
• The team formation, staffing and roles assignment.

The third activity is teams training (We train on remote tools, Scrum, Kanban, XP, SAFE, Nexus, etc.) and we work on the role’s confirmation inside de company, to officially assign the people to the team.  Some of the activities are:

1. General training, cadence definition, roles and confirmation.
2. Training in the specific frameworks, regarded to roles, events, rules and artifacts.
3. Product Backlog Creation.
4. Definition of VALUE.
5. Definition of DOR and DONE.
6. User Story Life Cycle.

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In our last capsule we have flew over a Business Agility practical case.

Now, in this capsule, we will continue with this first step, and we will review an approach of the current state assessment and a prioritization of the initiatives.

The general assessment of the current state

Then we can set the current state of our business, in order to know if we are far to reach our objective, at this step we analyses the team, environment and organizational mindset in order to know the communication, the leadership styles, the structures, the process, the power centers so we can know the opportunity areas, the suggested actions, to improve our environment and the way of thinking and doing.

We systematize de results, in order to suggest actions, remember that an agile assessment is focused on improvements and the co-creation of actionable immediate decisions, not for living at the past and validate this with all the company to find who agrees, and who doesn’t.

After this current state assessment, we have a big picture o the organization which serve us to ubicate where the impact is, regarding with the initiatives that we are going to co-assess with the Business Owners and all stakeholders related.

The next activity is the Aassessment & Prioritization of initiatives:

Now we are going to help the business to define the initiatives impact regarding their type. It’s about savings, investments and profits, so, based on that, we will get a list of prioritized initiatives we set the minimum required things to create an agile team, we talk with the main stakeholders and possible team sponsors to make a deep awareness about the minimum required needs to make a successful agile team, so after this setting, we prepare an inception workshop by each initiative or possible teams with the people names regarded with the product/service.

That’s all for now, in the next capsule we will go to the second step reviewing creating and launching initiatives.

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In our last capsule we have check two themes, a Path and the first step of it, in order to build Business Agility, and a “Future State Model of Business Agility”.

Now, in this capsule, we will continue with the first component “Tactical and Strategic Alignment”, flying over an example of a retail company that builds Business Agility.

At this future state model, we have a retail company that has decide to build business agility.

It has three concentric circles; at the exterior circle, we find the team agility level and the client.

At this example we have three stream values; to create a product/service that cross all the organization:

One is focused on Kanban, to operate services at regional level.

The second at the center is a stream value dedicated to build and a launch a product at the market, we are using Scrum & XP practices at the team level to deliver it to the client.

The third service is an electronic service, we are developing an app for the medium business so they can buy directly their products at our market place, we are focused on delivering premium services, for this we are using a Kanban discovery approach, a Kanban delivery and a Scrum to build what does not exist.

Each service is in a pink circle where lives the product/service tactic, we have 3 that govern a delivery term.

Each tactic is aligned to its corresponding strategy. So, they are aligned to the agile product delivery level of the company.

All these strategies are connected to the agile discovery level and a general tactic level, where we find an integration approach guided by  programs and a portfolio level which is connected to the general strategy of the company, the vision or massive transformation purpose.

In order to make an agile alignment between vision, strategy, tactics, an a operational level, we are using agile product management to enable the agile business from the strategy to the operational level and vice versa.

Remember as we advance on building an agile business, we are building capabilities as culture, structure and government so we have to manage the demand and classify all of these guided by a LACE.

That’s all for now, in the next capsule we will continue at this first step reviewing an approach of the current state assessment and a prioritization of the initiatives.

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In our last capsule we have flown over the 5 domains to be transformed in order to have an Agile Business.

Now, in this capsule, we will walk through the objective of an agile transformation. To do this, we are going to build 3 definitions:

1. A business is a recursive relationship (metabolism is  a metaphor that can describe it):

• • Between a construct (concept), a network of people and the environment (market).
  • Where the network stretches around the concept to bring it to life and constantly redefine it based on the interchange of meanings, and also
  • Based on the changing needs of the environment (market).

2. Agile Transformation is focused on changing the way:

• • • What we think and we act in the company.
    • We take advantage of frameworks that made simple the complex reality, decomposing it in fundamental elements.
    • We use them as quality assurance systems in order to take care of the integrity related to:
      • how we think, how we talk, and how we do, so values, principles and practices help US to clarity the objective model that we want to adopt and serve as learning stages to reach habits that make possible results.

3. We make an agile transformation to create agile businesses.

For now, that’s all, in our next capsule we will reinforce some significative topics that we have exposed here.

Thank you very much.

Miguel Martínez, October 16th 2020. 

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