Following my previous post on Agile Fluency someone asks me:
Good evening Pablo
I just read your article “PERSPECTIVE RATHER THAN FRAMEWORK: AGILE FLUENCY”, I would like to know where you would place Open Agile Adoption in this classification? at the fourth star with Holacracy and company?
If I draw a parallel with the company where I work:
1st star: Scrum is mastered, applied to the letter as taught to us by Claude Aubry for two years. We migrated to Kanban 2 years ago.
2nd star: We do continuous integration, quality is there and with a smile.
3rd star: Enhanced relationship with salespeople to understand the need, feedback and opportunities. We can still improve on the Lean-Startup side.
4th star: We no longer have hierarchy for 3 years and we use Open Agile Adoption. We held our 8th open space forum at the end of March.
Is my parallel good for the 4th star?
First, thank you
First, thank you for this feedback, which before answering, seems healthy and joyful to me, therefore a sign of good health! And then an organization that already has eight Open Agile Adoption under its belt is not common ! Congratulations.
My reading of your words
1st star?
Scrum? Kanban? They are only means. Frameworks, very sharp, very efficient when you can or when you know how to handle them, apply them, but they remain means. For this first star you should ensure that when you produce something it’s always done from the angle of the value generated: what value does it bring? For example: Will this feature or initiative make us gain market share? Will we save time by doing this? What benefits do we get from this activity ? Does it work? Work? Does it bring us something ? In time? In market share? In satisfaction?
You could very well do top-notch Scrum but like the Shadoks only achieve useless things. So for level 1 you should answer before anything else to this value focus. It’s said that ~50% of agile teams reach this level.
- It’s sometimes difficult to define what’s hidden under the term value
- save time, gain market share, users, etc. But it can also be learning value. We know more about…
2nd star?
Quality and smiles. Very good. Continuous integration. Very good. The question is as follows: Can you deliver when it makes sense for the market? When customers suddenly expect something , when an event occurs (new competitor, technological disruption, new market, etc.) Are you able to deliver the value you’ve produced? A value that potentially responds to this event? When you’re told: we need to release this now, you don’t answer: we can release it in three months, no you’re ready to release it? If yes, that’s level two. So yes it requires technical mastery that makes the technique invisible. Here we know how to deliver value when it has value. It’s said that ~30% of agile teams reach this level.
3rd star?
An enhanced relationship with salespeople. That’s very good. Ideally beyond that: with end users, those who are impacted by your activity, your product, those for whom you designed this product, this activity. So an ability to have a real dialogue with the actors in your domain. Have real knowledge of the actors in this domain. Have lots of measurements: this is used, this isn’t, this yes but only at this moment for this reason, etc. I released two variations of the feature, the second one is most used, why? For this reason because we questioned our users. And an ability not to go too far, not to invest too much before obtaining these measurements and the learning related to your action, delivery, etc. An ability to stop tracks that prove disappointing. So yes a level very linked to Lean Startup and Design Thinking. Here we know how to optimize value. It’s said that ~10% of agile teams reach this level.
4th star?
Often the need to generate autonomous meaningful elements carrying value has required having autonomous and multidisciplinary teams. We’ve often broken down silos to recompose teams. This was accentuated when we wanted to optimize value. We created teams around a meaningful objective: for example not we are the production deployment team, but we are the team that manages the entire customer relationship. Autonomy, multidisciplinarity, meaning, framework: this has spawned models like holacracy, sociocracy, feature teams Spotify-style, etc.
Whether your model is flat or not is not my question, even though the fact that it’s fairly flat implies there’s no need for pyramidal validation, that authorization is implicit, and therefore autonomy. Does your model give autonomy and carry a meaning that allows having a value focus? Is each question given with a perspective on the entire organization? These are the questions for this level four. Here we know how to optimize the system to respond even better to the underlying levels. It’s said that ~3% of agile teams reach this level.
In several places
Can I be in several places? Without having the feeling of having truly completed a level? Yes it’s entirely possible. It’s however a shame not to have gone far enough in completing a level because you don’t really reap the benefits.
During the raid agile with Claude Aubry, we conduct a workshop around Agile Fluency (inspired by Agile42) that we’ve adapted somewhat and renamed we’re gonna groove, we talk about it here. We review the practices of participants or addressed during the raid and we try to classify them by level but also by acquisition (to acquire, acquired, being acquired, not desired). This allows visualizing (in a Kanban) a map of practices and highlighting the investments we wish to make and where.
And I have two or three stars (I don’t remember anymore) in skiing, and I enjoy myself, no need to chase the chamois. Remember the idea that you need to choose a good destination, but not necessarily the “highest” one: Agile Fluency, a perspective.
And Open Agile Adoption? aka OpenSpace Agility
And Open Agile Adoption in all this? Agile Open Adoption, which Dan Mezick now calls OpenSpace Agility, is not a level, nor a target, but a way to conduct change towards such or such place. Dan Mezick will come back to talk to us about OpenSpace Agility in France this autumn, I’ll tell you more as soon as possible.