Andy Carmichael is the Managing Director and Principal Trainer at Huge IO. He has co-authored ‘Essential Kanban Condensed’ with David J Anderson. In this interview, he talks about why Business Agility is being talked about so much these days. The pace of change is one of the reasons we need to talk about it. However, why should business be Agile is the most important question for any organisation. Andy also goes on describing the challenges to achieve business Agility.
Interviewee: Andy Carmichael (Co-Author, Essential Kanban Condensed)
Andy brings wide and profound experience of software management in multiple industry sectors. He is co-author of “Essential Kanban Condensed” with David Anderson, the definitive guide to Kanban, senior agile coach and trainer in major Agile initiatives, and experienced manager and director in IT businesses,
Andy is an expert in applying agile frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban, and versions of these frameworks at scale, particularly Kanban ESP (he is a certified KCP), DAD and LeSS. He is known in the community through his writing and speaking on development and management methods, and he has co-authored several books, including “Better Software Faster” (2002) with Dan Haywood, which introduced an agile modelling approach to development.
Interviewer: Noopur Pathak (Chief Media Editor, INNOVATION ROOTS)
This edition features Teodora Bozheva is the Co-Founder, and Principal Trainer and Coach at Berriprocess. She has spoken in about organisational challenges to Business Agility.
Let’s read;
Q1. Organisations are in tremendous pressure to achieve business agility. How to cope up with the pressure to achieve business agility?
Teodora: The changing market, technologies and customer expectations are forcing the companies to develop skills that allow them to adapt quickly and deliver value faster than their competitors.
Recent statistics (State of Agile, May-2019) show that 97% of the companies are adopting Agile methods. I am pretty sure that some companies are doing this because they see Agile as a fad. Others, however, realize that they need to grow their business agility, if they want to survive.
I would like to talk about the companies who are really interested in improving their adaptability. My experience shows that there are three key factors that make this possible:
Obtaining fast feedback from the field
Ability to make decisions quickly even with incomplete information
Leadership and courage to execute the decisions
Obtaining fast feedback from the field is important for getting the pulse of the context. All well focused visualization techniques, information radiators and feedback cadences help to obtain fast feedback
Decisions are made fast when there is a clear and shared purpose and company’s management is aligned around it. It is Management’s duty to unite the business parties that have to make decisions for the good of the business.
Executing decisions, especially when the necessary information is incomplete requires courage and leadership to start small, collect needed feedback and use it to get further.
Developing business agility starts from the management of an enterprise, not from the teams. That is, the management has to be committed to foster these skills in the company, lead the initiative and help the rest of the people to understand and join it.
Q2. It is not enough to change technology, practices and services if people are not able to change their mindset. Share your opinion on the same.
Teodora: Indeed, technologies are important. They facilitate the adoption of new practices of work and management, the generation of information necessary for analyzing the current situation and making decisions, as well as the delivery of valuable products and services in shorter times. However, if people do not understand the purpose behind the introduction of the new technology solutions, until they get motivated to take advantage of it for themselves and for the business, little effect will be observed. Therefore, I truly believe that all of us who are involved and are leading business agility development initiatives have to work very actively on creating the right motivation that would bring to progress, demonstrate benefits and generate higher motivation for improvement.
Q3. What are the technological challenges existing to achieve business agility.
Teodora: The most frequent challenge I face is selecting the right infrastructure (collection of tools) for managing work. It is curious that companies tend to select “free” tools or very limited ones to save costs without evaluating the extra costs and time their employees spend because of tools’ limitations. So, in their intent to reduce time to market, cost and increase efficiency often I see decisions that lead to larger delivery time, higher costs and lower efficiency precisely because of selecting an inappropriate tool.
Q4. According to you what is the impact of Digital Transformation upon the Agile community?
Teodora: Definitely the Digital Transformations hype grows the Agile community. This does not necessarily mean the community of people with the right mindset, not simply recipe implementers, but in general I see it as very positive. The cultural shift takes time.
Q5. How do you begin with planning for change?
Teodora: I always start with understanding the “why” and the “now” of the companies – what motivates them to introduce new practices and habits and what is their current situation. Since David J. Anderon and I developed the Kanban Maturity Model I use it a lot for creating this initial understanding of the organisations, and defining a roadmap with them and for them. At the same time this helps me validate the model and make it more concrete and easier for use for other people as well.
Q6. Is there any way to determine if the change we are pursuing is valuable or not?
Teodora: In my opinion there are two groups of indicators that show us, if we are producing the desired effects:
The business outcomes: improvement in the organization’s capability to deliver products and services that meet and exceed customer expectations
Internal organizational health indicators showing us, if the improvements are sustainable.
The Fit-for-purpose framework developed by David J. Anderson and Alexei Zheglov includes useful guidelines for driving and evaluating organizational and business decisions.
Teodora Bozheva is the Co-Founder, and Principal Trainer and Coach at Berriprocess, a training and coaching company based in Bilbao, Spain. She has more than 25 years of experience in the field of Software Development. She has personally undergone all the challenges in managing large projects and meeting tough schedules with limited resources. For more than 15 years, she has been providing training and coachings on Kanban, Lean, CMMI and Agile to companies in different industries. With insights and practical guidance, she helps them combine and adjust the methods for their unique contexts to improve their management practices, deliver better products and services faster, and adopt continuous improvement culture.
