Breaking Bad Agile Transformations - Agile 2018

Editor's Notes

• #2: My name is David Morris, and I am a recovering consultant. I need to let go of mistakes I made in the past. Mistakes I believe are all too common. Before my current role as Manager for Enterprise Agile Coaching and the PMO with Fiserv in New Zealand, I worked for consultancies ... helping clients roll out a transformation change plan to reshape their process, structures, and governance to be more agile. Unfortunately these transformations would only get so far, and then stall ... or worse yet, the client would only have so much budget and we would have to move on. Although we approached these with good intent, these were bad agile transformations. About 5 years ago, I woke up to what we were doing, and decided to find out why and maybe what we could do that was better. I went back to school. Literally. I started an MBA with the intent of researching how to break bad agile transformations.
• #3: In my research, I found that there were six key factors to the success of any large-scale change. The first two you would expect: Roles and responsibilities (any changes needed to the organisation structure) and then Process and skills (training in Scrum or SAFe, and all the techniques that go with that). Then to make it a change program instead of just a training program, there needs to be clear vision and communications (why are we doing this, and ensure that everyone knows what’s happening and when). This is where many consultancies, like the ones I used to work for, will stop. This next one was a surprise to me, as it deals with the emotional impact of change, or more scientifically, people’s ‘felt security’. To embark willingly on change, people need to feel just uncomfortable enough to want to move while not being so disturbed they feel at risk. It’s a delicate balance. One that many approaches ignore completely. Next up, we have leadership. Of course we need a leader who can communicate the purpose and inspire trust. More importantly, we also need a broad team of motivated change agents, who will be on the front-line, dealing with challenges as they arise and advocating for the purpose and vision of the transformation. Lastly, we have the approach to the change. Is it appropriate to the organisation, the context, and importantly the outcomes we want? Is their problem space simple or complex? If you’ve been following the visual theme, from Breaking Bad, you might have noticed that these factors also look like elements from the periodic table. Those are not made-up atomic numbers, however, they correlate to the impact each has on the success. As you will have spotted by now, I revealed these to you in reverse order of impact.
• #4: Putting these in the right order, you will see that the change approach actually has the biggest impact of all on the success of a transformation is the approach taken. Nearly double the impact of all the work we do on implementing new processes, skills, and roles combined. That’s really significant! Please note this is not a process or recommended sequence to do these things, it is literally the relative impact each factor has.
• #5: What’s even more interesting to note is that more than 9 out of 10 of the change approaches I uncovered in my research were what we would call formal plan-driven methods. However, I also found a new field emerging, one that applies lean and agile thinking and practices to how we manage change. Some of which we’ve already heard about at this conference. This was like a ‘lightbulb over the head’ moment for me. Of course. How could we ever have thought that following a plan-driven approach to becoming more feedback-driven would work?
• #6: These lean change approaches put people at the centre. Al Shalloway talked yesterday about how resistance to change was refusal to buy into something imposed. This allows those directly affected by the change to co-create and build minimum viable change through incremental experiments. This was starting to look like an approach to good agile transformation.
• #7: At Fiserv, when we started our transformation 2.5 years ago, with support from Leading Agile, we used many lean change principles. Of course, not every idea we tried worked first time. However, that is the nature of experiments, you learn from how it goes. We have learned and I wrote about this in Scrum in easy steps (see chapter 10, where I talk about lean change and transformation). Keep people at the centre and follow a path of co-design and experimentation. I want to leave you with this thought. If you are already on a transformation or are planning to start one, consider one of these lean change approaches. They are not silver bullets, but they will fit better your intended outcomes, and you will bring more people on the way. You can find my masters research on researchgate at ~ http://bit.ly/agileparadoxpaper My books are available in print and ebook formats from all the usual outlets.