Solving Problems: An Agile Organization Approach
- 1. Solving Problems: An Agile Approach
- 2. My influences … Growing and selling a successful software company in my 20’s; Spending several days with Christopher Toria Alexander (Pattern Language “founding father”) Working with Matt, Hong, Walt and Daryl figuring out “organizational agility” Turning around a failing Colorado health care broadband network without knowing much about healthcare or networks. Holacracy … led me to this burning question: If you take 5 people and an idea and another 5 people and a different idea what makes one group successful and the other not? It’s not the people and not the idea. What is it?
- 3. Time boxed Iterations Backlog of User Daily Stand-ups Stories Planning Poker It’s the Practices Cross-functional work teams KANBAN board On Site for detailing Customer work Business Driven Development Retrospectives Burn Down Value Stream Charts Mapping
- 4. So long as they are grounded in Agile principles Backlog of User Cross-functional Daily Stand-ups Stories work teams Time boxed Planning Iterations Poker On Site Retrospectives Customer Value Stream Burn Down Mapping Charts Business Driven KANBAN board Development for detailing work
- 5. Dynamic Distributed Steering Decisions Value Driven Big and Visible
- 6. It takes a team….. Leaf for shade Wall to Hose for Rope for keep us watering binding safe Spear for hunting …to see the whole picture
- 7. “Most businesses die from indigestion rather than starvation.” -- Tom Thomison co-Founder HolacracyOne
- 8. So what do we do? We outvote or ignore the contradictory data. We pay our leaders to be filters but unwittingly setup a single point of failure. We make team decisions which often lead to “bloated” actions where we solve more than is needed.
- 9. So what’s the alternative? It’s all about processing tensions… Tension: The felt-sense of a specific gap between current reality and a sensed potential. Chronic Tension: the response to emotional pressure suffered for a prolonged period over which an individual perceives they have no control.
- 10. Processing Tensions: What are we even talking about? Who can make this decision? We’re going in the wrong direction!
- 11. Scaling the Agile Delivery Lead Role at Pillar: Metrics: 1. 2. 3. Projects: 1. 2. 3. Purpose: Create the Best Agile Delivery Leads in the Industry
- 12. Organizational Patterns human scale – evolutionary – value driven Toria Thompson Thank you! 303-746-3161 toria@organizationalpatterns.com
Editor's Notes
- #8: We have no shortage of ideas. We have trouble figuring out which ones to digest.How do we decide what is a good idea?
- #9: 1 - We outvote the one person that has the key perspective that sees something that no one else sees that is needed to keep us moving toward our purpose.2 - We enlist a leader to be the filter but then we have a single point of awareness and a single point of failure.3 – If we’re really advanced we dissect the data as a team and decide what it means. This can be time consuming and frustrating and often leads to “bloated” design.
- #10: Stress is tension that has no outlet. Every tension contains energy, time is limited but energy can be renewed.
- #11: Processing tensions help us to integrate the minimally sufficient perspectives to keep the organization achieving value.
- #12: Proposal: Establish a group of 6 individuals to iterate through 6 weeks of a