4. – feelings of anxiety and discomfort resulting from simultaneously
holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or
sets of assumptions”
Source: https://flowchainsensei.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/the-nine-principles-of-organisational-psychotherapy/
Photo: Contradiction by wornish
“Many organisations, particularly
in times of stress or change, suffer
acutely from ‘organisational
cognitive dissonance’
13. Capability 3
Capability 4
Capability 5
Capability 6
Capability 7
Capability 8
Capability 9
Capability 10
Backlog Doing
Capability 2
Capability 1
Next
Team 1
Team 2
DONE
No. 1 priority capability - which teams are required to deliver it
end-to end?
Teams 1 and 2, in this case
Capability 11
Capability 12
Backlog of customer capabilities, ordered by value
14. Capability 1
Team 1
Team 2
Capability 2
Team 1
Team 3
Capability 3
Capability 4
Capability 5
Capability 6
Capability 7
Capability 8
Capability 9
Capability 10
Capability 11
Capability 12
Backlog DoingNext DONE
Next priority capability also requires Team 1, but Team 1 is
focused on a higher priority capability - leave them alone!
If Team 3 starts without Team 1, they may end up either having
to interrupt Team 1 (who are working on a higher priority
feature), or leaving Capability 2 unfinished to start another
Let’s put a blocked sign on the capability to signify that a lower
priority capability is being selected
15. Capability 1
Team 1
Team 2
Capability 2
Team 1
Team 3
Capability 3 Team 3
Capability 4
Capability 5
Capability 6
Capability 7
Capability 8
Capability 9
Capability 10
Capability 11
Capability 12
Backlog DoingNext DONE
Team 3, and every team in fact, should pull in the highest
priority capability for which they have no dependency on a
team working on a higher priority capability
16. Capability 1
Team 1
Team 2
Capability 2
Team 1
Team 3
Capability 3 Team 3
Capability 4
Team 4
Capability 5 Team 6
Team 5
Capability 6
Capability 7
Capability 8
Capability 9
Capability 10
Capability 11
Capability 12
Backlog DoingNext DONE
Capability 4
Team 4
Capability 5 Team 6
Team 5
Capability 3 Team 3
Teams pull in work
17. Capability 3
Capability 1
Capability 4
Capability 5
Capability 6
Team 4
Team 5
Team 6
Capability 1 is “Done”, so
teams 1 and 2 are available to
pull in the next highest priority
capability that they have the
ability to work on
Team 3
Capability 2
Team 1
Team 3
Capability 7 Team 2
Capability 8
Capability 9
Capability 10
Capability 11
Capability 12
Backlog DoingNext DONE
Team 1 should work on top priority
(blocked) capability
Teams 1 and 3 should now co-
ordinate to put focus on the higher
priority capability
18. Capability 3
Capability 1
Capability 4
Capability 5
Capability 6
Team 4
Team 5
Team 6
Team 3
Capability 2 Team 1
Capability 7 Team 2
Capability 8
Team 1
Team 4
Capability 9
Team 2
Team 6
Capability 10 Team 3
Capability 11 Team 5
Capability 12
Backlog DoingNext DONE
21. ★ Company vision
★ Customer capabilities
★ “How the work works”
★ Synchronise as a company
★ Iterate as a company
So, what is the point?
Notas del editor
There will always be a desire to get better - this is how execs try and motivate staff
We tend to default to Agile and Scrum, but is that actually wanted?
In this talk I’m going to argue that we’re missing the point by talking about being/doing/scaling agile
We need to identify what we’re trying to improve and why - I will give you some tips to help you do that
Stand up if your company or team is involved in some kind of Agile adoption?
Stay standing up if you know who started it
Stay standing if you know why, i.e. what they’re trying to achieve
Development teams default to Agile, but do we even know if that is what the leaders in the organisation want?
Requires organisation to change, but have we asked? If they don’t want it, are we likely to be successful?
Mixture of mindsets within the organisation, even within “agile” people
Causes perpetual headbutting when trying to improve how the work works
Local optimisation - We can’t work together due to org cog diss, so we focus on our own team, our own goals
Every team is trying to justify its existence - showing they are efficient and not the problem
Teams and departments are not in step with each other - they are locally optimising
Will improving our team improve the company’s results?
What is the goal?
Someone, somewhere, wants something systemic to improve. But what? And why?
True improvement can only be from the company’s perspective
Provide strategic clarity - What are we trying to achieve as a company?
New customers? NPS? Enter new markets?
Short/medium/long term
Knowing this will help every employee make good decisions daily
Define ALL product development work as customer capabilities which are believed will deliver company goals
Ensures we are always focused on meeting our customers’ needs
Order these capabilities regularly in accordance with current company goals
Need to know how the company leaders want things to work - do they care about agility? Do they believe in self-organisation?
Is lean/agile appropriate? What is the “right” mindset?
To be effective we must minimise org cog diss
Shows collective mindset of organisation, and desired mindset of leadership
Shows if lean/agile is appropriate, and which areas require most intervention
Gives people a decision to make - can’t survive in system with “wrong” mindset
Extreme swings require more drastic intervention
Align company around what is important NOW
Companies have lots of goals
How do we make sure people are focused on the most important ones at the right time?
Do folks understand the goals? Are any of them in conflict?
Synchronise dependencies
Feature teams
Push dependencies down the priority queue - here’s an example
Coordinating:
This might be a simple matter of waiting for the other team(s) to finish what they are working on (if it's close)
Augmenting teams temporarily
Pausing lower priority work.
The teams can decide what's best based on the situation.
To be really effective at achieving company’s goals we need the ability to learn and adapt to new information, both internally and externally
Once we are synchronised, we can do this by iterating
We can embrace changing requirements, thus being more customer-focused
Don’t need to keep spending time and money on a solution we have learned to be wrong - “pivot”
Systemically avoiding risk of sunk cost fallacy
Why science the shit out of everything? Is science the point? Potatoes? Survival?
Is being/doing/scaling Agile the point?
Agile, Scrum etc. can help us become more effective at delivering quality, valuable software early and often to customers - but they are a means to an end, not the end itself - when you start talking about scaling these things, that becomes even truer
What are we trying to improve? What is our goal? How will we know we are improving what we want to improve?
If we can’t answer these questions, how likely are we to be successful?
What are YOU trying to improve?