Susan, a senior leader of a 300-person department, wanted to reduce the risks of late deliveries, and respond to customers faster. Susan suspected the managers and teams were too wedded to their plans and not experimenting enough. That meant she needed an agile approach.
But while she had been a part of several supposedly agile transformations over the past decade, not one of them succeeded. Aside from thinking a “traditional agile transformation” was an oxymoron, she was sure that approach would not work with her department.
Susan chose to reduce risk by focusing on adaptability and resilience at all levels. She decided to start with the managers. If that worked, she'd work with the product managers and then the teams.
She hadn't conducted a retrospective with the managers in the six months she'd held this job, so she decided to start there. In the invitation, she asked, “What can we do to learn earlier, regardless of success or failure?”
Retrospective Results
The retrospective yielded several results:
- On a weekly basis, the managers would learn together. They started with weekly article and book discussions, primarily about flow.
- To reduce the risks of late releases, the managers chose to attend every demo. They hoped to learn early about risks.
- And to reduce the risks that the managers caused delays, they would monitor their management decision cycle time.
Susan suspected these three actions would stretch everyone's adaptability and resilience.
Challenges to the Management Learning Cohort
The managers chose a book and prepared for the first week of discussion. But half the managers were not prepared for the second week because of emergencies. Susan suggested they map their decision cycle time to see where they might change their decision-making the next time.
That's when the managers realized their decision times had created several of the emergencies. Instead of learning from a book, the managers discussed the causes of their actions and what to consider the next time.
Susan wasn't happy with the emergencies, but she was happy that the managers were becoming more adaptable and choosing more resilient actions.
Frequent Demos Offer Trust and Information
Several months ago, the teams had stopped performing demos because no one came to them. But the presence of management—to see visual progress—prompted the teams to restart the demos.
Some teams discovered problems at the demos. Some teams could only show failed experiments. And other teams showed finished work that would satisfy the customers.
Susan wasn't worried about “failed” demos—she was worried about defect escapes and incomplete experiments. She didn't want to lose customers because the product had problems.
Once the managers watched the demos, they learned how to ask the teams about their progress. And the managers could see the risks of too much WIP (Work in Progress) when teams didn't finish enough. That feedback to the managers helped the managers rethink their decisions.
The teams and the managers increased their adaptability and resilience because they learned faster.
Their Journey
In the first month, everyone's experience was erratic. But Susan continued to reinforce the idea that resilience and adaptability could reduce risks. That first month, the managers and teams learned the three reframes to reduce risk:
- How to learn to work better.
- To reframe “failure” as learning early.
- To create small experiments so they could learn faster.
The second and third months were still a little rocky. But by the fourth month, the teams had learned to right-size their work. The weekly demos helped managers see that the teams needed less WIP. Their releases became more regular and less error-prone.
By the sixth month, the department had a culture of learning and experimentation. The managers even started to experiment with their retrospectives. Susan was pleased with the adaptability and resilience she saw.
It's been a year of focusing on ways to adapt and be resilient, especially in the face of crises and challenges. But the company has increased its market share, and very few of the customers complain about anything. The pressure is off the teams and the managers—which allows all of them time to experiment with new ideas and new products.
Susan's department still has risks. And because people focus on resilience and adaptability, through learning and practice, everyone is more effective. That was their real agile transformation.
This newsletter touched on all three of the Modern Management Made Easy books: Practical Ways to Lead and Serve Others, Practical Ways to Manage Yourself, and Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization.
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The Q4 2023 Writing Workshop is open for registration. If you want to write better and faster, please check it out. I still have room for three more people.
I published the first iteration of the Project Lifecycles book. That book will help people stop with fake agility and support them as they need to use more agility in any lifecycle.
If you are considering public speaking, please see the self-study workshop for Write a Conference Proposal the Conference Wants and Accepts. Enroll and take it any time you want. If you want my feedback, you can add that at the end of the workshop.
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© 2023 Johanna Rothman
Pragmatic Manager: Vol 20, #9, ISSN: 2164-1196