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Off the Grid Agile Teams

ACM — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 15:02:47 +0000

You must have heard the benefits of authorizing agile teams, from many sources. Everyone may understand different things from and come up with different explanations about the term ‘authorized team’ that brings to mind different concepts ranging from the team’s self-management of its duties to acceptance of a new member to the team, measurement of its performance, and selection of its own leader. We cannot help saying that autonomy is a feature that is not only granted but also gained by giving confidence. By the way, it should also be borne in mind that extension scope of powers in teams is associated with the team’s maturity. Duty of the leader is not to grant more powers to the teams in the course of time, but to contribute to the maturity of the teams and help them gain new powers by increasing their competencies. In other words, it is almost like raising a child since it requires much effort. Just like parents who have the role of provider of the necessary environment by removing obstacles and intervening, when necessary, when raising children and giving them powers, leaders should also assume such a role in leading their teams to maturity. In teams led by leaders who are not easy-going individuals, it is difficult to contribute to the maturity of the teams and to keep the team members’ adult-level communication going. Moreover, sometime companies are just like secondary education institutions which are home to angry teachers and students as well as psychological violence. (Eric Berne, Transactional analysis, parent-child transaction). And of course, such organizations exhibit very low flexibility in the face of change. So, what is autonomy…

It would not be wrong to say it is effort, endeavour and love…

You may have heard the Off the Grid life. Life away from the city network becomes more popular with the pandemic… You can get electricity, water, sewage services without depending on the community. It is kind of an authorization by the state where you can proceed step by step. Of course, electricity seems to be the principal issue. In a sense, we can call Grid as an autonomous area created for oneself by leaving the Grid. (House construction, budget, tools and equipment are provided by the Grid).

In order for further clarification of what many organizations call an authorized, autonomous team, I think the Off the Grid Agile Team concept will be useful. This is not so different from what we tried to explain several times before with the concepts of garage, stat-up, Agile Team etc. The name is a bit different, and in my opinion, the most critical point is that the team is provided with a budget; you are told that you have an investment budget of 2 Million and your goal is X. You will cover your own expenses such as your salary, tools and equipment you will use, your licenses, premiums etc. from this budget. Be Off the Grid. Let us construct the house and then you can complete it and we will support you wherever you need. Here, Grid means the remaining of the company. We will see what you provide at the end of the day and it should be radical and transparent. Of course, it is not so easy to achieve this in an instant, but we can call it “a good goal” when this becomes the objective with the efforts of the leaders.

I have observed that the obsession with productivity, budget and expenditure of almost all the companies we provide support with is the greatest obstacle to team autonomy. I think the difficulty in breaking the parent-child relation is also associated with this. In fact, in classic organizations, the duty of the manager is to manage for productivity-budget. Therefore, when the team cannot assume budget management, we can say that maturation has somewhat slowed down or come to a standstill. It goes without saying that stereotypical opinions such as the idea that not everybody can manage a budget or invest money in proper channels or demonstrate financial literacy etc. make even the discussion of this issue difficult. On the contrary, in the current system we live in, all people are able to manage their own budgets and hence they can manage the budget to be given by a company, subject to certain limitations and rules and with the support they need to improve their competencies in this regard.

Considering that it will make a great difference for companies, especially the ones desiring to make innovative and explorative works, to make their teams autonomous in terms of investment budget, I tried to explain the Off the Grid Agile Team concept below. This is only an idea for now, but we know that there are many firms with similar applications such as 3M, Lego, Buutzorg, Semco, Xerox, Haier etc.

Off The Grid Agile Team

What is it?

Off the Grid Agile Teams can be established to produce a new product that can completely change the industry, test a hypothesis or improve a process and they work based on Agile principles. See: Agile Manifesto. So, what are their features?

Have a budget

Yes, they have a budget. What I mean here is the ability to allocate a budget to the team, which will also cover the salaries. In other words, if such team consists of 8 members, the management can allocate a budget of 2M for 6 months to this team by specifying what they expect from such team in relation to a certain product. The team is free to purchase any product or equipment they desire, make any travel they wish, i.e. they are free to spend the budget responsibly. (Here, the limitation may be the framework defined by the company).

Free and autonomous

They are not only autonomous but also free to make their own decisions. In such case, it is the choice of the team to decide who to include in or remove from the team. There is no approval process about which vehicle to buy or which visual material to use etc. But, since they are autonomous, the organizational limits should be explained clearly. They should know what not to do, and not what to do. And I think this is sufficient to create the framework and main rules of the work. It is so critical for them to make a contract with the remaining of the company and abide by such contract. These limitations should also be questionable, open to discussion, and modifiable.

Competent

They have the necessary competence. This is so classic… And not so different from what we express all the time. The only thing I would add here is that; if you claim that you are very good and work with the best, try to include in such teams the best experts in the field not only from the company but also from around the world. Digital environment already facilitates this… Let also the team include such people by taking into consideration, and not adhering to, the organizational security policies. (Here, I say not adhering to the security policies since they are prepared for the lowest standards and awareness level). This way, these teams can also become more attractive to people in the company, thus increasing the work motivation in these teams.

Transparent

Information such as the actions taken and not taken, the outcomes, outputs, plans, expenditures etc. should be shared transparently with the stakeholders (and in my opinion, it seems more appropriate to say ‘partner’ rather than ‘stakeholder’ in such a structure).

FAQ

Part time – Full time?

Full time members are the best, but if this is not possible, it is useful to determine norms and routines as if actually working Part-time at a different company. In other words; we are talking about rules such as working in a certain project/team for 3 days of the week, i.e. Monday, Wednesday, Friday and thus minimizing the non-productivity that may result from other works.

Performance?

The team can make its own decision in this respect; it is not even necessary to measure anything since the budget will have already been allocated. It is allocated to the teams though, and not to individuals. The only need is to develop a feedback culture in the team.

To which situations it suits?

Initially, it is a good fit for innovative products/services. But, if it is improved and becomes sustainable by the company, why not apply this also to the operation?

What to expect when the project is completed?

The priority is the products/services, not the project. Therefore, what we are talking about here is a concept that has a life cycle, is open to continuous improvement, is alive, and has an operational aspect.

At the beginning, the team must in all cases be advised and clearly told about the alternatives in the case of change to the size of the investment in this field or the general investment decision, upon completion of the work. Below is an example.

If the product/service is successful, discussions may be held with the team to improve and maintain the product.
If the product/service will be terminated, but the team is performing well and is willing, a new product/service may be developed with the same method, thereby creating a different story.
If the product will be terminated and the team is being dissolved, there will not be a big problem since the conditions of such return will have been discussed at the beginning.

But, would the ones returning from Off the Grid not feel bad?

In my opinion, this type of concern is almost like “putting an idea into one’s head”. “Let’s not raise the awareness of the people”. I think such initiatives represent a good “challenge” for the company and company leaders. The trick here is to communicate the issue sincerely and clearly, to minimize any room for questions within the organization. This may be another challenge for those who spend years making decisions behind closed doors and execute these decisions by force or by selling their ideas.

Let’s see whether here they can say “Challenge Accepted!” as Barney utters very often in the series “How I Met Your Mother”

But what will the other people in the organization think?

Yes, they may see this risky and unfair at first, saying “come on now”. But, these journeys are somewhat like the first journeys to the space… Although it seems easy today, in the 50s and 60s, you may not have found too many people willing to put themselves in the shoes of Gagarin or Armstrong. Or think about the adventurers who travelled from Europe to America, and even to San Francisco, the furthest point of America… Such adventure-loving spirit willing to fight against the unknown brought the current recognition to the Silicon Valley. So, what we always need is a little journey to the unknown as well as some inspiration, motivation and magic. And also to brave agile leaders who can meet this need…

Note: If this letter makes you say “come on now”, “it is not possible in our company”, “not realistic”, “how can it be done?”, then it achieved its purpose. Just think about how we also had the same attitude towards many Agile concepts in the past.

Ahmet Akdağ

Agility Consultant

The post Off the Grid Agile Teams appeared first on ACM.

From Charismatic Leader to Agile Leader

ACM — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 10:47:27 +0000

I tried to define this new leadership concept in my previous article titled Agile Leader. Briefly, I had put forth a transformation that evolves from operation focus to human focus. In this article, I’d like to briefly share two major challenges currently encountered by managers in their journey of transformation.

The fear of feeling useless

In the current structure, managers are so heavily involved within the operation that I prefer to call them “foreman managers” in this sense. Therefore, we see that the current managers feel emptiness when they start to leave the operation to the team. Perhaps this might be perceived as a comforting element in the beginning, but we in fact speak of an emptiness that makes one feel useless after a while. Using this uneasiness for transformation is the key. You know what they say; important changes start with a bit of stomachache. So, managers should shift the focus to the topics I mention in my previous article, such as developing themselves, ensuring transparency, developing their team, and create themselves afresh. Agility is a talent of renewal and managers must lead the renewal.

Being able to stop intervening and producing answers

Again, currently, producing answers is the easy part of the job for the management team that is too heavily involved within the operation. Of course, this is the easy part not only for the management but sometimes also for the teams. Indeed, receiving the answer and direction and proceeding on a path accordingly means not taking accountability. Therefore, it is likely that a manager who gives the answers every time may not ensure a sense of ownership in her/his team. So, the leader should constantly remind herself: what questions can I ask to increase the awareness and sense of ownership in the teams? This is a new habit; asking questions instead of giving answers. And frankly, the only way to acquire this new habit is practicing it frequently. If the manager is willing to in the beginning, and thereafter insistent on, moving away from being the answerer, increasing the sense of ownership in the teams, and letting the team feed off her/his questions, then such manager can easily overcome this process.

It should be remembered that no organization can evolve beyond the perspectives and world views of its own leaders. Therefore, the success of the transformation is related to the development mindset of the leaders in the company and subsequently of all individuals therein. Hence, it is important that individuals can reflect on their own actions. For this, the managers should work on their own awareness, receive feedback frequently, and be open to and feed off external factors. If you cannot get out of the intensive tempo you created only in your company and the similar personal circle, then sorry to say this but unfortunately it means you have “become a dinosaur”! You cannot develop yourself by staying all the time in the comfort zone you have gotten used to.

In summary, a successful Agile Leader must invest in her/his own intellectual capacity. Do not be one of those typical, old-fashioned managers who say that they cannot participate in 1 full-day training because of being too busy, or who complain of not having time to spend in conferences or external communities again by using the excuse of being too busy!

Mehmet Yitmen

Agility Consultant

The post From Charismatic Leader to Agile Leader appeared first on ACM.

Agile Project Management

ACM — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 10:00:17 +0000

In this short article I’ll try to share some tips and tricks how in particular Scrum Framework can help you to manage your projects more effectively.

To start with, Scrum by definition is a framework to address complex problems and is widely used in product context. There is a role called Product Owner, things you will do about the product is kept as a Product Backlog and so on. So, can Scrum be used in project context and would that be fine ? Please note, I am neither here suggesting to take a project approach instead of a product approach, nor I will be discussing the differences between the two. This article intends to help people to take an incremental step towards using Scrum in an environment that they might be more comfortable with.

Right or wrong, some organisations build their business model on top of delivering projects to their customers. They are paid when they deliver the agreed upfront scope to the customer within a defined budget and/or timeline. Likewise some organisations manage all their internal initiatives as projects – they might be doing annual planning, internal contracts and so on. Organisations might take different approaches when managing projects. I’ve been an Agile consultant for quite a long time now and when I see an opportunity for an organisation replace their project approach with product approach, I always share my perspective. However moving to a product mindset is not always easy and might require organisational change along with other changes (contract management is a good candidate for instance) too. The organisations I’ve been helping so far think Scrum is a framework(in fact a method) that can help them to manage their projects more effectively. Although I explain them Scrum is much more than this, it is also true that Scrum can help you to increase your Agility in project context. How?

Product Backlog Management

Projects tend to have a fixed scope, so think about whether the scope can be agreed on at goal level. Rather than focusing on the features, focusing on the needs, users and define a goal based list could be a good start to be able to flex the scope. Besides, can the scope be negotiated during the project execution? How can this be incorporated to the contract? Some organisations craft their contracts which allow them to replace features with the same size features as long as the work hasn’t started on the “to be replaced” features yet.

Accountabilities

Scrum defines 3 distinct accountabilities.

In a nutshell, Product Owner (PO) who is accountable for the “Why” and What” we are building. She does this by keeping a transparent live Product Backlog (PBL). PBL replaces project scope document. (I am not going to go through how to effectively keep/manage a PBL in this blog). PO also primarily focuses on stakeholder management to identify and verify the customers needs.

Scrum Master who is accountable for the effectiveness of the Scrum team (your project team in this instance). How does she do that? By removing obstacles, facilitating the decisions, creating transparency, helping the team to adopt Agile principles, values and so on.

Developers who works on delivering certain aspect of the product. They deliver stuff complying with certain standarts in Scrum such as Definition of Done.

So in short, can these roles be adopted in project organisations? The short answer is yes. These three accountabilities are what you would need to deliver a successful project (however you define the success). Do you really need any other roles in projects?

Feedback Loops/Events in Scrum

Scrum has predefines feedback loops all of which are contained in a time-box called Sprint which is a maximum duration of 1 month. All Scrum events can easily be adapted in projects. Sprints will increase the transparency of the progress and will accommodate all inspect/adapts. While Sprint planning allows shorter planning cycles, Sprint reviews will provide transparency to stakeholders and allow them to give feedback earlier. While Daily Scrums will allow the developers to synch and plan their days towards Sprint goal, Sprint retrospectives will enable the whole Scrum team to run a more frequent lessons learnt hence allow the team to inspect their processes for the ongoing project rather than the future projects.

Empiricism

Scrum is built on empirical process control model which is based on frequent inspection and adaptation. What needs to be inspected and adapted in projects ? Just some questions you may wonder:
Are we really on track with our plan (scope, time, budget). If not what can be done? Can we have an empirical/adaptive planning instead ?How would our customers benefit from that ? What would we lose?
Do our customers/users still need these features ? How can I make sure whether they need them or not?
How can I accommodate the new customer needs and requests with a win-win situation without spending too much time on the change management?
How can I change my ineffective processes fast without being stuck with them long time?

Empiricims requires a behavioural/mindset change too and in Scrum that is supported mainly by adopting Scrum Values (openness, courage, respect, commitment, focus). These values creates trust which is a fundamental component to have for empirical mindset/approach. Can this be adopoted by project teams ? Absolutely yes, might be harder to achieve but is well worth the effort.

Summary

In this short article I tried to explain how Scrum can be exploited in projects. Using Scrum will not only help you to manage your projects more effectively but will also change your perspective how to approach projects. By using Scrum effectively you will eliminate most of your waste comparing traditional project management methods.

Hope this inspires people dealing with projects. Maybe this could also be a good step towards migrating to a product mindset where the main focus would be the customer/user value rather than scope/time/budget 🙂

Adopting Scrum at project level could also be an option for organisations willing to experiment Scrum before scaling it.

Alper Gürbüz

Agile Consultant

The post Agile Project Management appeared first on ACM.

What is Agile?

ACM — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 13:05:26 +0000

What is Agile? Agility is the ability of an organization to adapt to new conditions and change its course of direction to create new business opportunities.

Why Agile?

The most significant concepts that define today’s world are the extraordinary speed of change, complexity and uncertainty of the future. Therefore, the key factors that determine the success of the organizations may be summarized as the ability to adapt to change, address complexity and minimize uncertainty through an empirical approach.

In short, agility is a paradigm shift in the way of working

As the most established agility report, 14th of “State of Agile Report” was published in May 2020. According to the questionnaire responded by more than 40 thousand professionals worldwide, the most significant benefits of agility at the organizations have been listed as belowhttps://stateofagile.com/#ufh-i-615706098-14th-annual-state-of-agile-report/7027494" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">¹

Ability to manage changing priorities - 70%

Project visibility - 65%

Business - IT Compatibility - 65%

Delivery speed/ Market supply time - 60%

Team motivation - 59%

Increasing team productivity - 58%

Project risk mitigation - 51%

Project predictability - 50%

What is Agile Manifesto?

Agile Manifesto and 12 Principles of Agile Software Development were created as a result of the industry frustration encountered in the 1990s. During this period changing business requirements, add-on features requested by customers and technological advancements led to substantial delays or cancellation of many large-scale projects, causing frustration among all stakeholders.

Then software was predominantly developed using the waterfall model which failed to address the emerging unmet needs of customers due to accelerating speed of change.

17 software development gurus including Jon Kern, Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, Arie van Bennekum and Alistair Cockburn convened to search for more productive ways to develop software at a ski center in Utah in 2001. As an outcome of their gatherings, they reached consensus and documented Agile Manifesto & 12 principles of Agile Software Development:

“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Through this work we have come to value:

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”²

What are Agile Values?

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

This value of Agile Manifesto emphasizes attaching more importance on communication with customers. There are many things that customers would like to ask and it is the team members’ responsibility to address all the questions and requests coming from the customers as quickly as possible.
Working software over comprehensive documentation

In the past, the focus was largely on correct documentation of each phase of the project, rather than the project itself. So much so that it has been widely seen that an appropriate documentation was made at the risk of the final product. Agile values specify that the first and foremost important task of the project team is to meet the final deliveries determined by the customers.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Agile principles require involvement of customers in every phase of the project. Waterfall approach or conventional methodologies allow customers to negotiate only before and after the project. This resulted in waste of both time and resources. If customers are involved in the loop during the development process, the team members may ensure that the final product meets all the requirements of the customer.
Responding to change over following a plan

In contrast to the methodologies used in the past, agile values stand against detailed plans established before starting the project and sticking to the plan, no matter what the circumstances are. Conditions may change and sometimes the customers may request new features for the final product that may require a change in the project scope. In such cases, the project teams should adapt to the emerging conditions rapidly in order to deliver a high quality product and ensure 100% customer satisfaction.

What are Agile Principles?

Twelve principles provide guidance for the methodologies listed under “Agile Movement”. These principles define a culture in where change is welcome and customers become the focus of business. As Alistair Cockburn -one of the signatories of Agile Manifesto- describes that it demonstrates the purpose of the movement, which is to develop software compatible with the needs of customers.

12 Principles of Agile Software³

1- Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Customers become happier when they receive the working software frequently rather than waiting for long periods between versions.

2- Changing requirements should be accepted even in late stages of the software development process. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

Ability to prevent delays in case of a change of requirement or feature request.

3- Working software must be delivered frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Shorter timescales are preferred.

Continuous delivery of working software is aimed.

4- Business process owners and developers must work together every day throughout the project.

When the business process owner and technical team is in harmony, better decisions are made.

5- Projects should be built around motivated individuals. They should be given the environment and support they need, and trusted for the accomplishment of the job.

In contrast to disengaged teams, motivated teams are far more likely to deliver their best jobs.

6- The most efficient and effective method of information exchange within a development team is face-to-face communication.

When the development team is at the same place, the communication becomes more successful.

7- Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Providing functional software to the customer is the most fundamental factor that measures progress.

8- Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant work pace continuously.

The teams establish a repeatable and sustainable work pace for the delivery of software and repeat it for each version.

9- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

Correct skills and good design; ensures that the team keeps the velocity, improves the product continuously and addresses the change.

10- Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done, is essential.

For the present, development to the extent that the job is complete.

11- The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organized teams.

Talented and motivated team members, who have decision-making power, take ownership, communicate regularly with other team members, offer high quality products and share their ideas.

12- At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more productive and effective, and adapts accordingly.

Personal development, progress improvement, developing skills and techniques help the team members to work more productively.

The objective of Agile is to create sustained value in a customer-oriented manner despite the continuous change, increasing complexity and uncertainty. The customer always guides the teams directly or indirectly. As far as teams that could produce end to end value experience the impact that they have created for the end-user, this innovative working fashion becomes more meaningful and this is the very point where miracles emerge.

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Responses from ACM Agile Consultants to the question “What is Agile?”

It means testing the accuracy of the assumptions despite the existence of a vision and plan, and by taking small steps towards reaching this vision; knowing that a change of direction may be required after checking your surrounding and course of events at each step you take and pivoting towards the recognized need without saying that we have made big plans and the assumptions were very logical, changing your vision wherever required, remembering that there is no point to reach and agility is a journey and using Agile manifesto as compass during this journey.

Umut Arısoy

Agile Consultant

“Capacity to produce the fastest and high quality value for the customer by ensuring adaptation to all the variables, either internal or external, without losing people-orientation.”

Duygu Balcı

Agile Consultant

“Everything about yesterday
has gone with yesterday.
Today, it is needed to say new things”

said dear Rumi. Actually, change is our routine. It existed yesterday, it also exists today. It will always be, and what is more at full gallop. The frequency of change never remains the same, it increases continuously. That being the case, it becomes even more difficult to content oneself with what belonged to yesterday and to reach the correct target by moving forward in terms of accepting the future. Sometimes it becomes impossible. Now, the paths are thornier, foggier and the route changes constantly. But, let’s not sink into despair, it is possible to disperse the fog, recognize the thorns early and explore new paths at an early stage. Actually, this is what Agile culture serves for. Because, being wigglier, more dynamic and more flexible allows staying alive as well as being an explorer. If you are able to adapt your rhythm by listening to the heart beats of change constantly; if you are able to make value production constant by putting value under focus while doing this; if you concern yourself with value and make yourself a part of it; On top of all, if you call for the new and say it, then agility shows your advantage.”

Tuğçe Boyacı Kurtaran

Agile Consultant

“Organizational Agility is the quick learning and adaptation ability of an organization in comparison with its competitors.”

Alper Gürbüz

Agile Consultant

The post What is Agile? appeared first on ACM.

Let’s Make an Innovation!

ACM — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 11:48:50 +0000

Obviously, innovation is important, that is to have contestability and produce an idea to make a difference in the market. According to a research that consists of 154 companies and which lasted 5 years, companies that can systematically feed on their employees’ ideas and trigger innovation tend to grow more profitably. So, a way of working with a culture of renewal and innovation where new ideas can come out of every level and field of the company and the emerging ideas can take action, results in better financial outcomes.

Although there are lots of serious investments, a lot of companies are still not in the desired place related to gaining innovation abilities and make them come true. According to a research published by Accenture in 2018, while companies are planning to enhance their investments in innovation by 25% in the next 5 years, we are facing a 27% decrease in the return of innovation investment in the last 5 years. In other words, we spend much more money on innovation but these investments provide less return.

So, what kind of factors and structures are needed to increase the return on investment and create an innovation culture that produces success? McKinsey mentions the importance of 8 different factors to create an innovation culture in the article named “The eight essentials of innovation”. The elements that caught drew my attention among these elements are as follows: “With the teams working together, depending on/feeding off each other should be triggered, mechanisms should be created for learnings to be drawn from successes and failures, and environmental conditions should be provided where people can freely exchange ideas and information.”

When we look at the current company structures and way of working, it can be argued that we are far, far away from an environment where collaborative structures nurtured by each other, emphasizing the importance of a successful innovation culture, being open to improvement by making mistakes and learning is existing, and ideas can be freely shared and implemented. The main problem here is that our current organizational structure and business perceptive, in other words, our dominant 20th-century pyramid-structured organizations.

Companies in the pyramid structure which are shaped and grown fast after the industrial revolution, are machines that were designed to run operations like a clockwork. These machine organizations work not for adapting to change or produce a change, but on the contrary to control the change and keep things within their borders. Hierarchy and authority, workforce specialized in just one field and unable to see the whole picture, procedures, and processes developed for standardization form the main backbone in machine organizations. Therefore, due to its nature, this structure cannot produce innovation (since they are not designed for innovation). Machine organizations love planned order, spend lots of money beforehand to calculate the return of the investment, don’t like to be wrong, and avoid risk. When we just think about these features, you will understand why innovation is difficult in these structures.

Innovation, parallel to novelty, requires renewal. At this point, Agile appears before us as an innovation tool with:

its multi-disciplinary team structure,
its obsession of being customer-driven,
the cycle of taking small steps, stumble, learn, and evolve,
leave the power to the teams, and
the emotion of possession which is created in the team

Maybe that’s why a lot of companies try to evolve into team-based Agile organizations today to produce answers to changing conditions and, beyond this, to produce innovation. It is possible to say that we began to see the results of this transformation.

As research in the book named “Doing Agile Right”, teams and companies working in Agile culture are more innovative (+74%) than companies working with classical methods.

That’s why it is not enough to say “Let’s make an innovation!” and allocating a budget for it.

And some of the actions of intrapreneurship that we see in some companies are not enough. Because all of these actions are still designed in parallel with the working principle of the current machine organization. For example, we can see managers who are responsible for innovation and unit chiefs responsible for entrepreneurship. At this point, we need to rip this mentality of old business management out to make innovation and to be renewed. It’s time to evolve into an autonomous, multi-disciplinary, team-based, and agile business approach where decision power and freedom are transferred to people who produce!

Mehmet Yitmen

Managing Partner & Agile Consultant

The post Let’s Make an Innovation! appeared first on ACM.

ACM Agile is Now a Corporate Member of Business Agility Institute (BAI)

ACM — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 08:23:01 +0000

We are delighted to announce that, as ACM Agile we became a corporate member of Business Agility Institute (BAI). We have been collaborating with BAI since inaugural Business Agility Conference which was held in 2017 in New York and now we took our partnership to the next level as being a corporate member.

Business Agility Institute is the creation of Evan Leybourn and Ahmed Sidky. Their vision is to change the world; to make companies more human, engaging and adaptable. Institute’s mission is to advocate for, connect, educate, and inspire people within these organizations, encouraging them to create an environment of shared knowledge and trust that will usher organizations around the world into the future of business.

Evan Leybourn, Founder and CEO of Business Agility Institute, says “The Business Agility Institute (BAI) today announced a new partnership with ACM Agile, a modern management consulting company that specializes in organisational transformation through agile ways of working. The partnership highlights the two organizations as leaders in the business agility movement in Turkey and as thought-leaders for agile practitioners around the globe.”

As ACM, we fast forwards numerous local and international clients’ agility to deliver more business value faster and to enhance employee ownership. ACM’s purpose is to extend its impact across continents to assist self-actualizing organizations and employees for a better world.

Barış BAL, Managing Partner of ACM, says “Business Agility is a vital transformation for companies to be successful and sustainable in their domains. At least the last 3 years, ACM Agile’s 65-70% capacity has been reserved by companies who want to achieve their Business Agility transformations. This means that we have to be more engaged with global community. So that we would like to join our forces with Business Agility Institute, which has a very similar vision like us, to create bigger impact through the world.”

As the leading Agile transformation and consultancy company in Turkey, its region and beyond, we will continue to foster Business Agility with our trusted partner Business Agility Institute and spread world wide experience and knowledge to our network.

ACM

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Suggestions to Agile Leaders

ACM — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 14:24:42 +0000

In this article, we asked our Agile coaches “What are Your Suggestions to Agile Leaders?”. Let’s see what they said…

In my view being an Agile Leader means to be a trustful friend, role model and experienced guide of a new dynamic generation who is creative and willing to create contiuous value.

On which other properties can I recognize an Agile Leader?

Developing and using emotional intelligence at maximum potential
Being able to see secluded places
Reshaping instead of reacting to uncertainties
Developing flexibility and substantiality against unknowns
Developing new Agile leaders and
I recognize them also that they bring out the creativity of an self-organized team.

That may seem like a big responsibility and workload, but if every leader takes his leadership into the own hands, the rest will almost happen by itself.

Pınar Yaylacı

Agile Coach

I think Agility is essentially a people-oriented approach. Therefore any practice that does not put “people” in the very center of everything may contradict with Agility at some point. From this standing, perhaps leaders can start by asking themselves the following questions:

Is the purpose of the organization I work for meaningful and people-oriented?
Does my team really understand the purpose and internalize its meaning?

I believe that it is possible for an organization to truly focus on the customer it serves via its products & services if and only if these conditions are met. Once customer focus is well-established, reviewing all activities in order to offer the highest value to the customer as quickly as possible and determining the organizational priorities accordingly may contribute to the establishment of a healthy ground for agility.

Sinan Ökek

Business Agility Coach

The post Suggestions to Agile Leaders appeared first on ACM.

Who is the Smartest One In The Room?

ACM — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 17:12:03 +0000

This morning while driving to the office I was listening to a podcast and I came across a dialogue between a formerly project manager -now an agile coach- with a member of his team. He tells that during a meeting, while he was keeping on expressing his opinions on ongoing issues and explaining how they should be resolved, one of his teammates could not stand and bursted out!

The conversation goes like:

“Are you the smartest person in the room?”

“No, there are many bright people in this team…”

“So, please, why don’t you shut up and let them speak?”

Shocking and a bit tough…right?

Many managers may not be that much fortunate (or unfortunate?) to hear such a direct and to the point feedback yet colleagues might still be feeling the same way. Lyssa Adkins coins this age-old disease as “command-and-controlism” in her marvellous book “Coaching Agile Teams”. You might also have witnessed this if you have ever worked at a hierarchical organization. So the vicious circle where everyone loses trust flows this way:

Obviously a low trust environment is not desirable. However it is a very common output of command-and-controlism. So how did command-and-controlism emerge and will it remain to be prevalent?

By early 20th century, Frederick Winslow Taylor, who was among the first management consultants, sought to improve industrial efficiency. In his famous book named the “Principles of Scientific Management” he mentions that organizational paradigm relies on:

Size (to benefit from economies of scale)
Standardization (to enable growth without losing control)

It clearly made a lot of sense in the past century. However, as a by product of ever accelerating shortening of half-life of knowledge thanks to internet revolution, validity of Taylor’s hypothesis may have already expired for various industries.

At this point Tiago Garcez, an agile coach, perfectly diagnosis the underlying cause:

“While organizational leaders recognized the shift from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge economy, they failed to see that they also needed to re-think their internal structure to be successful. As a result, they simply accepted the same command & control management model without second thought. And this, in essence, is the root cause of the current friction between many change initiatives and organizational leaders – we’re operating in a knowledge economy while using command & control management principles from the industrial revolution.”

At the end of the day an organization is one example of human centered systems. It consists of people and behaviors of individuals make up the organizational culture. And for this reason attempting to change an organization’s culture almost always fails. As culture is a product of the system you have to change the system to change people’s behaviors.

Brian Søgaard, a Danish agile coach, elaborates on which approach to follow for successful organizational change:

“An organizational transformation process … is to a great extent about cultural change and effective change management. You cannot enforce a cultural change by use of a command-and-control approach, with no cost to employee satisfaction or motivation. The key to success is involving empowered stakeholders who – with the appropriate training – are engaged to collaborate to achieve an easily understood and clearly communicated purpose and goal. Thus, due to the nature of the Agile mindset, an Agile approach to the transformation process itself can be highly effective.”

So if you are working in a hierarchical organization rather than a lean one do you think that the leader on top of the hierarchical pyramid is the smartest one to make all the right decisions? It may be the right time to re-consider that.

Inspired from the following references:

https://ryanripley.com/afh-105-agile-leadership-and-management-with-dave-dame/
FW Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911)
“Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition”; Lyssa Adkins, Addison-Wesley Signature Series, 1st Edition
https://www.infoq.com/articles/bridging-management-gap/
http://implementingagile.blogspot.com/2013/06/organizational-adoption-of-agile.html

Sinan Okek

Agile Coach

The post Who is the Smartest One In The Room? appeared first on ACM.

Scrum and Purposes

ACM — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 13:30:54 +0000

Most of you have probably heard that the words we use are strongly related to our thoughts as well as our lifestyle. When your thoughts begin to change, that can be observed in your language too or when your language begins to change, also your mindset begins to change. We, ourselves, are the reflection of the words that we frequently use.

When we consider thinking of Scrum Guide at a similar point of view, the most critical points in terms of artifacts, events, roles, and values are Development Team (89*), Product Backlog (61*), and Increment (45*). Although the most widely mentioned and discussed roles are Scrum Masters or Product Owners everywhere, it is often overlooked that the Development Team is actually the heart of Scrum.

Given the fact that the main purpose of Scrum is to create value for the customer; when we consider a scenario that exists only the Product Backlog which can be prioritized by the Development Team and the product vision can be created by them, also the value can be represented with a high quality or without impediments, other members lose their functionality to a great extent. Neither the Product Owner, who gives the vision to the product and the sole accountable of Product Backlog; nor the Scrum Master, servant leader and the protector of Scrum Framework, or the Sprint Backlog, which shows the details of how to create a DONE Increment, sustain their former criticality or functionality. Even though we all know that our journey is not just on happy paths, sometimes the purpose of the work or the value created by the people at the coalface can be overshadowed by the means.

It should be never forgotten that Scrum or other approaches are just tools for creating value for the customer, and the people that use these tools differentiate the value created.

*Number of uses in the Scrum Guide.

Duygu Balcı

Agile Coach & Trainer

The post Scrum and Purposes appeared first on ACM.

sHR. was at Agile HR Training!

ACM — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 08:01:47 +0000

In our previous blog post, we announced you that as sHR., we are transforming into to agile. For the purpose of doing our job best and managing the transformation period successfully, we started searching Agile HR training. Luckily, at that time, we came up with a perfect match training program for our need.

On the 30-31st of May, as sHR, we attended “Agile HR Training” organized by ACM & Agile HR Community. We were approximately 10 HR Professionals and Leaders who are very enthusiastic about Agile coming from different countries (Russia, Lebanon, UK and Turkey) and different sectors (telecommunication, energy, pharmacy, finance, information and technology).

On the first day of training, the mindset of agile, agile frameworks, the functions of agile teams in the organization, and agile implications in HR were discussed and we got comfortable with words like Scrum, Kanban and incremental development. As two groups, we played “Scrum Lego Game”. While playing the game, we experienced the idea of working in an agile which enables us to respond quickly to the need of customer in the uncertain and ambiguous environment and the importance of incremental development for products/end results .

On the second day, we learned experience mapping as a business tool, created personas to understand customer, employee and end user perspectives while delivering a project, and formed user stories. We talked about Agile for HR ( the necessity of agile working in HR projects, departments etc.) and HR for Agile ( agile working leads to difference in organizations; thus, the frameworks of HR (performance evaluation, job descriptions etc.) should be aligned with changing/new organizations). Moreover, we argued advantages and disadvantages of Scaled Agile models ( Spotify Model, Team of teams model, Scaled agile framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum Model (LeSS), Sociocracy 3.0 (S3), Nexus Framework, Lean Kanban, Scrum@Scale). At the end of discussion, we concluded that tailor-made model/solution for the organization is quite significant.

We also assessed HR Topics (Training and Development, Payroll, Job Analysis etc.) in terms of complexity, complicacy, chaos, simplicity by using Cynefin framework (which is used to aid decision-making). “Agile People Ops Capability Model” © including 10 attributes (Build Business Value, Agile Context, Agile HR Coach, Apply Agile Philosophy, Values & Frameworks, Co-creating Employee Experience, Evidence-based, Innovate within Constraints, Continuous Improvement, Human-centric, Agile HR Operating Model) were explained very well.

At the workshop, we also practiced sprint (in Scrum) using a Scrum board, user stories, stand-ups and timeboxed activities in each day. In the training itself, while learning, we covered the Agile People Ops Capability Model ©.

We would like to thank to our “lovely, friendly and charming” agile HR guru workshop leader, Natal Dank for her effort, care and knowledge! We strongly recommend you to join this workshop if you are interested in Agile HR Transformation, Agile Organizational Transformation wherever you are in the world. You can follow their training calendar in the provided link: https://www.agilehrcommunity.com/training-calendar

Özlem Yürekli
sHR

The post sHR. was at Agile HR Training! appeared first on ACM.

Agile arşivleri - ACM

Off the Grid Agile Teams

It would not be wrong to say it is effort, endeavour and love…

Off The Grid Agile Team

What is it?

Have a budget

Free and autonomous

Competent

Transparent

FAQ

Part time – Full time?

Performance?

To which situations it suits?

What to expect when the project is completed?

But, would the ones returning from Off the Grid not feel bad?

Let’s see whether here they can say “Challenge Accepted!” as Barney utters very often in the series “How I Met Your Mother”

But what will the other people in the organization think?

Ahmet Akdağ

From Charismatic Leader to Agile Leader

The fear of feeling useless

Being able to stop intervening and producing answers

Mehmet Yitmen

Agile Project Management

Product Backlog Management

Accountabilities

Feedback Loops/Events in Scrum

Empiricism

Summary

Alper Gürbüz

What is Agile?

Why Agile?

What is Agile Manifesto?

“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

What are Agile Values?

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

What are Agile Principles?

12 Principles of Agile Software³

1- Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

2- Changing requirements should be accepted even in late stages of the software development process. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

3- Working software must be delivered frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Shorter timescales are preferred.

4- Business process owners and developers must work together every day throughout the project.

5- Projects should be built around motivated individuals. They should be given the environment and support they need, and trusted for the accomplishment of the job.

6- The most efficient and effective method of information exchange within a development team is face-to-face communication.

7- Working software is the primary measure of progress.

8- Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant work pace continuously.

9- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

10- Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done, is essential.

11- The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organized teams.

12- At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more productive and effective, and adapts accordingly.

Responses from ACM Agile Consultants to the question “What is Agile?”

Umut Arısoy

Duygu Balcı

Tuğçe Boyacı Kurtaran

Alper Gürbüz

What is Scrum?

New World Order and Agile Leader

Business Agility: The Way to Weather the Storm

Let’s Make an Innovation!

Mehmet Yitmen

ACM Agile is Now a Corporate Member of Business Agility Institute (BAI)

ACM

Suggestions to Agile Leaders

Pınar Yaylacı

Sinan Ökek

Who is the Smartest One In The Room?

Sinan Okek

Scrum and Purposes

Duygu Balcı

sHR. was at Agile HR Training!