My clients are often frustrated that their transformation isn’t taking off despite promising results (e.g., outsized outcomes and speed by leveraging agile ways of working in a strategic initiative). One path that leaders often take is to follow initial promising results with a mandate to follow new ways of working throughout the organization. This is …
A recent discussion on the Scrum Alliance Linkedin group was around Mike Beedle’s claim that “Hard-coded Frameworks are neither Agile or Frameworks” which is clearly aimed primarily at SAFe. I admit to thinking something similar before really getting to know SAFe in depth. Over time I realized SAFe isn’t one size fits all. Far from …
This week I’m in Fort Lauderdale, Florida speaking at the Lean/Agile US conference. The subject of my talk today was “Introduction to Lean/Agile scaling approaches” where talked about why scaling approaches are necessary and when to actually try to de-scale as well as gave a very brief introduction to a couple of the key frameworks …
Invitation and Pull-based approaches for implementing agile at scale has been a reoccurring theme in my work, writing and talks in recent years — including my talk at Agile 2016 and this series on my blog. In recent months I was working on a SAFe guidance article on this topic. Richard Knaster as well as Dean Leffingwell …
In parts 1 and 2 of this series about bringing Invitations into the Scaled Agile Framework implementation approach I talked about various ways to switch from Mandates to Invitations when choosing the timing and the how-to. In this post I describe an even more Invitational style using an approach called Open Space Agility. Consider this …
In part 1 of this series about inviting Invitations into the implementation approach for the Scaled Agile Framework I described the issue I have with Mandates and started to describe the Invitational style focusing on inviting groups to go SAFe but not forcing them to. Local leaders Mandate the Direction once they’re convinced of it …
There’s much to like about SAFe™(The Scaled Agile Framework™). One of those things is how some pro-level facilitation techniques are woven into ceremonies such as the PI Planning and Inspect and Adapt workshops. SAFe™also leverages one of my favorite change management patterns, starting with leaders. Two areas for potential improvement (On top of my earlier …
Context This post is inspired by my experience trying to help organizations make agile teams work in real life. It is heavily inspired or can even be called a revision of a post from a couple of years ago on the Lean/Kanban approach to teams. If you look at the Agile Manifesto, you can find …
Previously on “The Agile Journey”… So some time ago – maybe months or years – you decided to go for Lean/Agile. You went ahead and started to use Scrum/Kanban to break the waterfall and achieve a more agile operation. These were exciting times. First, that time of making sure you understand what you are trying …
I’ve been following Craig Larman’s work for a while now. I find the books he wrote with Bas Vodde on scaling agile to be very insightful and actionable. I recently discovered Craig’s “Laws of Organizational Behavior”: 1. Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo middle- and first-level manager and “specialist” positions & …