Don't attempt change without a Minimum Viable Remit

Whether you are a senior hire in a new role or a consultant on a new assignment, you might have to take stock of the overall situation in your part of the organization before you come up with a plan of action.

Your boss or sponsor might nudge you to focus on a couple of areas in particular. Take that as an initial remit but whenever possible, try not to accept it as the bounds of your inquiry. The suggested remit is usually based on the opinion and span of authority of your boss or the person sponsoring the assessment.?

The last post described how a problem-centered approach to an assessment might take you beyond the suggested remit. It might uncover issues that are beyond the scope of the person impacted by the problem.

Is it wasteful to probe beyond the suggested remit? No. Knowledge of factors beyond one’s control serves to temper expectations. It allows you to pause and consider if meaningful change is likely despite acting within a restricted scope.

Without this insight, you might accept a remit without probing the problem and believe that acting within the remit would bring about expected change. This is one of the reasons for the widespread underperformance of agile and digital transformation programs.

To address the challenge of faster and more reliable delivery, they restricted their remit to Scrum and DevOps only, for example. To improve speed to market, they restricted their remit to engineering only, not product. To avoid missed deadlines, they focused on delivery only, not work intake. To improve overall agility, they attempted transforming the technology organization only, not business. Did the people in charge of these change efforts probe the problem before accepting their remit?

Probe freely even though you might be constrained to act within your remit. By doing so, you’ll be better able to estimate the impact of your actions. Your estimation might help other stakeholders understand the potential benefits of expanding remit.

If your estimate of potential impact falls severely short of expectations (e.g. estimates B and C above), it’s a sign that the effort needs a wider remit. Ask for it. Frame it as a “Minimum Viable Remit” for the change to make a meaningful difference.?

Create visuals like the ones here tailored to your situation. Impress upon your higher-ups that you are better off doing something else if you don't have the minimum viable remit required to address the problem they’d like you to address.

They might not like your message at first but it will save you the embarrassment of having to dress-up your limited achievements (because of a constrained remit)? a year down the road.

Until next time, take care and prosper.

-Sriram

agileorgdesign.com