A few words on Agile Operations

As everyone and everything around us becomes more agile, responsive, dynamic, modular and flexible, I thought it may be interesting to summarize some thoughts poking around my head about Agile Operations. Being in the "Ops Business" for quite some time, I have witnessed some profound changes in thinking and perception of what it means to operate efficiently. I summarized what is subjectively important to me, when structuring and building Operations. Since Ops is defined so differently and encompasses multiple pillars of what a company does, I have been intentionally vague in the way I form my thoughts in this article.

Minimum Viable Everything

Fixing all problems at once with one unified solution is something that is frighteningly common. I have been lucky (or, at least that's how I feel) to learn my ropes in some amazing companies, startups, building things, often from scratch. This helps to shape your perspective and puts you on a steep learning curve of do's, don'ts, pitfalls and shortcuts of setting up a business. I have developed a small obsession of following a super simple, 3 step process when setting anything up, changing and transforming operations:

1. Create
2. Optimize
3. Automate

I believe that the principles of Agile Development apply here particularly strongly. Don't try to solve inefficiencies, lack of structure, lack of process or broken processes with giant overarching solutions, that aims to "fix it all". Don't deploy processes that are covering problems you don't have yet. Rushing into all-in-ones effectively removes the ability to pivot, course-correct and adapt issues you have and you don't know you have. You can even start with the humble spreadsheet or free tools readily available to you online, just make sure you have "something" in place to enable people to move forward with their tasks and focus on identifying the main issues and opportunities. Don't rob yourself of flexibility early on.

The Good Firmware

Operations for me is like a "company firmware": it enables you to function as an organisation. The only difference is, it doesn't come pre-installed with every new company. Now, the role of everyone involved in managing and implementing operative processes and strategies is to make sure this firmware is well designed, comprehensive and free of unnecessary complexities. firmware needs to be a platform, that allows everybody in the organisation to be flexible, quick, creative and efficient. It's all the tools, from e-mail system to payment processing, processes and structure that enables the company to function. There are some key aspects of a good firmware I always think about, which are also the pillars of company culture:

• The right people with the right stuff. Proper recruiting and on-boarding people impacts every single aspect of the company. That is how proper operational setup can truly make the difference. It's a great responsibility to bring the right people, with the right mindset to the organization - it may have both extremely positive, but also destructive impact. The sad part is, usually when the destructive part happens, it happens so much quicker. To enable achieving these goals, the Recruiting Team needs not only the right tools but also right connections and empowerment to drive change and keep the recruiting process agile. The importance and seriousness of People Operations's impact must be clear across the organization - this is one of the biggest challenges for Ops Managers.
• Communication. It is essential, that not only a common instant communication platform is provided, but also there is no chain of command process for passing information. I do realize some situations may require it, but restricting accessibility to non-confidential information flow and ability to easily talk across departments and offices is crucial.
• Voice of the customer. You hear it everywhere and it's right - voice of the customer is pivotal in any part of the business operations. However, without proper operative setup and tools, how can you facilitate this voice, feedback and criticism to flow across all the parts of the organization? It cannot be some forbidden knowledge only Product Developers are interested in. This voice needs a tube to be heard everywhere.
• Logic and Intuition. The company firmware is essentially a product and that's how it should be designed - it needs to be intuitive, user-friendly, transparent and logical. No person should be required to go through katharsis-like experience of asking 10 people randomly to find out the right person to be able to get a basic task completed. The system needs to facilitate focus on what is important and reduce administrative work to the necessary minimum. Basic information should be easy to find and accompanying everyone through their day-to-day.
• People and places. Office spaces and remote work is subject to a never-ending debate. It is essential to understand what kind of people work for your company and try provide a viable solution for all of them. I said try, as I am pretty sure every Ops person will tell you - you won't be able to make everybody happy. Think about quiet corners for the blues, open spaces for the reds, lab spaces for the creatives. Give everybody a space where they can feel productive. I know how utopian that sounds, but work with what you have and make the best of it, this is the Ops way - key is understanding the diverse needs and expectations.

Sprinting Everywhere

I strongly oppose to what I call post-factum meetings. Sync / catch-up / weekly that happens on Thursday is not the right thing to do for increasing efficiency and facilitating better communication. What I really like about working in Scrum, are the sprints and sprint planning, which enable to troubleshoot and discover issues for the week. In the operative, non-engineering departments that are not typically adopting Scrum, this is a profound change that may greatly improve quality and velocity. Bringing key hands-on people in one room and letting them walk through the week creates a spirit of cooperation, which is a crucial "asset" when dealing with emergencies. In the agile, every-changing world there are always last-minute changes, throw-ins, emergencies. The goal of ops sprinting is not to eradicate those, the goal is provide a process in which avoidable things are avoided, feedback shared and lessons learned.

Health & Safety

I believe it is a duty of Operations to work close with the Top Management to provide a set of safety mechanisms to ensure maintaining a healthy organisation. There are 2 go-to examples I usually like to highlight:

• Long meetings. I am sure a person that will eventually discover time travel would do so after sitting through a 4 hour meeting. Having these marathon meetings, going through 120 slides Power Point decks should be made illegal (this a joke of course... or is it?). The human brain cannot truly concentrate and be productive non-stop for that long (5 minute coffee break does not magically rejuvenates you instantly). That's why after 45 minutes everybody is on their smartphones texting and checking emails. If you have a complex topic, that truly requires long hours of focus - plan a workshop, do an offsite - give people some space. The way the company operates must provide mechanisms preventing such situations and ensuring at least a reasonable degree of flexibility.
• Parallel universes. Do you have people in your organization that are mostly creating presentations? Is your hard drive cluttered with Steerco_Update-032018-revised_Final2.ppts? This can be a symptom of an unhealthy organisation. This is not only because Power Point Factory organisations can be inefficient, there is even a greater danger: splitting reality into two: the "real reality" and the "slide reality" - two worlds that not always reflect each other. That very often traps senior management in a bubble, where their exposure to information is artificially crafted and filtered... and as we know every bubble will burst some time. Usually the worst time. The solution is creating a culture where slides are not ultimate reflection of reality and are not treated as single source of truth. Slides, while there is nothing ultimately wrong with them, cannot be made into a single communication platform that can push decision making forward.