The Heart of Agile in Warsaw, Poland

This Saturday afternoon has been dedicated for agile professionals from all around Poland.

Almost 200 experts filled the assembly hall at the Vistula University in Warsaw. This mantra:

COLLABORATE – DELIVER – REFLECT – IMPROVE

has been put at a core of workshops and case studies. Among great agile methods like Kanban, Scrum name gained superior recognition. However, for large corporations, the practical side of the methodology has become the dedicated knowledge. It's name in LeSS.

Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)

I call it system-wide, as it shall address the whole economic system of a company in order to make the company flying above competitors.

WORKSHOPS

The essence of "Agile By Example" is doing things practically. As my professional path is one foot in business and the other in technology, I naturally had a wider choice. Out of five parallel workshops, my favourite was the one focused on Systems Modelling for Organisational Design.

Once you are a decision maker, how do you prioritize an agile transformation of your big enterprise?

This is not a trivial question. In large companies, classic agile transformation sites, such as software development teams, function in the dependency ecosystem. Sales, marketing, finance and accounting, product R&D, production, distribution, corporate strategy, governance and compliance - all have their own stories. Is it viable to push them all at once?

At big companies, communication delays usually prevent synchronizing all departments at once. From another side, relying on bottom-up initiatives may cause way too long implementation. So where is the right switch?

In order to find answers, we need to go up from a department or line-of-business perspective.

When you ask 10 persons, who work in various companies at various places "what do you appreciate the most in your company that is possible to measure" and put results altogether with responses from C-suite interested in bringing agility into a big enterprise, the result unveils number of business system variables, sensitive to communication and right decisions. They are common for many departments and answer rather question "which way" than "where to start". In fact, the start can be anywhere - having curious, courageous and creative people is the pre-requisite. Once you empower them to agree decisions in agile way - the transformation starts.

The variables are interconnected. Some of them are part of loops. Once loops are discovered and tested, transformation can start even in a quire remote place in order to achieve desired result.

Within our team I proposed to select "level of overall quality" as desired measure of products and services a company offers to its clients. We found dependencies and loops extending from one to the other end of our model of System Variables. Knowing this, it's easier to decide where to start.

But what to improve?

We had 5 teams in one large room, equipped with 70% of shared variables. Everyone chose a different goal. Each discovered and verified dependencies. Each of them chose an important measure, the aim of transformation.

As long as this purpose serves customers and stakeholders, transformation in an agile way will be naturally effective. The map of variables, obtained by co-creating it by own employees, is a great communication tool, going beyond a single department of a big enterprise. LeSS is exactly focused on them. This way we have unconsciously followed the essential loop COLLABORATE – DELIVER – REFLECT – IMPROVE, which stays at The Heart Of Agile.

PS. many thanks to ProCognita and Deloitte, for organising this annual event and attracting experienced guests!