Its Coming Home - A Lean and Agile early retrospective

I have to say how impressed i am at the way England has played in the World Cup to get this far. It's been a long time since i have seen a series of great team performances back to back from our national side. To deliver that level of performance in a highly pressurised environment with millions of people watching is amazing. I have no doubts the whole squad have done something special in a high performance, agile, iterative and continuously performing environment.

This could just be luck but my experience tells me something special has been found here that really works. High performance does not happen by chance or overnight. Compare the England World Cup 2018 Project with the outcomes of the FIFA World Cup 2018 VAR Project. This is the leanest England football team i have seen in my lifetime. The outcomes they have delivered make me keep expecting Taichi Ohno to be on the subs bench.

These guys have sorted their processes, no doubt and all of a sudden their 'Game Management' (100 points score in bullshit bingo) is second to none. They have planned, delivered and improved across multiple sprints in the competition so far. I could see clear learning from Game(Sprint) 1 to Game 2 and changes in approach to deliver better outcomes. 'Game Management' in game 2 was through the roof. Game 3 was an opportunity to rest players and deliver more in Game 4.

Game 3 was a B side against B side match that didn't follow the previous highs but it was undertaken professionally and actually the result may have been lucky (Luck and England!).

In all of the first 3 sprints individuals performed at varying levels within their processes but delivered successful outcomes. People played well and some had the odd bad game. The media obviously jumps on those that are perceived as not succeeding but they have massively missed the point. The difference I have seen with this team is that we are just that a team not a bunch of talented individuals.

If an idividual makes a mistake someone has their back. Players that have had 'bad' individual games have still done a great job for the team. Outcomes have been better because we have a multi disciplinary team empowered in delivering better outcomes. Clearly matches and strategy have been laid out but also clearly the team is allowed to go and perform/iterate/improve on the pitch.

This team reminds me of Team Sky and the whole consept of marginal gains (hopefully without the proliferation of asthmatics). Everyone across the whole multi disciplinary team is charged with delivering the marginal gains/improvement necessary to take the team forward. All of the pieces seem to be in place (Purprose, Process and People) to deliver and clearly there has been a step change forward.

England Football team seem to have succesfully moved from the legacy approach to a new innovative, agile way to deliver success from less resources. Clearly we have had teams that have had more talented individuals but have we ever had a better team? (I was born in 1973 so you can see my experience).

Sprint 4 was delivered off the back of a defeat. The momentum had gone(?). They were playing a good team (none so far except the defeat as the media put it), in difficult aggressive/challenging conditions, we went in front and they equalised late (destroying momentum again), it wen to penalties and of course we won. There were a couple of players that didn't handle the pressure as well but the team did handle it all. We worked as a team and overcame terrific pressure.

Sprint 5 gave us our greatest performance. Never have i watched an Egland game where i wasn't worried. We executed our release perfectly. It was never in doubt and we were never going to fail. We bossed the game and run it like we could never lose. Anyone seem a more convincing victory and performance?

Sprint 6 (and possibly 7) are still to come but let's take a moment to appreciate the success of the project so far. We can easily get beaten tomorrow. We could be unlucky, we could play badly as a unit or it could go to penalties. We haven't won a thing and we have an analysts 3-1 chance of winning. If we win how amazing is that but if not has it been a success? I say yes absolutely the progress from where we were to where we are is huge.

There are many factors that might of had an impact along the way but i am willing to bet the biggest factor has been building the team and the culture to deliver success. Allowing the team to work on the work has delivered results. The leadership must be there and the empowerment/trust must also be in place. This team and performance did not happen by chance and i would love to see the performance analysed and an attempt to understand the turnaround and the factors involved.

This is a long post to say what I said in a single tweet. I have taken this opportunity to justify a new company phone and have ordered this beauty the OnePlus6 Red. It won't turn up till the tournament is almost over and i hope its not a jinx but i am so impressed with the performance and processes i couldn't resist.

I keep saying processes because that's what we do. I think process thinking and understanding what you do plus designing what you should do is one of the biggest factors in delivering succesful change. Processes are a big part of the picture but it is a picture i.e. all the components have an impact. Culture is the biggest thing i have seen that has changed and will have more impact than anything.

You need to create a culture where improvement is central. Improvement relates to everything we do. Often if we ask stakeholders for improvement ideas we do so at too high a level. We will ask how do we find 10% savings across the organisation. We should be asking how do we improve what we do for customers by a fraction of a percent. If we ask those questions and act on them my experience is that you will have hundreds of improvement ideas that will in the majority deliver incremental improvements.

If you have agile iterative solutions you can get started on your improvement journeys and deliver real tangible change and customer value. The England Football Team journey echos a similar pattern to any improvement project. If you get the conditions right no matter what the resources you can deliver better outcomes. Have a look at the Nesta Report point 4 it really resonates so much with my experience as does the rest of the report. https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/nine-big-messages-digital-government-public-sector-leaders-should-understand/

If you don't believe me about processes being right i will give a couple of examples.

Game(Sprint) 2 Paraguay. The first corner showed how much we had worked on processes. At the very first corner we showed the referee what underhand behaviour was going on. We demonstrated it in front of the referee and later in the game this gave us a penalty that didn't win the tie but was a great exhibition of delivering processes efficiently.

All Sprints - Set Pieces - I have never seen such an organised team at set pieces and it has delivered amazing outcomes. How many goals/penalties/cards has our excellence at set pieces delivered. Do you really think that was by chance? Those routines have been rehearsed, discussed, iterated and delivered many times. There has been some terrible outcomes but we have understood the purpose and processes and delivered with our people.

I did this really long blog both to show off my new phone but also to draw the parallels between project delivery in this sector and project delivery generally. If you get the conditions right you too can succeed even if you don't have the best. Lean/Continuous improvement underpins every successful team and if you need.want to improve processes talk to us [email protected].

I talked about VAR Project vs England Project. This to me is the traditional Waterfall vs Agile discussion. VAR success (waterfall) vs England success (agile) which way of thinking is delivering better results?

Get rid of your legacy( https://weareleanandagile.com/uncategorized/top-tips-for-better-procurement-of-better-solutions/ ), stop, collaborate and listen ( https://weareleanandagile.com/uncategorized/stop-collaboration-time/ ) and #JFDI lets deliver success on a par with our sporting heroes in the Public Sector.

#LGaaPP