Ways to Include the Business In Agile Transformations

The Constraint is the Lack of Shared Ownership and Vision with the Business

Paula Stewart - From Being An Effective Value Coach

“Having talked to several late adopters of Agile and observing the technology industry I have noticed that while Agile coaches focus teams on knowing the why and what first to create better products, most Agile coaches focus Agile transformations on the how.” - Paula Stewart

A case study by Paula Stewart

This case study highlights the common need for partnership between business and technology leaders in creating a shared vision of a technology organization before an Agile Transformation. It highlights several impacts and provides a more systematic and workable approach.?

In the complex landscape of large legacy organizations, one crucial aspect missed in many Agile transformations is business leaders' active participation and partnership with technology leaders to create a shared vision of a technology organization. This was the case at "Brick&Mortar," a large, legacy organization I joined as part of a small Enterprise Agile Team. The cost of declaring "We Are Not A Technology Company," whether consciously or not, means there were monolithic architectures and significant technical debt where systems had not been refactored over many years. In addition, talented developers had been working on legacy technologies. To modernize, developers with experience using the latest technology stacks needed to be attracted to the company.

As a result of not being a technology company, "Brick&Mortar" was still operating as a waterfall environment. Instead of reiterating the difference between a waterfall and an Agile environment, I will sum it up by saying that instead of committing and investing in iterative value delivery with a short cycle time, they continued to maintain traditional waterfall and project planning with "Agile" teams. Due to duplication and unnecessary administration, there was an actual cost to the development teams, the customers, the leaders, and the organization. The meetings routinely took lead developers away from working with their teams, causing expensive context-switching.

Upon joining the organization, I delved into the team's dynamics. As everyone seemed to be working on distinct features, It was like witnessing a scattered collection of digital nomads, each living in their coding oasis, disconnected from the grand roadmap of progress. The backlogs were more like jigsaw puzzles than a Marie Kondo closet. Developers embarked on an epic quest for code clarity, battling the monsters of undiscovered product strategies and unclear user stories. The testing framework was not decided, integration servers were limited, and the staging environment played a game of hide-and-seek with the developers, leaving them puzzled and longing for a stable place to showcase their code. Business subject matter experts, business analysts, and project managers acted as product owners but struggled with writing Epics, Features, and User Stories, and although the business subject matter experts had domain knowledge, they needed more time to work with the team. The business analysts learned to write user stories once they learned INVEST, what a vertical story was, writing acceptance criteria, and understanding just-in-time requirements. The team dynamics were adversely affected at first. However, we addressed the most critical issues over time, starting with establishing Team Charters, standardizing a testing framework, creating product roadmaps, and conducting Story Workshops. Eventually, the teams achieved strong dynamics. Unfortunately, a sudden shift in priority mandated by the business leaders led to the abandonment of nearly completed work, with the development teams feeling a lot like they were victims of organizational Wac-A-Mole, and a mass exodus of talented developers ensued. This decision proved demoralizing and undermined the motivation and commitment of the development teams. Oh, the enchantment of outsourcing! With a wave of the wand, all software development was bestowed upon an outsourced development organization. Rumors are that the technical debt has increased like a castle of spaghetti code. It demonstrates how complete outsourcing can result in a showcase of shortcuts and half-hearted solutions. Who needs internal expertise and accountability when you can completely outsource your way to magical chaos??

This case study is a cautionary tale, highlighting the dire consequences of neglecting the partnership between business and technology leaders. By heeding the lessons learned from this experience, organizations can chart a more successful path toward an Agile Transformation that unlocks the full potential of their technology organization and fosters sustainable growth and innovation.

Create a Partnership Between Business and Technology

Start by establishing a shared understanding and alignment between business and technology leaders on the goals, objectives, and desired outcomes of being a technology organization. If the only thing you accomplished was this, the organization would have received some of the best consulting it ever could.

The advantages of this partnership include:

• Tapping into the deep domain knowledge, strategic insights, and understanding of the organization's broader objectives
• Bridging the gap between business and technical capabilities
• Fostering collaboration, breaking down silos, and promoting cross-functional dialogue between business and technology stakeholders
• Aligning the organization's strategic direction, technical and business, and addressing critical technical and business challenges - These can no longer be planned, measured, or understood in isolation
• Prioritizing the most impactful areas for digital modernization and organizational transformation
• Understanding the full scope of the transformation
• Providing tangible and incremental benefits to the business and technology teams to sustain the transformation over time

These initiatives are a significant lift that demands commitment, patience, and perseverance. The best way to start and continue to make the right tradeoffs must BEGIN with business and technology operating as a technology company. This partnership is even more critical when 50% of organizations surveyed declared that Artificial Intelligence is part of their technology plans in 2023, according to a Deloitte study in Forbes on February 2, 2023.

Provide Business Value Before A Larger Transformation

Providing the business with specific technological advances before and during the transformation creates momentum and change champions. What makes the difference:

• A Value Coach with a business background sitting in the business and learning how technology is currently used along with business rules, workflows, policies, procedures, roles, and responsibilities. They can build a knowledge base or provide information architecture that brings significant business value and simplifies onboarding product managers. In addition, if the Value Coach can use their experience in process improvement, value stream mapping, and analysis to quickly understand business domains, the business will start asking them business-related questions as a trusted advisor. In addition, they can find simple ways to streamline business processes creating momentum for digital modernization. All of this means that there is an advocate who can create a bridge between business and technology sitting with the business.
• An experienced coach and consultant can find low-hanging fruit to create quick wins by simplifying business processes and data processing, including streamlining and rationalizing data processing and providing an ad hoc Business Intelligence solution.
• An experienced consultant and coach can work with the organization to implement Microsoft's Robotic Process Automation. Not only does this allow for the automatic identification of workflows, but it also allows tuning those workflows. This could replace legacy applications and reduce the scope of digital modernization initiatives.

Focus on A Foundation:

• Implement an IT Portfolio tool early in the initiative to show every dollar of IT spend associated with applications impacting business capabilities in each line of business. This will enable conversations about digital capabilities. It will also provide actionable insights to save money by consolidating infrastructure, and platforms, rationalizing applications, and exploring retire and buy versus build decisions.
• Leverage the IT Portfolio tool to provide transparency between the business and technology regarding planned and actual costs, including the real costs of outsourcing technology.
• Advocate for a value-driven approach, aligning all efforts towards creating value for customers to drive growth and maintain resilience.
• Establish strategic goals that align business and technology, specifically focusing on digital modernization, product strategy, and maturity.
• Strategically plan using AI to simplify business processes, impact the product lifecycle, understand the market and competitors, and create new data products.
• Advocate for business and technical alignment, avoiding the pitfalls of introducing teams too early without a baseline for product management and digital capabilities and emphasizing the need to understand the actual costs of outsourcing.
• Emphasize hiring experienced product managers or coaches with a product background to sustain momentum and balance customer value, business returns, sustainability, market dynamics, and innovation.
• Establish a Lean portfolio, budget, and effective prioritization methodology.
• Conduct an organizational readiness assessment to identify barriers in digital capabilities, business and technical leadership alignment and goals, and product management.
• Attend to change management by addressing resistance to change, supporting employee education and empowerment, and fostering a culture that embraces technology and agility. Include identifying change champions in technology and the business.

With a focus on these areas, a Value Coach can facilitate transformative communication, align efforts, and drive successful organizational transformation. Most importantly, they can create a partnership between the business and technology to create and maintain momentum for a significant transformation.