ORGANIC agility - beyond the mass production of agile at scale

www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2019.
Beyond the Mass Production of Agile at Scale!

agile42 | the agile coaching company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2019.
Lasse Ziegler
• Strategic Coach
• Certified Scrum Trainer
• Joined agile42 in 2011
• Based in Finland
• Help customers change their world of work
• Work with teams and leadership
• Coached agile transitions at Skype, Siemens,
Swedbank, ABB and many others

Who we are
• Founded in 2007 by an international
group of people passionate about
agile
• Focused on making every workplace
more liveable and engaging
• Completely self-managed: 
no departments, no ﬁxed roles
• Employs around 70 people
• Highly qualiﬁed coaches and trainers
(highest number of CECs, CTCs and
CSTs in one company worldwide)

Experience makes the difference.
We recognize that your organization and culture are unique, which
implies a unique implementation of any new methods like Scrum or
Kanban.
Our eﬀective combination of leadership coaching, knowledge transfer,
team training, coaching on the job and practical tools is the basis for your
success, as it has been for many other international customers.
agile42 has helped enterprises such as Nokia, Sony, ABB Group, Ericsson,
Avea and Siemens successfully and sustainably transition to agile.
agile42 also helped startups to grow faster and healthier, good examples
are: Fyber, Babbel and Sipgate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOq-5D4gm0U

The World around us is changing
faster than we think…

Technology is often one of the main
drivers in this change…

To survive organizations need to be
adaptable, flexible, nimble…
resilient!

Market adoption curve
Early majority
Market Cycles 20-25y 5-7y
Innovators Early adopters Late majority
Chasm
11% 16%
44% 29%
SELL TO MAKE MAKE TO SELL

How we achieve results
Experiences
Beliefs
Actions
Culture
Results
Manage
Leadshift
the
balance
“Doing”"Being"
The “Results Pyramid” is copyright of Partners in Leadership LLC

“Don’t copy the tools, copy the
principles.”
- Dr. W. Edwards Deming, 1972

Organizational Resilience: is the capability of an
organization to react to unknown challenges and volatility by
co- evolving with the change into a new and improved stable
state.
Growing Autonomy: means investing in growing people to
enable them to act more autonomously and consciously
within and for the organization. Good as well as fast decisions
needs to be made constantly, and autonomously within the
organization to allow fast feedback and reaction time.
Nurturing an Inter-dependent Culture: requires enabling
communication between diﬀerent groups and people within
the organization. Increasing transparency and encouraging
development of interpersonal relationship outside of team
and group boundaries accelerate reaction times. Cultural
coherence deepens and with it the understanding about how
to act in everyone’s interest.

1st Principle: Increase Cultural
Awareness and Coherence
Organizational culture exists and manifests in the form of behaviors, habits, parables,
sacred stories, failure stories. By making these explicit, awareness will increase and
coherence will emerge. Culture is a lagging indicator, and can be used to measure the
behaviors which are successful the stories which are followed and the habits which stick. If
these qualities are measurable we can act aiming and promoting more of the stories we
like, and less of those stories we don’t like. The same applies to behaviors, and habits.
These can be fostered through rituals

“This is how we do things around here…”
Culture is the set of behaviors that have been
established and accepted within an organization

Culture Type: Hierarchy
Orientation: Controlling
Leader Type: Coordinator, Monitor,
Organizer
Value Drivers: Efficiency, Timeless,
Consistency and Uniformity
Theory of Effectiveness: Control and
efficiency with capable processes produce
effectiveness
Culture Type: Market
Orientation: Competing
Leader Type: Hard driver, Competitor,
Producer
Value Drivers: Market share, Goal
achievement, Profitability
Theory of Effectiveness: Aggressively
competing, customer focus produce
effectiveness
Culture Type: Adhocracy
Orientation: Creative
Leader Type: Innovator, Entrepreneur,
Visionary
Value Drivers: Innovative outputs,
Transformation, Agility
Theory of Effectiveness: Innovativeness,
vision, and new resources produce
effectiveness
Culture Type: Clan
Orientation: Collaborative
Leader Type: Facilitator, Mentor, Team
Builder
Value Drivers: Commitment,
Communication, Development
Theory of Effectiveness: Human
development and participation produce
effectiveness
Flexibility & Discretion
Stability & Control
Internalfocus&Integration
Externalfocus&Differentiation
Organizational Culture Profile (CVF)

Agile Values &
Principles
10
20
30
40
50
60
10
20
20
20
10
10
30
40
50
60
30
40
50
60
30
40
50
60
Ad-hocracy
Hierarchy
M
arket
Clan Most of the organization today have a
strong Hierarchy oriented proﬁle
They struggle to introduce a more agile
and lean approach to work, because the
hierarchical culture is not supportive of
agile values and principles

Most of the organization today have a
strong Hierarchy oriented proﬁle
They struggle to introduce a more agile
and lean approach to work, because the
hierarchical culture is not supportive of
agile values and principles
To create the right context to move
toward a more agile and lean culture, we
need to transition toward Clan or Ad-
Hocracy
10
20
30
40
50
60
10
20
20
20
10
10
30
40
50
60
30
40
50
60
30
40
50
60
Ad-hocracy
Hierarchy
M
arket
Clan

Market adoption curve and culture
Early majority
Market Cycles 20-25y 5-7y
Innovators Early adopters Late majority
Chasm
11% 16%
44% 29%
SELL TO MAKE MAKE TO SELL
Culture:
● Innovative
● Adaptive
● Quick reaction to feedback
● Prototypical
Culture:
● Structure
● Quality
● Process
● Effectiveness
Culture:
● Efficiency
Culture

“If you can make
culture explicit, you
can agree where you
stand, and where you
want to go…”
There are two ways to encourage speciﬁc behaviours within an
organization:
1. Story telling and role-modeling (e.g: empathy and
tradition, walk the talk, common jargon)
2. Ritualization (e.g: Scrum events, Ritual Dissent, Open
Space)

Organizational ScanClan
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
Market
Leader Type
Clan
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
Market
Quality Strategies
Clan
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
Market
Theory of Effectiveness
Clan
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
Market
Value Drivers

2nd Principle:
Situational Decision Making
Understanding the context is key to be able to identify the right approach. Depending on
the context, the assessment of the situation and the way the decision-making process will
be implemented varies significantly

Complicated
Obvious
Chaotic
Complex
sense-analyse-respond
sense-categorise-respond
probe-sense-respond
act-sense-respond
Governing constraints
Fixed constraints
Enabling constraints
no effective constraint
Good Practice
Best Practice
Novel Practice
Emergent Practice
Cyneﬁn Framework
•It’s a Sense-making Framework means that the
data comes before the model, contrary to
categorization where the model comes before the
data.
•It has 5 domains which are separated by
boundaries. On the right side there are Ordered
domains which have hard defined boundaries, on
the le" side Unordered domains which have
permeable and overlapping boundaries.
•Each domain is defined by recognizable
behaviours supporting decision making
processes, and are defining diﬀerent contexts
•The grey area in the middle is called Disorder and
indicates that we aren’t able to make sense of a
specific situation

Complicated
Obvious
Chaotic
Complex
Cyneﬁn Framework
• Learning Loop: allows to learn and
consolidate the learnings (e.g.: Scrum,
Experimentation…);
• Innovation Loop: shallow dive into
controlled chaos to allow innovation to
emerge by removing constraints;
• Standardization: acquired knowledge is
commoditized into standard usage
procedures;
• Entrenched Expertise: experts are stuck
into their models, and underestimate
the complexity, dive into disorder and
recover through complexity
• Fall into Chaos: over-simplification,
causes chaos and recovery is very
expensive
Learning
Innovation
Standardization
Entrenched
Expertise
Fall into chaos

Obvious Domain
Rules based decision making, where rules
are understandable and applicable by
everybody. A review process will grant that
decisions are consistent with the rules.
Situational analysis isn’t necessary as in
this domain things are self-evident.

Complicated Domain
Rules & process based decision making, where
rules are understandable and applicable only
by experts. Peer to peer reviews will provide
insights on how to improve outcomes, and
iterations will help improve decisions.
Situational analysis is done by experts or
peers, and it is validated through peer reviews.

Complex Domain
Situational analysis is distributed, actions are
distributed (to probe faster) and decisions based
on actions are happening in real-time and
distributed. Direction decisions and Respond
decisions are centralized, to keep coherence in
an environment in which a lot of unexpected
outcomes and unintended consequences will
emerge.

Chaotic Domain
Situational analysis isn’t possible,
draconian decision making is necessary to
provide a minimal level of coherence. A bad
decision which leaves options open is
better than no decision at all. Decisions
need to be taken very fast.

3rd Principle:
Focus on Value Creation
Your organization supports the creation of value. The traditional approach has been to
optimize organizations to support the management of the business, versus value delivery
to customers and stakeholders. Identify what is value, and evolve the organization to
eﬀectively create it, whilst removing waste and making adjustments to streamline the
simplest path to delivery.

The matrix organization…
SubSystem1
SubSystem2
Quality
Infrastructure
Operations
PMO
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
… optimized for utilization, not value delivery…
Handovers and coordination
Value
Client
Push in the lines

Stream 1
Stream 2
Stream 3
The resilient organization…
SubSystem1
SubSystem2
SubSystem3
Infrastructure
Operations… optimized for value delivery and time to market
Value
Client
Pull on the streams

Opportunity Canvases to create context and focus on Customer Value…
Lean Portfolio Canvas™ have been created by agile42 and are licensed using Creative Common 3.0 with attribution (BY), non commercial usage (NC) and
share alike (SA) options. You can reuse and modify the template, but you will always have to leave the logo on it.
OpportunityName (title)
1. Opportunity 2. Customer Segments
What is the problem to be solved? What type of customers & users will
benefit from this solution?
How is the customer solving the
problem right now?
3. Possible Solution
What are the key points of a possible
solution to the presented problem?
4. Benefits
What are the benefits for the
customers?
6. Measuring Success
What metrics will be best measure the
success of the feature?
5. Business Readiness
What steps are required from the
business side to be able to use this
capability?
7. Cost of Delay
Which profile better represent the cost
of delay (CoD)?
8. Costs Structure
How does the cost structure look like for such a feature? One time, ongoing
costs, contractors expenses, development costs?
9. Value to Customer and Business
What are the expected incremental revenue for selling this feature, and what are
the strategic and tactical benefit? What are the intangible values (usability,
performance, customer knowledge obtained...)
Opportunity Owner (name)

Regular synchronization events in
front of the portfolio board, allow for
better decision making…

Uniﬁed Portfolio and Program System
to increase transparency, to visualize
Customer Value and dependencies

Clear Policies allow everyone to both
understand and contribute to the
work very quickly, value is key…

4th Principle:
Validate Changes in Small Increments
Change is diﬀicult and confronting. Validate changes with small safe-to-fail
experiments, executed at regular intervals, to reduce resistance and minimize the
waste of two coexisting systems of work, whilst gradually incorporating validated
learnings. A portfolio of safe-to-fail experiment will help emerging options that can
then be vetted and tested, before being implemented, significantly reducing risk.

The traditional approach to change
management…
…focused on standardization, before stabilization…
t
Design
Documentation
Rollout
Fix Issues
> 9-10 months…

The ORGANIC approach to change
management…
…focused on stabilization with emergent standardization…
Design
Rollout
Doc
Rollout
Doc
Rollout
Doc
Coach
≤ 12 weeks t
Design Coach
Rollout
Doc
Rollout
Doc
Experimentations allows
for better approaches to
emerge

Agile Strategy Map

Strategy Map from March 2014
The Goal for 2015 has been
established
The Transition Team identiﬁed
at least 7 PSFs that would
provide a powerful leverage to
achieve the ﬁnal Goal

Strategy Map June 2014
Break out groups
worked on detailing the
various PSFs into
actionable experiments
to validate the
hypothesis for
organizational
improvement
-

Strategy Map from
May 2016
-> strategic
alignment within
project with multiple
agile teams
Tactical board to the Strategy Map
-> created for alignment on tactical
actions related to each Success
Factor

Strategy Map from
May 2016
-> presenting relation
from GOAL and
company Vision
Tactical board to the Strategy Map
—> focus only on 2 main Success
Factors

5th Principle:
Optimize Flow
Dependencies are a symptom of an over synchronized system design. They carry the
excessive burden of coordination, handovers and plans which dramatically increase the
transaction costs. Design a decoupled system which removes unnecessary synchronization
and establishes eﬀective working agreements which grant collective responsibility and
ownership. Inter-dependence between teams emerges based on needs, and it is temporary.
This allows for minimal alignment while remaining strongly coherent through principles.

t
Project 2
Project 3
Project 1
The plan driven organization… Synchronization of
all Projects for a
release, decreases
efficiency and
increases
coordination costs
Release
Pm 3
Pm 1
Pm 2
…fixed scope and fixed date…

t
The resilient organization… De-synchronization
of development
teams to reduce
cost of release
…variable scope and variable date…
Feature A
Release
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
Team 4
Feature B
Release Release
Feature C
Release
Feature D
Release
Feature E

Release incrementally,
with higher quality
Automated testing
in short cycles
Delivered
serviceable Product
in just 2 months

Continuous Integration & Delivery…
Switch from big
product releases to
incremental change,
every feature is
released on all
platforms
“Focusing on one Feature at
a time allowed for faster
feedback also involving
stakeholders was easier…
deliver fast to learn fast”

ORGANIC agility Principles
1. Increase Cultural Awareness and Coherence
2. Situational Decision Making
3. Focus on Value Creation
4. Validate Changes in Small Increments
5. Optimize Flow

Interested in more details?
ORGANIC agility Foundations
Learn the foundations on ORGANIC agility in this 1 day class.
https://www.organic-agility.com/events/
ORGANIC agility Foundations Masterclass
Become an accredited ORGANIC agility Professional.
This allows you to hold ORGANIC agility Foundations classes.
https://www.organic-agility.com/partners/

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