This document discusses the evolution of business management approaches from Frederick Taylor's scientific management principles to more modern agile approaches. It outlines how Taylor's reductionist views focused on planning and efficiency led to inflexible processes good for mass production but unable to change. More recent complex adaptive systems thinking emphasizes continuous adaptation through practices like scrum and lean. The document argues that true organizational agility requires transformation across the entire business from operations to leadership and describes the Agility Path framework for continuous improvement towards this goal.

1. Agile: Beyond Software
Edwin Dando
Consulting Manager

2. Edwin Dando
+ Founder and MD of Clarus
+ Now Manager for Assurity’s Education practice
+ Helping re-wire how companies think
+ Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org
+ Worlds first Agility Path™ Engagement Manager
+ PMP, CSP, PST, EM
Better education. By practitioners
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3. Business context
+ Where have we come from?
+ What has shaped our current context?
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4. "Scientific Management”
Frederick Taylors key beliefs
1.Workers work less than they could
2.Management fails to structure work effectively and provide incentives.
Taylors solution
• Sub-divide the work into tasks
• Analyse each task & schedule for optimal efficiency
• Assumption: reconstructed tasks = an efficient job.
• Management arrange work & pay for the tasks completed
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Taylor promised to
reconcile labour
and capital. Shop
Management
(1903), is
considered the
first book on
management

5. Prevailing management approach
+ Reductionism
+ Plan to execute, execute the plan
+ Focus on
o removing variability
o economies of scale
+ Efficient for mass production, but
o inability to change
o long lead times
o stifles innovation
o business becomes predictable
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6. How well does this approach work on 2013?
Why / why not?
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7. Complex/adaptive systems thinking
+ In warfare predictability = death
+ John Boyd – the OODA Loop - Observe,
Orient, Decide, Act
o Basic drills train reflexes to survive
first seconds of battle (fight, flee,
freeze)
o He with the tightest/fastest OODA
Loop wins – i.e. adaptive
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“If you are not moving at the speed of the marketplace you’re already dead –
you just haven’t stopped breathing yet.” - Jack Welch

8. How resilient are you?
+ Fragile
o Low tolerance to disruption
o Small change has significant consequences
+ Robust
o Don’t care about disruption or events
o But don’t benefit from them either
+ Anti-fragile
o Shaped by (and thrives) on change and disruption
o Self-correcting and beyond resilient
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9. Scenario planning
+ Consider a range of possible future business scenarios for your organisation
+ 3-10 year horizon
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10. Scenario planning
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Impact
Establish Chinese market
Time
+
_
Current assuming steady growth
First to market with Acme
Cloud Integration
Google develop XYZ
product and
dominate market
Salesforce partnership
Exchange rate increases
European financial crisis

11. So just how manoeuvrable are you?
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12. Common CEO discussion
+ Are you manoeuvrable enough now?
+ Do you need to be?
+ So is agility part of your business strategy?
+ Do you see a problem with this?
+ What department has accountability for
agility?
+ What your investment into agility to date?
+ How are you measuring this?
+ Are you yielding benefits form this investment?
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No. Definitely not. We’re at risk
Yes - we have to be
No. But it needs to be
I do now
IT/project delivery
Not sure
We aren’t
Not sure as we don’t measure.
Get feeling it’s yes, but there is
much more.

13. So just how manoeuvrable are you?
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14. Traditional business thinking
Time
How are
we
doing?
Stage one
Stage two
Stage three
Stage four
Errr…
Then finally… Ta Daa!

15. Agile thinking
Time
How are
we doing?
Done things the
customer can
use & experience
The results show that
We don’t need the
rest of those features.
They loved that! But if
we could also do X
then that would be
5 things are 100%
done and can be
shipped. 10 things
isn’t quite what
customers wanted.
Project over.
We amazing!
need to try
something are not done
else…
Stage one
Stage two
Stage three
Stage four
ReleaseReleRaseelease
Awesome! That went
down well. It’s
something our
competitors don’t
have.

16. How agile is this company?
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Business Delivery Operations Customer
Waterfall Scrum ITIL/Waterfall
Large, up front plan
Fixed requirements
Fixed project budgets
Change discouraged
“No stuff-ups” culture
“Don’t challenge” culture
Minimise change
Break-fix culture
Cost centre
ITIL
Process in batches
batch

17. How agile is this company?
empirical business decisions measure
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Business Delivery Operations Customer
Lean Planning Scrum Continuous Delivery
Concept/Vision
Accept ambiguity
Strong customer focus
Incremental budget
Safe-to-fail culture
Quality infrastructure
Automation
Value centre
Flow driven delivery
Customer focus
Experiment
to validate
assumptions
& test market
Validated learning: reduced business risk, stronger customer focus

18. Slowest throughput: big batches, high utilisation

19. Everything is different in an agile business
 Business cases & funding
 How “the business” & IT work together
 Sales and marketing
 Governance and reporting
 People management
 Operations
 Leadership
 In other words, business transformation

20. Agility Path™
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Creating a continuous cycle of
improvement towards competitive
advantage and sustained business
success.

21. Agility Path: Framework, Not Methodology
+ A tool for continuous improvement towards organizational agility
+ Engaged change team (exec level) iteratively deliver increments of change
+ Based on Kotter’s change management model
+ Constant measurement
o Revenue per employee, customer satisfaction, staff satisfaction, innovation
rate, feature time to market
+ Not a prescriptive methodology: a framework for ongoing discovery
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23. Come talk to me
Edwin Dando
@edwindando
edwin.dando@assurity.co.nz
021 361 813
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