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Agile Business
Transformation
Kevin Goldsmith, Chief Technology Officer
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Why Agile?
• Bring value to customers
more quickly
• Adjust to competition /
market changes
• Improved speed of execution
• Enhanced innovation
velocity
Benefits
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Bring value to customers
more quickly
• Adjust to competition /
market changes
• Improved speed of execution
• Enhanced innovation
velocity
Benefits
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Innovation > Efficiency
Innovation > Consistency
Ingredients of Agile Business
Transformation
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Toyota
Production System
Highest Quality, Lowest Cost, Shortest Lead Time
Just in time
Continuous Flow
Takt Time
Pull System
Jidoka
Stop and notify of
abnormalities
Separate human
work and machine
work
Heijunka Standardized Work Kaizen
Stability
• Validated Learning
• Innovation Accounting
• BUILD-MEASURE-LEARN
Lean Startup
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Tenets
Minimize Process
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Standardize only where absolutely necessary. Standardization
reduces task innovation and institutionalizes Amdahl’s law
Team Autonomy
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Resource teams with everything that they need to drive and
execute against their goals.
Move Decision Making Down
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Leadership’s responsibility is to take the global business
context, set strategic direction, and communicate. With that
input, the larger organization can work towards strategic goals
using global and local contexts.
Be data-driven
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Real data always wins over opinion. Data establishes
true accountability.
Deliver Quickly and Iterate
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Delivering smaller units of value to your customers lets you
learn faster, adapt to market changes, and experiment
inexpensively in-market.
Tightly Manage WIP
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Working on fewer things means you always have to focus on
the most important thing
Create a culture of continuous improvement
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Finding and removing impediments to execution and speed needs
to be the responsibility of every member of the organization.
In Practice @ Avvo
• DUHBs
• WIGs / sWIGs
• Journey Teams
Elements of
Strategic
Execution at
Avvo
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
DUHBs
• Data
• Understandings
• Hypotheses
• Bets
• (Results)
DUHB(R)s
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Spotify DIBBs
• Kaizen Cards
• Toyota A3 Problem-solving
sheets
DUHB
Influences
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Incontrovertible
• Internal product or external
industry data
DUHB(R)
A
T
A
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Interpretation of the data
• Must follow from the data
• Semi-incontrovertible
DUHB(R)
N
D
E
R
S
T
A
N
D
I
N
G
S
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Based on the
Understandings
• Strategic interpretation of
how to address the
situation/problem outlined by
the Data and Understandings
• Debatable
DUHB(R)
Y
P
O
T
H
E
S
E
S
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Tactics to validate the
strategic hypotheses
• Can be sequential or parallel
• Reasonably small scope
• Debatable
DUHB(R)
E
T
S
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Documentation of the bets
and their outcome
• Used for future reference and
to inform future DUHBs
DUHB(R)
E
S
U
L
T
S
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
WIGs / sWIGs
• From Covey’s Four
Disciplines of Execution
• Wildly Important Goals
• Company-level Strategy
• Set by SLT yearly
• WIP-limited (currently 2)
WIGs
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• sub-WIGs
• Tactical cross-functional,
cross-team projects
• Scoped to 1-2 Quarters
• Reviewed bi-quarterly
• WIP-limited (currently 4)
sWIGs
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Supported by project lead
and SLT sponsor
• Informed by multiple DUHBs
sWIGs
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Journey Teams
• Focused on an external (or
internal) customer journey
• Fully cross-functional,
autonomous organization
• Can drive reasonably large
efforts independently
Journey
Teams
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Accountable to unique
business metrics
• Primary unit of
organizational execution
Journey
Teams
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
• Minimize execution
bottlenecks
• Minimize coordination
bottlenecks
• Minimize decision-making
bottlenecks
• Maximize execution velocity
Journey Team
Goals
@kevingoldsmith #AgileBizTrans
Thank You
Agile Business Transformation