A presentation given at 1st Conf 2016 about using the Agile Fluency model to create a professional development roadmap

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2. ROAD MAPPING YOUR
WAY TO AGILE
FLUENCY
Kelseyvh@Thoughtworks.com
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3. WHERE ARE WE GOING?
• How it all began
• Agile Fluency – the model
• Case study
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4. ARE WE THERE YET?
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• How are we doing?
• What should we do next?
• How do we compare?
• Who can help us with xyz?

5. IT’S COMPLICATED
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• There are lots of Agile/CD/
CI maturity models to
choose from
• Many are free, some are
not
• It’s not always clear what
they are measuring against
• Many don’t consider
context!

6. WHAT IS THE AGILE FLUENCY MODEL
• Developed in 2012 by Dianna
Larsen and James Shore
• The model results from their
observations of hundreds of
teams and organisations over
many years
• The model helps teams
understand where they are in
terms of their own goals
within a relevant context
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7. WHAT IS FLUENCY?
• The quality or condition
of being fluent
synonyms:
fluidity, flow, smoothness, effortlessness, ease,
naturalness; grace, gracefulness, elegance;
regularity, rhythm, rhythmicity;
• Dianna Larsen talks
about fluency as what
you do without thinking
about it
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8. HOW FLUENT IS FLUENT?
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• How many people
here speak multiple
languages?
• Do you have the
same level of
fluency in all the
languages you
speak?

9. Understand what level of fluency
makes sense for you
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10. THE AGILE FLUENCY MODEL
A quick tour
• Teams start by
developing software
together.
• After a while ..
Something will change
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11. ONE STAR AGILE FLUENCY – FOCUS ON VALUE
A cultural shift has
happened.
Thinking as a team,
not as individuals
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12. ONE STAR FLUENCY – TEAM AND ORGANISATIONAL
CHARACTERISTICS
• Transparency
• Sharing information
• Actively seeking to
improve practices
• Understand how their
work contributes to the
whole
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13. * KEY METRIC
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• Key Metric
• Does the team plan and work on delivering value?
• Can anyone in the organisation see progress?

14. TWO STAR AGILE FLUENCY – DELIVER VALUE
• Teams deliver high
quality products, on
demand or at the
cadence the market or
business needs
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15. TW0 STAR FLUENCY – TEAM AND ORGANISATIONAL
CHARACTERISTICS
• Explicit focus on
developing practices to
support the goal of
delivery
• Deep commitment to
upholding practices
such as pairing and
TDD
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16. ** KEY METRIC
• Is continuous delivery the norm?
• Does the team know the cadence for the
business and the market?
• Does the team have the right skills to deliver
value and quality consistently?
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17. THREE STAR FLUENCY – TEAM AND ORGANISATIONAL
CHARACTERISTICS
• Truly cross functional
teams
• Minimal management
oversight
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18. *** KEY METRIC
• The business and the team use a shared
language to talk about goals and progress
• Teams have access to all the information they
need to deliver high value products
• Teams are empowered to make product
decisions
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19. FOUR STAR AGILE FLUENCY – OPTIMISE FOR SYSTEMS
• Whole business
involvement in the
product or service
delivery process
• A new organisational
culture
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20. **** KEY METRIC
• The work of every person in the organisation is
driven by the work of the development teams
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21. WORKING OUT HOW MANY STARS MAKE SENSE
• One star fluency could be be what makes sense:
• You are a large, organisation or work in a highly regulated field.
• Two star fluency could be what makes sense:
• you deliver a web based service internally or externally
• Three star fluency could be what makes sense:
• If you deliver software as a service (SaaS)
• Four star fluency could be what makes sense if:
• You are a start up
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22. CASE STUDY
Using the Agile Fluency model
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23. SETTING THE SCENE
• Working with a delivery platform within a large
organisation
• Goal:
• To transition away from a project based delivery
model towards a CD environment
• Many changes over the preceding months
including:
• Forming several long-lived cross functional teams
• Using visual systems to communicate progress
• 3 amigos approach to elaboration, development
and testing
• + more
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24. HIGH LEVEL OBJECTIVES
• Review progress to date
• Identify opportunities for
knowledge sharing
• Identify any knowledge
gaps
• Set goals – common and
team
• Create a check point for
ongoing review
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25. APPROACH
• Basic requirements for
the approach:
• Context sensitive
• Enjoyable to complete
• Team based
• Visual outputs
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26. DATA COLLECTION - OVERVIEW
• Gather each team
together – away from
their desks
• Provide an explanation
of the Agile Fluency
model
• Ask each team to assess
themselves against the
model
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27. ONE POSSIBLE MODEL VIEW
• Building on existing work to create a
visual model
• Four quadrants
• Representing practices, processes, concepts
and enterprise
• Four concentric circles
• Each representing an Agile Fluency level
starting from one star in the center to four
stars at the perimiter
• Numbered blips
• Each blip represents a specific practice or idea
• The position of each blip, indicates the Agile
Fluency level at which you expect to see it
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28. TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
• A3 print outs of each
radar quadrant (from
our visual model)
• Sticky dots
• Sharpies
• 1 or more facilitators
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29. RUNNING THE SESSION
• Each team forms 4 sub groups
• Each group takes one radar quadrant
• For each blip, assess using a traffic light
system
• Green = We’ve got this!
• Yellow = We’re working on this!
• Red = Not on our radar yet! Or too hard –
because …
• Where a group felt they couldn’t call a blip,
we used a blue dot and discussed at the
end
• Facilitator available for clarification and
questions
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30. DATA ANALYSIS
• Very manual
process
• Converted the traffic
light ratings into a
numeric scale
• Captured on a
spreadsheet for
detailed analysis
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31. VISUALISING THE RESULTS
• Experimented with a few
different tools;
• Excel
• Tableau
• Raw (Web based
visualisation engine)
• Looked for patterns,
anti-patterns and
outliers
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32. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
• All of our teams were well on the way towards
achieving 2 star Agile Fluency
• Yellows in the one or two star circles indicate
where we should focus next
• Reds in this area need to be better understood
• All the teams had yellows and greens in both
three and four star area’s
• We could easily see where one team could
provide support and coaching to another team
• We could see some opportunities for shared
development activities
• All the teams reported that the process of sitting
together and discussing their practices was highly
valuable
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33. NEXT STEPS
• Give the teams their data
Suggest how they might use it
• For example:
• Ask another team to put together a brown
bag or workshop in their strength area
• Asking another team to pair on a topic
• Suggesting internal or external speakers or
training
• Developing and showcasing a team
roadmap
• Asking for management support where
progress in blocked by big picture
challenges
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34. THINKING RETROSPECTIVELY ABOUT THE PROCESS
• What went well?
• The lo-fi process
• It stimulated good open conversations
• People enjoyed the experience
• Using the radar
• It was simple to use
• Generated an immediate and relevant visual output
• The data
• Provided an overall snapshot
• Target the one thing which would make the most difference.
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35. THINKING RETROSPECTIVELY (2)
What could have been done differently
• A simpler spreadsheet
• We didn't need to use all the categories of data we
collected
• Asking teams to nominate their own practices
rather than providing a generic set
• Would have been more relevant
• An easier way to enter/collect the data
• Hand data entry was very time consuming and error
prone
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36. ACTIONS – FOR NEXT TIME
• Digitise the data collection process, without
losing the benefits of the face to face
interactions and conversations
• Possibly a tablet based solution?
• Try using the model in a different context, e.g.
with governance teams
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37. LATEST THINKING
• Another perspective;
• More stars = more investment
• Investment = time + money + cost of change
• Essentials:
• Coaching
• Patience – willingness to slow down in order to learn how to
speed up
• Business champion – someone willing to spend their social capital
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38. WHAT CAN YOU DO?
¨ Step 1. Work out what fluency level makes sense for your team
or organisation.
¨ Step 2. Create your own radar with quadrants and blips that
make sense for you
¨ Step 3. Run the exercise together
¨ Step 4. Share the data
¨ Step 5. Improve the model we have provided and share it back
to the community
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39. THANK YOU
For questions or suggestions
kelseyvh@thoughtworks.com
For opinions and comment
@kelseyvh