The document outlines the Agile Fluency Model, developed by Dianna Larsen and James Shore, which helps teams assess their progress towards agile practices based on their specific context. It describes four levels of fluency, ranging from basic value delivery to optimizing entire systems, each with associated team characteristics and metrics. A case study illustrates the application of the model in a large organization, highlighting practices, necessary data collection, and opportunities for improvement.

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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