Marc Danziger, an expert in agile transformation and project management, highlights the distinction between practicing agile methods and achieving true organizational agility. He emphasizes the importance of delivering value consistently and managing the organizational structure to support agile practices, as many companies face challenges that prevent their agile transformations from being sustainable. The document discusses barriers within typical management practices that hinder agility and suggests strategies to create a dynamic, responsive approach to management that aligns with agile methodologies.

1. Marc Danziger
CDO, Enterprise Consultant
Agile v. Agility
…the problem of management

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Marc Danziger
marc.danziger@NetObjectives.com
CDO, Enterprise Consultant
Chief Delivery Officer Marc Danziger is the Chief Delivery Officer of
Net Objectives. With over 20 years of
experience, Marc is a leading practitioner in
project and program management, project
rescue, product portfolio management, SAFe,
Scrum and business architecture. He helps
companies transform to Lean and Agile
enterprises.
He has a Masters in Planning Theory from U.C.
Berkeley where by random chance he studied
with the originators of the concepts of Wicked
Problems and Design Patterns.

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Lean Management
Project Management
Kanban / Scrum
ATDD / TDD / Design Patterns
technical
ASSESSMENTS
CONSULTING
TRAINING
COACHING
Lean for Executives
Product Portfolio Management
Business Product Owner
Product Owner
Onsite SPC
Leading SAFe
SAFe Architecture
PM/PO

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What’s we talking about?
Differentiating ‘Practicing Agile’ from
‘Organizational Agility.’
Discussing the barrier typical
management practices place between the
two.

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Agile is about practices
s
*Sprint = Iteration
• PM
• POs • POs
• Users
• POs
• Users
• BAs
• PM
• POs
• PM

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Agility is about overall control and responsiveness

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Simple:
The tight connection between strategic decision and execution
When an organization can make a decision and promptly
deliver an outcome that accurately manifests that decision,
the organization is demonstrating agility.
What’s “Agility?”

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Don’t Agile practices lead us to Agility?
…not always

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• Friction at the working service goes down
• Reliability of delivery improves
But:
• Does value of delivery improve?
• Post-transformation, does this persist?
If not, why not?
We’ve all lived through this

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Improve the delivery of value.
Change our model so that the transformations persist.
Why? …and how?
So we have to do two things…

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Delivering Value

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“It’s all about the
Benjamins.”

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No.
It’s about delivering value. But in our economy, money is a
decent proxy for value.
…and, by the way, when we rapidly deliver value other good
things happen.
Is it all about Money?

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First Release
Investment
Period
Payback
Period
Profit
Period
Breakeven
Cashflow
Time
economics of responsiveness
Mark Denne and Jane Cleland-Huang
Software by Numbers

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First
Release
Invest-
ment
Period
Profit
Period
Pay-
back
Period
Cashflow
Time
Release 1 Net Return
staged releases

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Profit
Period
Second
Release
Invest-
ment
Period
Pay-
back
Period
Release 2 Net Return
Cashflow
Time
Release 1 Net Return
staged releases

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Profit
Period
Investment
Invest-
ment
Period
Pay-
back
Period
Breakeven
Point
Total Return
Cashflow
Time
staged releases

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Cashflow
Breakeven
Single
Release
First Release
Time
Staged
Releases
Requires a focus on sustainability of
realizing value by attending to
architectural roadmap of product line
increased profit

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Cashflow
Breakeven
Single Release
First Release
Time
Staged
Releases
when competition
is intense

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Source: Standish Group
Study of 2000 projects at 1000 companies
Usage of Features and
Functions in Typical System
DELIVER
the
IMPORTANT THINGS
…NOT EVERYTHING

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1 2 3
but incrementing calls for a
fully formed idea
courtesy Jeff Patton
“incrementing” builds a bit at a time...

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1 2 3
to allow you to move from
vague idea to realization
courtesy Jeff Patton
“iterating” builds a rough version, validates it,
then slowly builds up quality…

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Program: Straight Through Processing
Value Criteria
Improve
Operations
Increase capacity for
handling transactions
Customer
Satisfaction
Shorten resolution time
Reduce Cost Reduce manual processing
cost (headcount)
Synopsis
Customer transactions/requests/issues/problems are handled by process associates in
the customer service area. The volume of transactions which need to be resolved on a
daily basis is nearing the capacity of what can be handled within a 24 hour period; in
addition, resolution time is longer due to the manual effort involved in resolving the
problem.
The company is committed to investing in technology which would automate (no touch)
current manual processes, handle more requests in a shorter amount of time, with a
reduced number of process associates.
Investment
Budget $20M
Payback / ROI 1-3 years

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Business Backlog for STP
Program: No touch STP
High Low
Plan Setup Ent. Data Workflow Auto. STP
Bus
Inc
Bus
Inc
Bus
Inc
Bus
Inc
Bus
Inc…
9 months
Plan Setup
Ent. Data
Workflow
Auto. STP
80% 10% 10%
6 months!
4 months
1 month of a dev team’s
vs.
Realizing value 3 months sooner!

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Why don’t Agile transformations persist?

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“In a poll last Wednesday of some 400 people working in many
different firms where the practices known as Agile and Scrum
are being implemented, 88% reported tension between the way
Agile/Scrum teams are managed in their organization and the
way the rest of the organization is managed. Only 8% reported
‘no tension.’ “
- Steve Denning, Forbes January 2015

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What’s management’s problem?

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”I don't think investors and money managers are aware of the
rate of change coming down the pike. The rate of change is
too hard to fathom. But they need to be aware that many of
today's F500 are in danger. A study from the John M. Olin
School of Business at Washington University estimates that 40
percent of today's F500 companies on the S&P 500 will no
longer exist in 10 years.”
- Peter Diamandis, X-Prize founder
Why is Management fearful?

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• Technological change
• Cultural change
• Economic change
• Political / Regulatory change
• _______________ change

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How We Manage People

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Costs of Interrupting a Team
What we think will happen What does happen
Current state
Rework
Overhead
Planned Work
Rework
Overhead
Planned Work
New Features
Rework
Overhead
Planned Work
New Features
Extra work
The cost of interrupting a team is not
just the delay of other work, it is the
additional work it creates that would
otherwise not have to be done.

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We Manage This Way
even though our value flows this way

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Let’s Create a Pilot Project
Project 1
Project 2
%
Project 3
Project 4
Project N
Business Analyst, Architect, Usability Expert,
Developer, Developer, Tester, Project Manager
Expert
Just creating a cross-functional,
co-located team you will improve
3x without changing your process.
While it may be successful
as a pilot, it will likely not
be sustainable.

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Let’s look at this again.
…reducing friction in monolithic systems
can be a good thing.

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• Strategy
• Budgeting
• HR
…are the top 3. Let’s discuss them.
..but it leaves us with some issues.

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Project Manager >
Program Manager >
Portfolio Manager >
CIO
HR and Agile
Scrum Master >
RTE >
??

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• Stack rank
• Individual reviews
• Bonus/promotion policies
Other HR Issues

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• Budgeting by project
• Inflexible annual budgets
• Managing variance down
Budgeting and Agile

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Given all this - what is to be done?

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Input
Priority
BUSINESS DISCOVERY BUSINESS DELIVERY
Planning Staging Ready to
Pull
c h u n k i n g s l i c i n g
Decision
High enough business
value?
Decision
Technically feasible,
sufficient ROI?
Iteration
0
Iterative
Development
Incremental
Deployment
Support &
Feedback
Decision
Ready to release?
Decision
Is there capacity?
Define acceptance
criteria and
feature sequence
Build iteratively, deploy
incrementally
Review business value ,
approve, and prioritize
Define value
increments and
sequence
Define
product
backlog
The Value Stream
Doing
“Left of Do”

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• Dynamic, responsive strategy
• Budgeting aligned with value streams
• Agile leadership becomes a characteristic of the
management team
• Agile team members have both a pro-Agile set of HR goals
and a career path that doesn’t require that they abandon
Agile (or Lean) practices to advance into management roles
What happens if we make ‘left of do’ Agile?

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Observations Related To Moral
Conflict
No fixed recipes for organization, communications,
tactics, leadership, etc.
Wide freedom for subordinates to exercise
imagination and initiative – yet harmonize within
intent of superior commanders.
Heavy reliance upon moral (human values) instead
of material superiority as basis for cohesion and
ultimate success.
Commanders must create a bond and
breadth of experience based upon trust –
not mistrust – for cohesion.
- John Boyd, “Patterns of Conflict” slide
118

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“In command – and
out of control.”
- LtGen. Paul Van Riper