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Cultural change? Fight Fire with Fire!

Cultural change? Fight Fire with Fire!

Most enterprises fail in their journey towards Agility. There are many reasons, but most fail because of the unbalanced focus on improving IT departments and changing the practices – e.g., implement Scrum, hire Scrum Masters, use Jira, create Backlogs, do Refinements, etc. In other words, we replace a traditional process by an “Agile process” without transforming the underling culture. Agility is about increasing our company’s ability to deliver high-quality business value in an ever-changing market. It is not about using Scrum, Kanban, doing pair-programming or implementing many of the other buzzwords. Let’s face it, without the cultural change: failure is guaranteed. So, stop trying! Or, join us and see how we can use processes and tools – that traditional organizations like so much - to actually drive the behavioral changes that promotes Organizational Agility.

Frederico Figueiredo

January 29, 2018
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  1. 1 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Cultural Change? Fight Fire with Fire
    A Path to Organizational Agility
    Fred Figueiredo (@fredfigueiredo)
    Jan 2018 @ AgileWarsaw

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  2. 2 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    A real story…

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  3. 3 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Fight the organization

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  4. 4 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    How I started to promote Agile?
    Fight the organization!

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  5. 5 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    To save people from processes & bureaucracy!

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  6. 6 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    To save people from bad management!

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  7. 7 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    What do we fight? Where is it coming from?
    “All resistance comes from
    specific individuals

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  8. 8 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    An example of fighting…

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  9. 9 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Hiring a Scrum Master – Problem (1/2)
    Zero or low number of applicants,
    regardless of job post duration

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  10. 10 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Hiring a Scrum Master – Problem (2/2)
    Other companies often get 22 applicants
    in less than 10 days

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  11. 11 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    What to do?

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  12. 12 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Mission Scrum Master (experiment)
    Within 16h to 18h
    From idea, to running experiment
    Posted in LinkedIn (anonymous)
    With no direct reference to X
    Survey with 13 questions
    Complementing “Apply” site

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  13. 13 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Results (1/2)
    (all images retrieved from LinkedIn)
    18x improvement
    (vs. similar jobs - competition)
    Within 2 days
    72 applicants

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  14. 14 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Results (2/2)
    (sample feedback from Twitter)
    8/13 are potential candidates.
    List is prioritized based on results & feedback
    Using a survey eases the process and
    provides valid data for initial filtering
    Brand improvement

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  15. 15 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    What happened? (1/2)
    (what we expected)
    (reality)

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  16. 16 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    What happened? (2/2)

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  17. 17 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    How I felt afterwards?

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  18. 18 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Reflection: Changing HOW is not sustainable (1/3)

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  19. 19 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Reflection: Where resistance come from… (2/3)
    Does it already exist or do we create it?
    (thanks to my friend and mentor, Saket Bivalkar, for enabling this perspective in me)

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  20. 20 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Reflection: We resist what is already there! (3/3)
    Leadership
    Processes Tools

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  21. 21 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw

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  22. 22 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Hi J

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  23. 23 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Believe there is…
    A

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  24. 24 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Fight Fire with Fire!

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  25. 25 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    i.e., Use processes & tools to drive cultural change

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  26. 26 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Let’s get back to the beginning

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  27. 27 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Why we do what we do?

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  28. 28 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Why we need a better way?

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  29. 29 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Exercise: Why organizations adopt Agile?
    • Pair-up
    • Identify 2-3 reasons using a max. of 1-3 words
    • Time: 1 min

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  30. 30 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Why we need it? (customer PoV)
    “Poor user interface.”
    “Too slow to respond.”
    (re-write from the most common NPS comments found online)
    “Good qualities, but lacks basic needs.”
    “Customer service has no idea about their products.”
    “Totally unhappy with the system.”

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  31. 31 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Why we need it? (competition PoV)
    $19 Billion
    (in 5 years)

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  32. 32 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Why we need it? (market PoV)
    (source: 2015)

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  33. 33 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Exercise: How is it different from your Why’s?
    We tend to talk about WHAT we need
    Not WHY we need it
    Example: “Flexibility”, Why do we need it? “Because…”, Why?, … (root-cause)
    Why => How => What
    (watch this 18 min video)

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  34. 34 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Tool: Create a sense of urgency!

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  35. 35 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Exercise: How we adopt Agile?
    • Pair-up (different person)
    • Identify 2-3 ways using max. of 1-5 words
    • Time: 1 min

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  36. 36 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    How our organizations look like today…

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  37. 37 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Exercise: How you add value in your company?
    • Pair-up (different person)
    • Say your first name and how you add value
    • We will find new partners 3 times when I say “switch”
    • When we switch, you need to say something different
    • While I do not say switch, hold or talk
    • Note: you cannot say your role
    • Time: 1min x 3

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  38. 38 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Exercise: How is it different from your How’s?
    We tend to talk about how to do it
    Instead of talking about the value of doing it
    Example: “Introduce Scrum by sending everyone to a PSM”, What is the value of it?

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  39. 39 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Tool: Promote value-driven conversations

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  40. 40 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Exercise: What is Agile?
    • What is the essence for you, max 1-3 words
    • Individual answers
    • Time: 30 sec

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  41. 41 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    What is Agile?
    Not a process or a tool (& not just for software)
    Agile is a cultural mind-set
    Agility is an organizational property

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  42. 42 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    What creates a culture?
    People
    (values, beliefs,
    behaviors, …)
    Leadership
    Environment
    Tools, Frameworks

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  43. 43 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Exercise: What is Business Agility?
    • Pair-up (different person)
    • Describe it using a max of 8 words
    • Time: 1 min

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  44. 44 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    High-performance organizations
    (aka., Business Agility)
    Our ability to rapidly adapt to external and internal changes
    while delivering high-value & quality to our customers

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  45. 45 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Are we creating an high-performance organization?
    “All local optimizations lead to a sub-optimization of the global system.”
    Marketing Sales
    Product
    Mgmt.
    Prod Dev
    Imp. &
    Delivery
    Customer
    Service
    Planning Analysis Design Dev
    Test &
    Integrate
    UAT Operations

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  46. 46 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Business Agility
    Culture
    (behaviors & environment)
    Operational Excellence
    (faster, cheaper & high-quality)
    Business Competiveness
    (innovation & competitive)
    Sweet spot
    (aka, flow)

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  47. 47 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    How to do it?

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  48. 48 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    We are Agile!?!
    There are the benefits of pursuing Agile?
    • High employee satisfaction (due to autonomy and self-organization)
    • Delivery of business value (aligned with needs)
    • Iterative (progress through successive refinement)
    • Incremental (built and delivered in pieces – subsets)
    • Short feedback loops (validate if we headed in the right direction)
    • Visibility (transparency of the work-in-progress)
    • Adaptability (to changing requirements, market, etc.)
    • Predictability (from visibility and adaptability)
    • Control risk (due to the all of the above)
    • …

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  49. 49 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Tool: Ask, where are we?
    Consider this “success criteria” for high-performance organization (10):
    • Our people are happy and retention rate is above average in the industry
    • Hiring and onboarding new employees takes 1 month, in average
    • Our customers are happy with our products
    • We continually deliver product value and reduce all types of wastes
    • Quickly making decisions and executing our strategy
    • We are known for our ability to innovate and disrupt the market
    • We have effective & efficient communication & collaboration across functions
    • Reduce lead time and increasing customer satisfaction
    • We deliver to production several times a day (and all testing is automated)
    • Our products are known for their high-quality (e.g., low # of defects)
    • Our client acquisition, retention and revenue surpasses forecasts
    Time: 30 sec
    10
    1 5

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  50. 50 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Tool: Improvement backlogs

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  51. 51 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Tool: Improvement backlogs (examples)
    Team Improvement Backlog (sample)
    • Review working agreements
    • Add peer-review to our Definition of Done
    • Add a fast-lane to our visual board
    • Celebrate hard at the end of the sprint
    Program Improvement Backlog items (sample)
    • Product Owner Training
    • Identify minimum documentation for X project
    • Train Marketing team on Agile values
    • Look for external Agile Coaches providers
    Portfolio Improvement Backlog
    • Pilot program self-assessment in Y and Z programs
    • Review budget for each program at the end of the quarter
    • Get training on Business Value and Decision Models

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  52. 52 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Tool: Self-assessments at all levels

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  53. 53 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Tool: Self-assessments (behavior-driven)

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  54. 54 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Tool: Self-assessment (example)
    Product Ownership Health
    • To maximize the delivery of value, PO facilitates PBI dev, prioritization and negotiation
    • To ease planning, review, and acceptance of PBIs, PO facilitates the dev of AC
    Iteration Health
    • To get a common understanding, we plan our iterations together with stakeholders
    • To mitigate risk, we proactively address inter-dependencies and impediments
    Increment Health
    • To accelerate value creation , we use explicit and transparent AC and DoD
    • To maximize customer satisfaction, we regularly show done, integrated, and tested work
    Team Health
    • To boost engagement and productivity, we work in a happy, fun and fail-safe environment
    Technical Health
    • To reduce cost of rework, we actively remove technical debt (code that slow us down)

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  55. 55 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Tool: Knowledge networks

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  56. 56 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    What we get?

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  57. 57 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Happiness at work, wouldn’t you like that?

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  58. 58 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    How to get there?

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  59. 59 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Closing

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  60. 60 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Exercise: One take-away, one action
    • Write down, somewhere:
    • Your biggest take-away / learning?
    • What improvement / experiment will you introduce tomorrow?
    • Time: 2 min

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  61. 61 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Exercise: Share take-away
    • Pair-up one last time and share (only):
    • Your biggest take-away / learning and WHY
    • Time: 1 min

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  62. 62 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Be crazy!

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  63. 63 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Don’t fear failure, embrace it!

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  64. 64 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Have fun!

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  65. 65 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    But always as a team!

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  66. 66 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Call for action!
    Unhappy customers, aggressive competition
    and market disruption is real.
    Change is a choice.
    What will you change tomorrow?

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  67. 67 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Thank you Google!
    (for all the images used, except my drawings)

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  68. 68 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    15+ years, 20+ orgs, from 4 - 60k workers
    ~6 years
    Traditional Product
    Development
    ~9 years
    Agile Product
    Development

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  69. 69 Fight Fire with Fire / @fredfigueiredo / AgileWarsaw
    Thank You & Questions
    Twitter: @fredfigueiredo
    Email: [email protected]
    Currently: Passionate contributor at…

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