SWARMing

Dan North has spent the last few years showing all kinds of organisations how they can deliver faster, achieve better results with less effort, and have fun doing it. Katherine Kirk has been in similar organisations, messing with how techs, executives and senior managers strategise, teaching them to embrace ambiguity and stop being their own worst enemy.

Between them they have a wealth of experience and stories of alignment at scale, and not a formal scaling methodology in sight. This is not a coincidence. They have realised, and Katherine will demonstrate, why structured scaling methods simply can’t work for very long. Context is king: It constantly changes and we must continuously adapt to it.

Come and learn how to sort the wheat from the chaff, the effective from the dogmatic, of scaling delivery, and find out why Dan is Scaling Without A Religious Methodology and Katherine is teaching Eastern philosophy to techs and execs… but not religiously.

Transcript

1. Scaling
   Without
   a
   Religious
   Methodology
   Katherine Kirk
   @kkirk
   Dan North
   @tastapod
   

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2. Please help us…
   IT is so slow to deliver!
   IT is expensive, poor value
   Too many “surprises”
   PMO tells us too late!
   We know we are slow…
   but we are working so hard!
   Business doesn’t trust us
   PMO micromanages us
   Infrastructure is a bottleneck
   Our landscape is so complicated!
   IT always blow their estimates
   and can’t stick to a plan
   How can we govern and report?
   We don’t even know if their work
   is aligned with the org!
   We want to help but dev teams
   won’t tell us what they need
   Our procurement cycle is annual
   so we have to know in advance
   Business stakeholders Development
   PMO and Change groups
   Infrastructure
   

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3. What are we doing so wrong?
   “You are aiming at the wrong target”
   $
   Cost Accounting vs Throughput Accounting
   cost and profit centres whole org creates value
   busyness and effort lead time and throughput
   local “performance” targets identify and resolve bottlenecks
   

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4. Oh right, we get it!
   Lean/Agile™ will save us!
   Lean/Agile™ will save us!
   Lean/Agile™ will save us!
   Lean/Agile™ will save us!
   Business stakeholders Development
   PMO and Change groups
   Infrastructure
   

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5. © The New York Times
   

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6. Please help us…
   Lean/Agile™ didn’t save us!
   Or whatever it was those

   IT folks were doing
   Lean/Agile™ didn’t save us!
   It’s the same old
   command-and-control,
   just with different labels
   Lean/Agile™ didn’t save us!
   People were even more
   reluctant to give estimates.
   They even have a #hashtag
   Lean/Agile™ didn’t save us!
   Now they are even less likely
   to know what they want
   Business stakeholders Development
   PMO and Change groups
   Infrastructure
   

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7. Please help us…
   That thing we tried was
   working ok, and then
   it stopped working!
   That thing we tried was
   working ok, and then
   it stopped working!
   That thing we tried was
   working ok, and then
   it stopped working!
   That thing we tried was
   working ok, and then
   it stopped working!
   Business stakeholders Development
   PMO and Change groups
   Infrastructure
   

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8. How do we always end up here?
   That thing we tried was
   working ok, and then
   it stopped working!
   

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9. Some things are inevitable
   

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10. Some things are inevitable
    Degradation
    Dysfunction
    Expiry

    stimulates maintaining, transforming
    stimulates innovating, challenging
    stimulates creating, starting over
    Applies to people, products, process, strategy, organisations
    

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11. Why does this happen?
    Change
    Interdependency
    Imperfection

    drives the need to adapt
    drives the need to collaborate
    drives the need to iterate
    These are the drivers of Lean and Agile methods
    

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12. Packaged methods don’t last!
    

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13. Packaged methods can’t last!
    

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14. Scaling
    Without
    a
    Religious
    Methodology
    

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15. First a word about religion
    religion (n): the structures, constraints and rituals we
    humans accrete around a kernel of faith because we
    fear uncertainty so we invent answers.
    — Dan North
    

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16. Table stakes*
    *necessary but not sufficient
    Time
    Investment
    Communications
    Influence
    Education
    Practise External help
    Leadership
    - Consistent
    - Invested
    - Resilient
    

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17. Based on simple principles
    People are basically good
    “Everyone is trying to help”
    Sustainable flow of value is the goal
    We need to learn new metrics and techniques
    Theory of Constraints: one constraint at a time
    “The Goal” as a book club
    

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18. This is literally* all of it
    Visualise -> Stabilise -> Optimise
    Start small, get data
    Learn from mistakes, iterate
    *not literally
    

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19. Summing up
    Don’t be fooled!
    You can’t defeat the universe
    Mastery is understanding how to work with the grain.

    This means adapting, iterating and combining techniques
    for your context and the changes around you.
    This all takes education, time, practise, and other things
    There is no magic formula but there is hope
    

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20. Thanks for listening
    Katherine Kirk
    @kkirk
    Dan North
    @tastapod
    

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