Slides from my talk to Unicom "Agile in the Public Sector" on 7 March, 2013. Governance is about decision making. If you don't address it head on, then people will waste a lot of time on demarcation disputes & etc. Agile changes several aspects of decision making -- the locus of authority, the timing of decisions, notions of "best practice" -- but it doesn't change the need to make decisions about priorities, resources, tools, etc. So you need to think about governance. This talk discusses some work I've been doing to help organisations and teams explore differing views of decision rights and processes. If you can't talk about governance, then you sure as hell can't manage it.

1. Perceptions of Governance
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2. Agile
Governance
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3. Agile
Governance
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4. Agile
Governance
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5. Agenda
 What is governance?
 Why agile changes governance
 A tool to explore people’s perceptions
 Results
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6. Institute on Governance (www.iog.ca)
They follow an
We know which
acceptable process
decisions matter
(“due process”)
Governance is the process whereby societies or
organisations make important decisions, determine
whom they involve and how they render account.
The right people are They track outcomes &
involved in these act to improve them
decisions
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7. Summary (scalpel)
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gothick_matt

8. Agile …
 … questions locus of authority
 … questions applicability of “best practice”
 … questions timing (“last responsible moment”)
 … doesn’t remove need to make decisions
 … so doesn’t remove existence of governance
 … may change governance structures & style
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9. Decisions?
What corporate infrastructure?
What algorithm to use?
Which projects to prioritise?
What budget & resources to allocate?
Are we ready for release?
What development infrastructure?
Which stories to prioritise?
What to do today?
What tools to use?
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10. 1 Identify differences and open up discussion
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Gather a body of data 2
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11. Perceptions of Governance
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14. We’d need to do
Cynefin
an experiment or We’d assemble a team of
experts
pilot/prototype
If we need to think Dave Snowden
I can just decide and do it
about this, we’re in
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March wrong place 15

15. Perceptions of Governance
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16. Perceptions of Governance
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17. Some results
 N=50+
Exec
Middle
Mgr
Team
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18. Who chooses the development process?
Complex.
Belongs to team plus PM.
“Belongs to me”
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Simple (“just do it”).
March 2013 19 Belongs to team plus exec
1/12

19. Who allocates resources?
Project Manager
“Belongs to me”
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Anyone but me.
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4/12

20. What level of commitment can we make?
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6/12

21. Is this story ready for implementation?
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8/12

22. Who sets budgets?
BCS
Agile North
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10/12

23. Who prioritises work?
BCS
Agile North
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11/12

24. “Chaos” decisions
Estimation
Objectives
Costs
Estimation
Work Allocation
(Developers also saw these as belonging
to team, but Development managers
thought they owned work allocation.)
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25. Final thoughts
governance
He who forgets history is condemned to repeat it.
 Good governance lets you focus energy on decisions, not process
 If you don’t define governance up front, you revisit it for every decision
 Agile shifts the locus and timing of decisions
 It doesn’t remove the need to think about governance
 People have divergent opinions who should make which decision
 This derails projects & programmes, unless it’s addressed head on
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26. Thank you
graham@grahamoakes.co.uk
@GrahamDOakes
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27. Graham Oakes Ltd
 Making sense of technology…
 Many organisations are caught up in the
complexity of technology and systems.
 This complexity may be inherent to the
technology itself. It may be created by the pace of technology change. Or it may arise from
the surrounding process, people and governance structures.
 We help untangle this complexity and define business strategies that both can be
implemented and will be adopted by people throughout the organisation and its partner
network. We then help assure delivery of implementation projects.
 Clients…
 Cisco Worldwide Education – Architecture and research for e-learning and educational systems
 Council of Europe – Systems for monitoring compliance with international treaties; e-learning systems
 Dover Harbour Board – Systems and architecture review
 MessageLabs – Architecture and assurance for partner management portal
 National Savings & Investments – Helped NS&I and BPO partner develop joint IS strategy
 The Open University – Enterprise architecture, CRM and product development strategies
 Oxfam – Content management, CRM, e-Commerce
 Thames Valley Police – Internet Consultancy
 Sony Computer Entertainment – Global process definition
 Amnesty International, Endemol, tsoosayLabs, Vodafone, …
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