Where we are seeing more and more individual and team level learning and continuous improvement in organizations, improvements at the higher levels still tend to pose significant challenges. We learn as a team and learn how to be a team, but when we reach the borders of our team and have to deal with more complex systems involving people from our ecosystem and even sometimes from people outside our ecosystem, many improvement practices break down and don’t lead to sustainable results. At the same time, the bigger and more complex our solutions become, the more we need to be able to secure improvement at all levels in the organization.
In this talk, Ben Linders will explore what we can do to increase our understanding of systematic problems at higher levels in organizations, and how to use that to improve the performance and agility of organizations. He will show how we can apply techniques like system/multi-team retrospectives and systems thinking to get improvement going at a level of two higher than the team, and present the benefits that this can bring to teams and organizations as a whole.
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Ben Linders Consulting
Learn and improve at higher level
Systemic, Complex Problems
Projects / Products / Systems
Stakeholders with Different Goals
Cultural & Organizational Barriers
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Ben Linders Consulting
No time to learn
2019 Workplace Learning Report by LinkedIn
https://learning.linkedin.com/resources/workplace-learning-report
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Ben Linders Consulting
Organizational learning fails
What doesn’t work
Best practice repositories
Project evaluations
Classroom training
Implement a framework
Tools
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Ben Linders Consulting
Systems Thinking
Know the purpose
Holistic view
Visualize the system
Understand behavior
Probe-sense-respond
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Ben Linders Consulting
Case: Team autonomy & coaching
1 hr of work left to finish US
Should we intervene?
• Stand-up
• Product review
• Retrospective
• Grooming/planning
Give space for teams to learn
Be available as coach
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Ben Linders Consulting
Root cause analysis
Analyze a problem
to determine causes
that made it
happen, to define
actions to prevent
similar problems
from happening
Real Problem
Significant Damage
Sponsor pays:
– investigation and
– preventive actions
Success Factors RCA
“We do not want such a problem to happen again!”
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Ben Linders Consulting
Finding Root Causes
Multiple causes
Relationships
Safety (training)
Challenges
• Opinion or fact
• Uniqueness
• Prevent or mitigate
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Ben Linders Consulting
Impediments & Blockers
Analyze to understand
Solve first, learn later
What, not who
No blaming
Fail fast -> Learn fast
Don’t shoot the messenger
Ignoring doesn’t make
problems go away
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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Retrospectives Myths
Invented by agile/Scrum
Only for teams
One format fits all
Learn from mistakes
Lead by Scrum master
More actions is better
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Ben Linders Consulting
Large-scale retrospectives
Project Product Organization
Release Delivery Quarterly
Collaboration Arch, Tech Debt Structure/culture
Dev, Ops, & Teams & Departments &
Stakeholders Arch / POs & PMs Managers
Timeline Value Stream Map Open Space
Large Sailboat Mad Sad Glad Self-assessment
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Ben Linders Consulting
Case: Bus–Dev–Ops Retrospective
Distributed business, develop & operations –> Agile team
• Physical and social distance
• Distributed decisions
• Timeline retrospectives on release
– Reconstruct what happened
– How people felt about it
– Improve decision making
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Ben Linders Consulting
Retrospectives with Stakeholders
Invite all involved
Problems relevant for all
Suitable exercise/format
Shared understanding
Ownership of actions
Meeting Atmosphere
Everyone feels welcome
Safe to speak up
No blaming & complaining
Guiding toward results
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Ben Linders Consulting
Prime Directive
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly
believe that everyone did the best job they could, given
what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the
resources available, and the situation at hand.”
Project Retrospectives – A handbook for Team Reviews
Create an Open Culture
where people Speak Up
with Respect for each other
to Learn and Improve
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Ben Linders Consulting
Independent Facilitator
Process
Effectiveness
Atmosphere
No personal agenda
Not involved in topic
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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile transformations fail
Transformation Project:
We will be agile by xxx
Plan the transformation, stick to the plan
Everybody must do agile the same way
Agile Manifesto:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Responding to change over following a plan
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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile journey of learning
What hinders us to reach our goals?
What helps us to take the next step?
What are the risks & opportunities?
What to pack for our agile journey?
What shall we leave behind?
Backpacking Retrospective
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Ben Linders Consulting
Case: Organizational-wide Quality & Process
Dev, Ops & PM departments @ government -> one Q team
• Office in every department
• Weekly story telling – scale up to MT
• Joint project audits & assessment
• One Quality & Process Report
• Align goals and way of working
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Ben Linders Consulting
Coaching Agile
People coach each other
Culture of coaching – all levels
Exchange coaching experiences
JIT & on-the-job coaching
Coach by just being there
Agile needs coaching
Not about coaches; coaching and coachees matters!
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Ben Linders Consulting
Enable organization for learning
Establish a culture of learning
Drive out fear and blaming
Do improvements at all levels
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Ben Linders Consulting
Bonus: Effective Retrospectives
Why over how
Good facilitation
Effective exercises
Frequent, small steps
Vital few actions
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Ben Linders Consulting
Vital Few Actions
Small Actions
Frequent Change
Focus on Value
Stop Starting,
Start Finishing
Vital Few Actions