The document discusses building agile organizations. It argues that traditional annual budgeting creates problems like unrealistic assumptions and unethical behaviors. It advocates for separate and improved financial and performance processes with different rhythms. Continuous planning and forecasting is preferable to annual budgeting. Organizations should also de-couple processes, apply the appropriate rhythm to each, continually align teams, empower them and connect their work to customers to build speed, agility and adaptability.
4. Some Annual Budgeting Problems
• Very time consuming
• Assumptions quickly outdated
• Stimulates unethical behaviors
• Creates illusions of control
• Decisions made too early with too much uncertainty
• Often weak link to strategy
• Can prevent value adding activities
• Cannot see beyond the fiscal year end
• Complicates performance evaluation
•4 -
Strategy
Budgeting
(Finance)
Performance
Target
Sep à Oct Nov à Dec Jan à Feb
5. Separate and Improve
Financial
• Reporting
• Target Setting
• Forecasting
• Resource Allocation
What happened
What we want to happen
What we think will happen
What will it take to happen
How can behaviors be better
How to motivate better behavior
Taking action on very bad behavior
Performance Management
• Feedback
• Rewards
• Legal
Same number, same process
Conflicting purposes
Different processes
Different numbers
Separate Improve
Using the timing and approach that makes
most sense.
Timely, accurate, right level of detail
Inspiring & challenging, VUCA robust
Unbiased, limited detail, updated quickly
Dynamic, based on measures and trends
Honest and actionable feedback
More team based, to inspire the team
Exception handling; don’t punish everyone
6. Traditional Budgeting and Forecasts
Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1
Traditional
Annual Planning
(and Budgeting)
“Budget”
the illusion of control
7. Continuous Planning over Annual Planning
Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Traditional
Annual Planning
(and Budgeting)
Continuous/Rolling
Planning and Forecasting
“Everyone”
Department
Finance Forecast
This requires changes both in
processes and technology (reporting,
measurement, decision making,
collaboration, feedback)
Monitoring Forecasting
9. Beyond Budgeting Principles
Leadership principles
1. Purpose - Engage and inspire people around bold and noble
causes; not around short-term financial targets
2. Values - Govern through shared values and sound judgement; not
through detailed rules and regulations
3. Transparency - Make information open for self-regulation,
innovation, learning and control; don’t restrict it
4. Organisation – Cultivate a strong sense of belonging and organise
around accountable teams; avoid hierarchical control and
bureaucracy
5. Autonomy - Trust people with freedom to act; don’t punish
everyone if someone should abuse it
6. Customers - Connect everyone’s work with customer needs; avoid
conflicts of interest
Management processes
7. Rhythm - Organise management processes dynamically around
business rhythms and events; not around the calendar year only
8. Targets - Set directional, ambitious and relative goals; avoid fixed
and cascaded targets
9. Plans and forecasts - Make planning and forecasting lean and
unbiased processes; not rigid and political exercises
10. Resource allocation - Foster a cost conscious mind-set and make
resources available as needed; not through detailed annual budget
allocations
11. Performance evaluation - Evaluate performance holistically and
with peer feedback for learning and development; not based on
measurement only and not for rewards only
12. Rewards - Reward shared success against competition; not
against fixed performance contracts
13. 360 Degrees KPI
13 -
…..and more
Short Cycle Long Cycle
Making the 800 over ”Ambition to Actions (KPI)” transparent
across the company and connect them
14. 360 Degrees Performance Evaluation
• From narrow measurement to a holistic assessment
14
B e h a v i o u r
D
e
l
i
v
e
r
y
Living the values
• Day-to day-observations
• 360°/ 180°/ 90° surveys
• People survey
50/50Pressure testing KPI results:
• Deliver towards the strategic objectives?
• How ambitious KPI targets?
• Changed assumptions, with positive or
negative effect?
• Which risks were taken?
• Delivered results sustainable?
Ambition to Action
•Development
plan
•Rewards
22. Traditional to Agile
Traditional Agile1 Release
Every 100 days
1 Release
Every 10 days
1 Release
Everyday
10 Releases
Everyday
100 Releases
Everyday
Branching
Testing
Architecture
Release
Approach
Infrastructure
Database
Feature
Branches
Develop on Trunk,
Release on Branch
Pull Request to Release Branch
Separate
QA Department
Fast Comprehensive Automated
Test in Deployment Pipeline
Developers and Testers maintain automated tests
Monolithic Architecture
Deploy Everything Together
Service Orientation Microservices
Release Trains
Dark Launching, Blue-Green Deployment
Canary Release
Developer Push Changes
Applications
Managed
By Operations
Automated
Deployment Scripts
Infrastructure as Code Cloud Architecture
With Standardized PAAS and SaaS
Manual
Database
Upgrade
Delta
Database Scripts
Apps and Databases Have
Forward and Backward Compatibility
23. Traditional to Agile Architecture and Processes
Microservice Architecture
Monolithic Process
Monolithic Architecture
Monolithic Process
Development Integration
Test
Production
Monolithic Testing
Microservice Architecture
Microservice Process
Monolithic Testing
Microservice Testing