Overview:
Agility as a movement started with software developers uncovering better ways of doing what they do. Today that movement is driving even business leaders to rethink how they lead their organizations. What does it mean to "be" agile? How can agility be applied to leading organizations? Where do successful agile leaders start? Three stories, three secrets, and three tips to apply agility to your life and work and unlock your potential as an executive or a manager.
Learning Objectives:
1. Connect agility at the personal, the team and the organizational level
2. Experience how the same challenges that led to poor performance in software development 30 years ago still plague the management of most organizations today.
3. Learn 3 simple techniques to unlock the potential of management.
4. Learn the key concepts and principles of Personal Agility
Leaders enhance communication by actively listening, providing constructive f...
INNOVATION ROOTS | Webinar | Three Secrets of Agile Leaders | Peter Stevens
1. Three secrets of Agile Leaders:
Leading others by leading yourself
Peter Stevens
@peterstev
red-arrows-david_e_smith-CC BY 2.0
2. Who is in the room? Would you consider yourself a…
• Developer – you design, create, test or deploy a product or service
• Project Manager – you lead people to deliver something specific
• Scrum Leader – you serve as a Scrum Master or Product Owner
• Team Manager – you have developers reporting to you
• Group Manager or higher – you have team managers reporting to you
• C-Level Manager – You have overall responsibility for your company
or business unit
Vote here: https://tinyurl.com/y6bbmfpb
4. What do executives ask me about agility?
• What are the buzz words about?
• How can we innovate faster?
• How can we get business and technology to talk to each other?
• How can we develop better products?
• How can we educate our clients?
• It’s all about the customer. How can agile make us better at delighting
the customer
• How can I make it a success?
• What does it mean for me?
5. This introduction represents the start of a conversation
Behavior
PerspectiveMindset
Source: Barry O’Reilly, Unlearning
7. What is agility?
User Stories
SAFe
Sprint
Scrum
Planning
Poker
Story Points
Product
Backlog
Scrum Master
CI/CD
Pair
Programming
Kanban
LeSS
Product
Owner
12. What does it mean to be agile?
Steve Denning’s Three “Laws” of Agile Organizations
• Law of the Customer
• Focus on customer needs, both existing customers, and even more importantly, new
customers and new markets
• Law of the Network
• Information flows without friction through the organization to seize opportunities or fix
problems
• Law of Small Teams
• Get business and technology working together efficiently to create customer-centric
products
16. Agility has become a topic for leadership
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-agile-enough-for-agile-management-11565607600https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile
18. Fake Agility - 2
User
Stories
SAFe
Sprint
Scrum
Planning
Poker
Story
Points
Product
Backlog
Scrum
Master
CI/CD
Pair
Programming
Kanban
Product
Owner
LeSSDo Scrum!
19.
20. I’d like to share three examples of successful leaders and
reveal their secrets of agile leadership
We wanted to
change,
but we
couldn’t,
until…
To save my
company, I first
needed to…
How I lost 10kg
23. “Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these
were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of
paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green
pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
-- Douglas Adams
24. I don’t like how sugar makes me feel.
So I want to avoid sugar and carbohydrates.
27. Christmas represented a severe thunderstorm!
“They are good,
they are really good”
SugarPressure.com: Trader Joe's Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
https://www.sugarpressure.com/2010/12/trader-joes-milk-chocolate-peanut-butter-cups.html
29. If you want to go there,
you’ll get back on course
30. Tips:
You are the captain of your ship!
Make Values & Goals Actionable
Tie desired actions to wants and feelings
Change is easy if you want to do it
33. To get the right things done,
master three basic skills
Doing Work
QuestioningSetting Priorities
34. Scrum defines a role to address each aspect
Solves the Problem – Development Team
Voice of Common Sense
Scrum Master
Voice of the Customer
Product Owner
35. For individuals, Head, Body and Heart
must cover all three Doing Work
Body
Questioning
Heart
Setting Priorities
Head
36. Personal Agility is the gateway for people who don’t work
in teams (like executives)
37.
38. How to create alignment among 400,000 people
Every member of the Apollo
mission knew:
1. We are going to the moon
2. It’s not going to fail because of
me
3. If something goes wrong,
remember item 1
Chandrayaan 2 Ready for Launch
39. Tips:
Get Clarity on What Really Matters
Communicate it right away
Your people will notice the difference right away
Clarity on What Really Matters Can Be Transformational
44. Six months later…
• “We accomplished everything needed
to achieve our initial goals.
• “Half of our initial ideas proved unnecessary, so we didn't do them.
• “We were able to achieve all our goals with ½ the work & ¼ of the time
• “And the the results are already visible in our finances!”
-- Walter Stultzer, Executive Director, Futureworks AG
45. How Walter’s team did it
• “I committed to making this a
success
• “I communicated WHY, then WHAT
• “We applied Scrum to improving
the company
• “Every three weeks or so, my
management and I got together…
• “Personal Agility was the most
important part of all
50. Impact means doing what matters
Stuff That
Matters!
Waste
Capacity
Demand
“to do’s”
51. What happens if…
what you do doesn’t matter?
Waste
Capacity
Stuff That
Matters!
Demand
“to do’s”
52. What are the top agile practices used in Development?
• Daily standup
• Sprint/iteration planning
• Retrospectives
• Sprint/iteration review
• Short iterations
Source: VersionOne, 12th Annual State of Agile Report, 2018
53. As part of their job to improve your organization,
does you manager…?
Practice
• Daily standup
• Sprint/iteration planning
• Retrospectives
• Sprint/iteration review
• Short iterations
% of development teams that use
• 90%
• 88%
• 85%
• 80%
• 69%
Source: VersionOne, 12th Annual State of Agile Report, 2018
58. Tip: Start applying techniques
you expect
from your development teams
How to make it easier
59. How to apply these lessons and become an agile leader?
We wanted to
change,
but we
couldn’t,
until…
To save my
company, I first
needed to…
How I lost 10kg
60. How to become an agile leader?
Individual
Apply Personal Agility
to your life or project
61. How to become an agile leader?
Leadership
Product Development
Apply Personal Agility
to everything you can’t delegate
Executive
Action Team
Product
Team
Product
TeamProduct
TeamProduct
TeamProduct
Team
viral, invitation, not commanded
62. How I help leaders become more agile
“steps that work”
• Executive Workshops
• Agility for Executives: Problem identification, Personal agility, Leading from why
• Scrum for Executives
• Kicking off the Executive Action Team
• Operational Workshops
• CSM Scrum Training
• Scrum Product Owner Training
• Project Kick-off Workshop
• Impediment Removal Team Kick-Off Workshop
• Executive Support
• Leadership Circles – Access to experts, Access to Peers
63. Would you like to be the next Futureworks?
Let’s start a conversation
• Peter Stevens
• Co-Founder
Personal Agility Institute
• Co-Founder
World Agility Forum
• peter@saat-network.ch
• @peterstev
Walter Stulzer, Executive Director
