Improve the chances of success of your organization with Resilience and Antifragility

agile42 | the agile coaching company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2016.
Improve the chances of
success of your organization
with Resilience and Antifragility
Explicitly measuring and designing culture is an enabler towards agility
and can provide incredible advantages to an organization
development. Understanding how to lead such change is the one
thing that might save your company in the rough waters of todays
market. Are you ready for the challenge?

Andrea Tomasini
Agile Coach & Trainer
andrea.tomasini@agile42.com
@tumma72
@agile42/coaches

The World around us is
changing faster than we
think…

Technology is often one
of the main drivers in this
change…

And most of the time it is
considered a “commodity”
which we are willing to
compromise and
outsource…

What is Fragility?
We are trying to reduce the impact of volatility by controlling
the knowns… forgetting that when the unknowns are hitting
us, they will generate immensely more harm…

Fire…

Fighting…

Prevention…

Brush…

So what are Resilience and
Anti-Fragility?
Let’s try to understand what these two words mean and
how can help us improving our organizations…

“Resilience is the capacity of
a system to absorb
disturbance and reorganise
while undergoing change so as
to still retain essentially the
same function, structure,
identity, and feedbacks.”
[Brian H. Walker, 2004]

“Antifragility is a property of
systems that increases in
capability, resilience, or
robustness as a result of
stressors, shocks, volatility,
noise, mistakes, faults,
attacks, or failures”
[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]

Fragile
it is a system which reacts by breaking
without signiﬁcant signs of alteration of
deformation. From an organizational
standpoint this emphasize the incapability
of the organization to react to changes,
and simply failing in unrecoverable ways.
A fragile organization is both not ready
and not capable to react to changes. Any
minimal disturbance in the ﬂow, or
volatility can cause a breakdown. Fragile
organizations are incapable of reacting to
failures.

Robust
It is a system which is capable to resist to stress and avoid failures,
requires to be speciﬁcally suited to resist to speciﬁc types of failures
or stressors. From an organizational stand point means that the
design of the organization is such that allows the organization to
oppose
to certain types of stressors, and resist failure. At the same time it
means that an organization can only be designed to resist against
some known types of changes or stressors, and won't be able to
adapt to unknowns very quickly. So robust organizations might turn
out to be fragile against unknown stressors.

Resilient
it is a system which react to changes, by reestablishing
itself as closely as possible to its original state.
Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb
disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change
so as to still retain essentially the same function,
structure, identity, and feedbacks. Applied to
organizational design, it means that the organization is
capable of assimilating change, and evolve to a new
state which substantially provides the same level of
services as before the change. Resiliency allows to
withstands unknown changes and volatility by co-
evolving with the change into a new stable state.

Antifragile
Antifragility is a property of systems that increases in
capability, resilience, or robustness as a result of
stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults,
attacks, or failures. An antifragile system is a system
which improves as a result of stressors and failures.
Many biological systems have this property, and also
some organizations can be design to be able to
learn and improve based on the attacks they are
subjected to and the failures they undergo. Instead
of trying to go back to their previous state, they
evolve to a new state which is betters suited for the
current market conditions.

agile42 | the agile coaching company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2016.agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2009.
Individuals & interactions
Working software
Customer collaboration
Responding to change
Processes & tools
Comprehensive documentation
Contract negotiation
Following a plan
o
v
e
r
We recognize
the value here...We value
this more….

Client &
Value focus
Self-Organization
&Autonomy
Iterative &
Incremental
change to
reduce the
risk
Continuous
Improvement

How to improve resilience and
antifragilty of an organization?
Can we really design an organization which is ready and
prepared to recover from failure? Can failure make your
organization stronger?

Hierarchy
Compliance
Rigidity

1st Principle: validate changes
in small increments
Change is difﬁcult and confronting. Validate changes with
small safe-to-fail experiments, executed at regular intervals,
to reduce resistance and minimize the waste of two
coexisting systems, whilst gradually incorporating validated
learnings.

The traditional approach to change management…
…focused on standardization, before stabilization…
t
Design
Documentation
Rollout
Fix Issues
> 3-4 months…

The agile approach to change management…
…focused on stabilization with emergent standardization…
Design
Rollout
Doc
Rollout
Doc
Rollout
Doc
Coach
≤ 12 weeks t
Design Coach
Rollout
Doc
Rollout
Doc
Experimentations
allows for better
approaches to
emerge

Goal PSF
NC
Agile Strategy Map™
Define the Goal we
want to achieve
Possible Success Factor (PSF)
represents a hypothesis about a
key factor that would enable us
to achieve the Goal
Necessary Condition (NC):
what is needed in order to fulfill
the Success Factor

Strategy Map from
March 2014
• The Goal for 2015
has been
established
• The Transition
Team identiﬁed at
least 7 PSFs that
would provide a
powerful leverage
to achieve the
ﬁnal Goal

Strategy Map
June 2014
• Break out
groups worked
on detailing the
various PSFs
into actionable
experiments to
validate the
hypothesis for
organizational
improvement
Safe-To-Fail
Experiments

2nd
Principle: focus on value
delivery and adjust accordingly
Your organization is a tool to deliver value to your
customers. Identify what that value is and adjust the
organization to focus on delivering it, whilst removing waste
and making adjustments to streamline the simplest path to
delivery.

The matrix organization…
SubSystem1
SubSystem2
SubSystem3
Infrastructure
Operations
PMO
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
… optimized for utilization, not value delivery…
Handovers and coordination
Value
Client
Push in the lines

Stream 1
Stream 2
Stream 3
The agile organization…
SubSystem1
SubSystem2
SubSystem3
Infrastructure
Operations
… optimized for value delivery and time to market
Value
Client
Pull on the streams

Opportunity Canvases to create context and focus on Customer Value…
Lean Portfolio Canvas™ have been created by agile42 and are licensed using Creative Common 3.0 with attribution (BY), non commercial usage (NC) and
share alike (SA) options. You can reuse and modify the template, but you will always have to leave the logo on it.
OpportunityName (title)
1. Opportunity 2. Customer Segments
What is the problem to be solved? What type of customers & users will
benefit from this solution?
How is the customer solving the
problem right now?
3. Possible Solution
What are the key points of a possible
solution to the presented problem?
4. Benefits
What are the benefits for the
customers?
6. Measuring Success
What metrics will be best measure the
success of the feature?
5. Business Readiness
What steps are required from the
business side to be able to use this
capability?
7. Cost of Delay
Which profile better represent the cost
of delay (CoD)?
8. Costs Structure
How does the cost structure look like for such a feature? One time, ongoing
costs, contractors expenses, development costs?
9. Value to Customer and Business
What are the expected incremental revenue for selling this feature, and what are
the strategic and tactical benefit? What are the intangible values (usability,
performance, customer knowledge obtained...)
Opportunity Owner (name)

Uniﬁed Portfolio and Program System
to increase transparency, to visualize
Customer Value and dependencies

3rd Principle: decentralize
control
Decentralization of control and decision making shortens feedback loops
and enables a more responsive organization. Deﬁne goals and constraints
to allow for autonomous decision making and create Containers for
Empowerment encouraging responsibility ownership and empowered
action. Set boundaries with Enabling Constraints and encourage growth
within these boundaries and challenges of them when they become limiting.

Control !
Worker 1
Sub 1
Worker 2
Sub 2 Sub 3
The hierarchical organization… Centralized Control,
ends up overloaded,
introducing delays
Requests
Authorization
the design is based on mistrust…
Information&power

Container for empowerment
Worker 3Worker 2
The agile organization… Decentralized
Control reduces
overhead, and
encourage
collaboration
the design is based on trust…
Worker 1
Collaboration
Information&power

• Both on the “budget”
level, as well as on the
expected delivery and
preparation levels
• This level of
transparency allows to
build trust between
Portfolio Management
and self-organizing
teams
• Clear Policies
describing the
range of autonomy
the teams have

• Every team has two “avatars” to
volunteer on upcoming
Opportunities
• The Opportunity Owner will get in
touch with the team to get their
input and enrich the backlog

4th
Principle: remove
unnecessary synchronization of
ﬂow
Interdependencies are a symptom of an over synchronized
system design. They carry the excessive burden of coordination,
handovers and project plans which dramatically increase the
transaction costs. Design a decoupled system which removes
unnecessary synchronization and establishes effective working
agreements which grant collective responsibility and ownership.

t
Project 2
Project 3
Project 1
The plan driven organization… Synchronization of all Projects
for a release, decreases
efficiency and increases
coordination costs
Release
Pm 3
Pm 1
Pm 2
…fixed scope and fixed date…

t
The agile organization… De-synchronization of
development teams to
reduce cost of release
…variable scope and variable date…
Feature A
Release
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
Team 4
Feature B
Release Release
Feature C
Release
Feature D
Release
Feature E

Release incrementally,
with higher quality
Automated testing
in short cycles
Delivered
serviceable Product
in just 2 months

Continuos Integration & Delivery…
Switch from big product
releases to incremental
change, every feature is
released on all platforms
“Focusing on one Feature at a
time allowed for faster
feedback also involving
stakeholders was easier…
deliver fast to learn fast”

And don’t forget about
culture and context…
Ok, now you get which patterns can help your organization
and your teams improve their resilience and antifragility so
what do you need to make it happen?

5th Principle: make culture
explicit
Organizational culture exists and manifests in the form of behaviors
and activities. Make it explicit to allow for better alignment and
context creation - its difﬁcult to change what cannot be seen. Once
explicit, set a new direction to a more appropriate culture which
supports strategic goals whilst supporting the values and behaviors
that are important to the people within the organization.

“This is how we do things around here…”
Culture is the set of
behaviors that have been
established and accepted
within an organization

Culture Type: Hierarchy
Orientation: Controlling
Leader Type: Coordinator, Monitor,
Organizer
Value Drivers: Efficiency, Timeless,
Consistency and Uniformity
Theory of Effectiveness: Control and
efficiency with capable processes
produce effectiveness
Culture Type: Market
Orientation: Competing
Leader Type: Hard driver, Competitor,
Producer
Value Drivers: Market share, Goal
achievement, Profitability
Theory of Effectiveness: Aggressively
competing, customer focus produce
effectiveness
Culture Type: Adhocracy
Orientation: Creative
Leader Type: Innovator, Entrepreneur,
Visionary
Value Drivers: Innovative outputs,
Transformation, Agility
Theory of Effectiveness: Innovativeness,
vision, and new resources produce
effectiveness
Culture Type: Clan
Orientation: Collaborative
Leader Type: Facilitator, Mentor, Team
Builder
Value Drivers: Commitment,
Communication, Development
Theory of Effectiveness: Human
development and participation produce
effectiveness
Flexibility & Discretion
Stability & Control
Internalfocus&Integration
Externalfocus&Differentiation
Organizational Culture Profile (CVF)

Organization Cultural Proﬁle (CVF)
10
20
30
40
50
60
10
20
20
20
10
10
30
40
50
60
30
40
50
60
30
40
50
60
Ad-hocracy
Hierarchy
M
arket
Clan
Stability & Control
Most of mature organizations
today have a strong Hierarchy
oriented proﬁle
They struggle to introduce a
more agile and lean approach to
work, because the hierarchical
culture is not supportive of agile
values and principles
Agile Values &
Principles

Organization Cultural Proﬁle (CVF)
10
20
30
40
50
60
10
20
20
20
10
10
30
40
50
60
30
40
50
60
30
40
50
60
Ad-hocracy
Hierarchy
M
arket
Clan
Stability & Control
Most of the organization today
have a strong Hierarchy oriented
proﬁle
They struggle to introduce a
more agile and lean approach to
work, because the hierarchical
culture is not supportive of agile
values and principles
To create the right context to
move toward a more agile and
lean culture, we need to
transition toward Clan or Ad-
Hocracy

“If you can
make culture
explicit, you can
agree where you
stand, and where
you want to
go…”
There are two ways of encouraging behaviours within an organization:
1. Story telling and role-modeling (e.g: empathy and tradition, walk
the talk)
2. Ritualization (e.g: Scrum events, Ritual Dissent, Open Space)

6th Principle: create the
appropriate context
Process, rules and even culture are often set without
consideration to the context in which they are intended. Context
matters and is a great lever for success. It needs to be created
appropriately for the purpose it is intended so as to refrain from
establishing a single context to fulﬁll multiple purposes.

Ordered
Unordered
Disorder
Complicated
Good Practice
Sense-Analyze-Respond
Governing Constraints
Obvious
Best Practice
Sense-Categorize-Respond
Rigid Constraints
Complex
Emergent Practice
Probe-Sense-Respond
Enabling Constraints
Chaotic
Novel Practice
Act-Sense-Respond
No Constraints

t
Culture, Market/Product Maturity & Context
Early Adopters
Early
Majority
Late
Majority
Laggers
Chasm
CultureTools
Complex
(Emergent)
Com
plicated
(G
ood
Practices)
Obvious
(Best Practices)
Rapid
Prototyping/XP
Scrum/ 
XP
Scrum/ 
Kanban
Kanban
Chaotic
(Novelty)
Complex
(Emergent)

Thank
You!

More food for thought...
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