The document discusses how adopting agile principles and practices can help teams be successful in solving problems and achieving their goals. It argues that what makes one team successful over another is not the people or the initial idea, but the practices they use. These include having daily stand-ups, time-boxed iterations, planning poker, cross-functional work teams, Kanban boards, and value stream mapping. Adopting agile practices grounded in principles like focusing on delivering value helps teams better process tensions that arise and make collaborative decisions.
2. My influences …
Growing and selling a successful software
company in my 20’s;
Spending several days with Christopher
Toria Alexander (Pattern Language “founding
father”)
Working with Matt, Hong, Walt and Daryl
figuring out “organizational agility”
Turning around a failing Colorado health care
broadband network without knowing much
about healthcare or networks.
Holacracy
… led me to this burning question:
If you take 5 people and an idea and another 5 people and a different idea
what makes one group successful and the other not?
It’s not the people and not the idea.
What is it?
3. Time boxed
Iterations Backlog of User
Daily Stand-ups
Stories
Planning
Poker
It’s the Practices
Cross-functional
work teams KANBAN board
On Site for detailing
Customer work
Business Driven
Development
Retrospectives Burn Down Value Stream
Charts Mapping
4. So long as they are grounded in Agile principles
Backlog of User Cross-functional
Daily Stand-ups Stories work teams
Time boxed Planning
Iterations Poker On Site
Retrospectives
Customer
Value Stream Burn Down
Mapping Charts
Business Driven KANBAN board
Development for detailing
work
5. Dynamic Distributed
Steering Decisions
Value Driven Big and
Visible
6. It takes a team…..
Leaf for
shade
Wall to
Hose for Rope for
keep us
watering binding
safe
Spear for
hunting
…to see the whole picture
7. “Most businesses die from indigestion
rather than starvation.”
-- Tom Thomison
co-Founder
HolacracyOne
8. So what do we do?
We outvote or ignore the
contradictory data.
We pay our leaders to be filters but
unwittingly setup a single point of failure.
We make team decisions which
often lead to “bloated” actions
where we solve more than is needed.
9. So what’s the alternative?
It’s all about processing tensions…
Tension: The felt-sense of a specific gap
between current reality and a sensed potential.
Chronic Tension: the response to emotional pressure
suffered for a prolonged period over which an individual
perceives they have no control.
10. Processing Tensions:
What are we even talking about?
Who can make this decision?
We’re going in the wrong direction!
11. Scaling the Agile Delivery Lead Role at Pillar:
Metrics:
1.
2.
3.
Projects:
1.
2.
3.
Purpose: Create the
Best Agile Delivery
Leads in the Industry
12. Organizational Patterns
human scale – evolutionary – value driven
Toria Thompson
Thank you!
303-746-3161
toria@organizationalpatterns.com
Notas do Editor
We have no shortage of ideas. We have trouble figuring out which ones to digest.How do we decide what is a good idea?
1 - We outvote the one person that has the key perspective that sees something that no one else sees that is needed to keep us moving toward our purpose.2 - We enlist a leader to be the filter but then we have a single point of awareness and a single point of failure.3 – If we’re really advanced we dissect the data as a team and decide what it means. This can be time consuming and frustrating and often leads to “bloated” design.
Stress is tension that has no outlet. Every tension contains energy, time is limited but energy can be renewed.
Processing tensions help us to integrate the minimally sufficient perspectives to keep the organization achieving value.
Proposal: Establish a group of 6 individuals to iterate through 6 weeks of a