Agile transformation minds- Meetup 01 - Bangalore Speaker :Mukhthar Shariff

1. 1
Mukhthar Shariff
Transition and Transformation PM – IBM
CSM ®, SAFe Agilist ®, ITIL ® Foundation & MCP
 Mukhthar has more than 10 years of IT experience
& is proficient in Business Analysis, Stakeholder
Management, Client Engagement through Agile &
Waterfall methodologies.
 He has worked extensively in Product
Implementations Projects playing the role of
Scrum Master; Product Owner handling end to
end Product lifecycle of Social Media Platform and
Instant Messaging and web conferencing
products.
 Mukhthar has played a pivotal role in Application
Deployment, Maintenance and Production Go
Lives using Agile/Scrum Approach.
 On academic front, Mukhthar has graduated in
BCA Bachelor in Computer Application from
Bangalore University, Karnataka, India
 He holds CSM® certification awarded by Scrum
Alliance, SA® awarded by Scaled Agile
Academy & ITIL® Foundation Certified by
Axelos in addition he hold a MCP certification
awarded from Microsoft
Mukhthar has played the role of Scrum Master & Product Owner
and helped teams organize and transform from a Waterfall
approach to an Agile approach. He has worked on Enterprise Agile
transformation using SAFe
While consulting with a leading Banking client, Mukhthar worked
as Product Owner for end to end delivery. The responsibilities
included overseeing Application Delivery from requirement
gathering stage to demonstration/review stage.
On the Application maintenance front, he has worked with teams
on application upgrades and migration from one version to another
guiding the teams through Scrum approach.
He has played the role of a IT Business Analyst with a leading
Banking & Financial products company as a part of large Product
portfolio encompassing Product Implementation & Maintenance
engagements using Agile & ITIL approaches. He focused on IT
Products, dealing with End User Computing Like Jive, IBM
Sametime &Microsoft Lync.
Mukhthar is also a Business Continuity Champ and has worked in
capacity of managing and Implementing Organization wide BCP
strategies.
Photo

2. JOURNEY OF
ORGANIZATIONAL AGILE
TRANSFORMATION

3. Let`s understand what is Agile? In Simple Terms
• Agile simply means to move at a fast pace easily and in a
coordinated fashion.
Why should an Organization need to be Agile?
• To meet growing demands from their customers.
• Gluttony to be most relevant to the market.

4. Deep Process and Governance Model
The Fear of breaking
something which was
running successfully
from ages.
The concept of
Keeping the Lights
On.
The Fear of
Failing
The Fear of
Change
Why is it so difficult to be Agile

5. Journey of Organizational Agile Transformation
Have you ever wondered what it takes for an organization to
transform and to adapt to a new way of working.

6. So Let`s start preparing ourselves for a Transformation
• Transforming your organization to Agile is like changing to a new way of thinking
• Bringing in a cultural change.
• Everyone has to work collectively and Collaboratively.
• No amount of classroom training will help you get there.
• Transformation should an Iterative Approach.
• Introducing Agile in a Big-Bang approach could be catastrophic.
• Show teams short term and long term goals.
• Help them realize their quick wins
• There might be initial discussion around measuring success during the transformation stage
• The success measurement envisioned by each organization is different.
• This is derived from the current state Vs To be state
• These discussion should not bring the focus down or detract you from the purpose.
• One must understand that Agile is not a solution to all the problems that exists.
• The myth is, if something is not working well. Then lets all move to Agile.
• This should not be the attitude of organization that intends to walk on this journey.
• There are numerous challenges, Its never going to be easy for anyone to simply jump and adopt agile

7. What you need to drive towards a successful transformation
Organizational
Agile
Transformation
Organizational
Agile
Transformation
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
Secure IT leader
and Business
Executive
Sponsorship
Introduce
Business to the
Agile World
Share the
Business Vision
with your teams
On-Board an
Agile Coach Create and Build Cross
Functional Teams with
clear Roles and
Responsibilities
Shift from Individual
Performance to Team
based performance
Bring in Cultural
Changes

8. Secure IT leaders & Business Executive Sponsorship
Agile Journey can be highly disruptive and it wont happen without the support from the CIO`S and
CTO`s
IT Leaders have to champion the cause first, They should then be able to articulate how this model will
bring Improvements . They can then sell their vision to people in the ranks below them
Top executives have to build clear strategies around various aspects of transformation
It is critical for leadership to create a fail safe environment, for your technologist to innovate fearlessly
We are not talking about catastrophic failures, We are talking about failing as a team and recovering
fast
It is Important for organization to perform a proper due diligence before starting on the Agile journey.
Uncertainties always exists and its impossible to guarantee success

9. Introduce Business to Agile
The business stakeholders involved must be educated on Agile.
They are often overlooked and avoided, because the focus is on delivery teams.
If this group is not brought into agreement, there might major disconnects in terminology, approach to
situations, handling slippages and commitments.
The business must clearly understand the expectation from the team, They should make themselves
available for the teams. As a result this will enable the teams to complete the work
Unmatched expectations usually arise due to long breaks between the technology teams and Business
reviews
Educate folks on presales side, The unrealistic expectations set by them can build pressure on teams
and also produce a bad quality product. Resulting in dissatisfied customer experience.

10. Share the business vision with your teams
Sharing the business vision with your teams, It creates an environment of collective ownership as the
they realize their contributions are adding to the overall success.
In most organizations the Vision is not well articulated, Teams don’t realize the objective. It results in
only getting work completed without understanding the value of their delivery.
In large organization which has many business units / line of business. They work in silos, Senior
leadership teams must work towards aligning them together
The alignment of teams / business units for providing a solution to a bigger cause

11. Let`s see how Agile coach can add Value :
• Organization can be overwhelmed with the volume of changes during their transformation Journey
• There is an increased likelihood that it can loose track of what it originally intended to achieve
• Its like being on a Journey which has no destination Or travelling without any direction
• Agile coach is a person who works throughout the life cycle of the transformation
• He helps teams become more mature and takes organizational Agile maturity to greater heights
On-board an Agile Coach
He is a Trainer, Coach, Mentor, Evangelist and a Continuous improvement agent
• Agile Coach is an evangelist, who preaches Agile at all levels
• He is someone who encourages the teams to adopt, mature and scale
• Helps towards crafting unique solutions to the teams unique problems
• Agile Coach is a Partner on the project and a keen observer
• He regularly monitors the adoption levels and build metrics for a purpose
• He analyzes the areas of improvement and helps develop solution

12. Create and Build cross functional, self organized teams
On-board people from Cross Skills or Full Stack engineers. These folks should be able to demonstrate
knowledge across functions like Front End, Back End UI / UX
They should be capable of automating the deployment process. This reduces human interference
It is always a challenge to keep up with the latest technology advancements. Especially when someone
who has acquired depth of knowledge.
Senior leadership team should help engineers upscale their knowledge by providing adequate level of
trainings
Always start with n+1 technology and then proceed incrementally
People with cross skills reduces the cross dependency issues

13. Encourage Collaboration between teams
There has to be a greater focus on Collaboration. Senior leaders have been taking measures to
encourage collaboration
There is no member who can get away with sitting alone in silo in a corner cubicle
Either have co-located teams or build systems / technology which can bring people virtually together.
Tools like Video conf , Social networking sites or even Instant messaging can help.
Build your Campuses to serve as open air platforms for collaboration. This can give a new perspective of
learning and knowledge sharing

14. Shift from Individual performance system to team based
Many organization have moved away with this legacy approach of Individual Performance model
As teams are becoming self organized and mature, They take responsibility of success of failure of
projects
It is a shared responsibility of the team to take ownership of the completion of work. This calls for
equally appraising the team rather than an individual
Its is very necessary to stop comparing two team, as the nature of work and people are different
An organization who continuous to measure performance only based on productivity and load people
with 100% will be a catastrophic for Agile transformation

15. Keep the team motivated
What is that one thing that makes someone to come to work each day, Human
psychology is a science and not everyone can master that in a short time.
It is also said that money cannot be motivational driver all the time. There has to be something beyond
money.
It is our responsibility to unlock that intrinsic motivator in each individual, This might lead to many
positive attributes.
To some it can definitely be money, it can be a good work atmosphere, every challenges can keep one
motivated .. And so on..
But as leadership we can certainly do a few things to keep the team motivated:
• Celebrate quick wins
• Organize team lunch/ dinner Or even as small as high tea sessions
• Celebrate birthdays as surprises
• Start the day with an appreciation note
• Plan for events for people who work late hours

16. Bring about Cultural Changes
Become discipline through cadence and ceremonies
Embrace Change
Eliminate wasteful processes
Bring in automation
Adopt lean principles
These are some of the challenges an organization can foresee, at the beginning
of their transformation journey. Every organization / team have to go through
these base challenges in addition to their unique roadblocks.
Bring in Innovation

17. Mukhthar Shariff
+91-9686763977
linkedin.com/in/mukhthars
mukhthars@gmail.com
Thank You
Questions Contact Details ThankYou