Who’s to blame if you can’t achieve agility?

www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2017.
Gaetano Mazzanti
@mgaewsj
agile42
Who’s to blame if you can’t achieve agility?

agile42 | the agile coaching company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2018.
Gaetano Mazzanti
Enterprise Coach & Trainer 
agile42 Italy 
gaetano.mazzanti@agile42.com
www.linkedin.com/in/gaetanomazzanti
www.agile42.com - www.organic-agility.com
@mgaewsj 
@agile42/coaches

“non posso più perdere tempo a fare cose che non mi va di fare”
Jep Gambardella
“I can't waste any more time doing things I don't want to do”

Once Upon a Time…

https://www.adweek.com/agencies/hertz-sues-accenture-for-breach-of-contract-over-seriously-deﬁcient-web-design-work/
…(Fast) Forward to 2019

Hertz online presence revamp project
Timeline
August2016
December2017
January2018
April2018
Hertz hires Accenture
Initial due date
First delayed deadline - missed
Second delayed deadline - also missed
"By that point, Hertz no longer had any
confidence that Accenture was capable
of completing the project, and Hertz
terminated Accenture”
Hertz finds it does not have the
internal digital/tech capabilities

Hertz online presence revamp project
Timeline
August2016
December2017
January2018
April2018
Hertz hires Accenture
Initial due date
First delayed deadline - missed
Second delayed deadline - also missed
"By that point, Hertz no longer had any
confidence that Accenture was capable
of completing the project, and Hertz
terminated Accenture”
Hertz finds it does not have the
internal digital/tech capabilitiesSolutionBlueprint,DeliveryPlan,and
ArchitectureSpecifications-$7Million
PO from
Accenture. They decided if the
design met Hertz’s requirements
Team
partially dismantled (PO too)
Sept1,2017new
SOW
($26M),endofSept
new
duedate.Notlonga!erwardsecond
delayannounced
Frontendcodevulnerableandslow.
Requesttoadoptanew
CMStool.
Inadequatetests

Who’s to blame then?

What should have Hertz done?
What about:
Avoid delegating responsibility for project success
Use an incremental approach
Get real users feedback

How does this relate to introducing Agile and agility?
You believe to claims and nice presentations…
You don’t own it…
You don’t use an incremental approach to minimize risk…
You don’t adapt to to your context and culture…

Wrong assumptions and expectations
You want “the answer”, you want the recipe
There is no “Agile Recipe”

agility vs Agile

Wrong assumptions and expectations
You think “Agile” is what teams do
You think “Agile” will fix everything—as long as the teams do it
Agile teams have nothing to do with agility!

“We’re so freaking Agile. Yay!”
Klaus Leopold
Agile Teams
Slow End To End Process - Long Time To Market
Where’s agility???

There is no One Right Answer for everyone, there are no Best Practices.
Agile is ok but agility makes the diﬀerence.
So what?
Use guiding principles and discover what works for you

Practices = Principles + Context
Dan North
Uphold Principles, Observe Context, Adapt Practices

To adapt practices
you need to be 
flexible and nimble…
 
a.k.a. resilient Warning!
Very abused and
misused world

Outside-in perspective
Inside-out perspective
Making sense of context

Early majority
Market Cycles 20-25y 5-7y
Innovators Early adopters Late majority
Chasm
11% 16%
44% 29%
SELL TO MAKE MAKE TO SELL
Market Adoption Curve
Increase Resilience 
rather than 
Strengthen Robustness

How we achieve results
Experiences
Beliefs
Actions
Culture
Results
Manage
Leadshi"the
balance
“Doing”"Being"
The “Results Pyramid” is copyright of Partners in Leadership LLC

nt

Organizational Resilience by
Growing Autonomy and
Nurturing an Inter-dependent Culture

Industrial Era. Traditional leadership.
A static checklist of behaviors; Leader as a person
Exponential Era. Dynamic and situational leadership as an organizational capability.
Distributed leadership
ORGANIC Leadership

ORGANIC Leadership
organizational capability
emergent behaviors
cultural and situational context
all complexity leadership theories include situationally based behaviors as well as emergent ones;
they also support the idea of co-evolution of leadership behaviors and environment

Organizational Archetypes
Expert
Coordinator
Peer
Coach
Strategist
There is no right or wrong

• Directing
• Demanding
• Conducting
• Inspiring
• Coaching
• Catalyzing
ORGANIC agility leadership behaviors
There is no right or wrong

“This is how we do things around here…”
Culture is the set of behaviors that have been
established and accepted within an organization
1st Principle: Increase Cultural
Awareness and Coherence

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)

Agile Values &
Principles
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 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
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
M
arket
Clan

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
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
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
M
arket
Clan

Market adoption curve and culture
Early majority
Market Cycles 20-25y 5-7y
Innovators Early adopters Late majority
Chasm
11% 16%
44% 29%
SELL TO MAKE MAKE TO SELL
Culture:
● Innovative
● Adaptive
● Quick reaction to feedback
● Prototypical
Culture:
● Structure
● Quality
● Process
● Effectiveness
Culture:
● Efficiency
Culture

“If you can make
culture explicit, you
can agree where you
stand, and where you
want to go…”

Organizational ScanClan
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
Market
Leader Type
Clan
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
Market
Quality Strategies
Clan
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
Market
Theory of Effectiveness
Clan
Hierarchy
Ad-hocracy
Market
Value Drivers
Orientation

Cyneﬁn Framework
2nd Principle:
Situational Decision Making

Complicated
Obvious
Chaotic
Complex
sense-analyse-respond
sense-categorise-respond
probe-sense-respond
act-sense-respond
Governing constraints
Fixed constraints
Enabling constraints
no effective constraint
Good Practice
Best Practice
Novel Practice
Emergent Practice
Cyneﬁn Framework
It’s a Sense-making Framework
It has 5 domains which are separated
by boundaries Disorder

Complicated
Obvious
Chaotic
Complex
Cyneﬁn Framework Dynamics
• Learning Loop: allows to learn and
consolidate the learnings (e.g.: Scrum,
Experimentation…)
• Standardization: acquired knowledge is
commoditized into standard usage
procedures
• Innovation Loop: shallow dive into
controlled chaos to allow innovation to
emerge by removing constraints
• Entrenched Expertise: experts are stuck
into their models, and underestimate
the complexity, dive into disorder and
recover through complexity
• Fall into Chaos: over-simplification,
causes chaos and recovery is very
expensive
Learning
Innovation
Standardization
Entrenched
Expertise
Fall into chaos
Disorder

Complicated
ObviousChaotic
Complex
How do different
leadership
archetypes fit?
?
How do different
leadership
behaviours fit?
?
Cynefin domains and leadership

3rd Principle:
Focus on Value Creation

The matrix organization…
SubSystem1
SubSystem2
Quality
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 resilient organization…
SubSystem1
SubSystem2
SubSystem3
Infrastructure
Operations… optimized for value delivery and time to market
Value
Client
Pull on the streams

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

Regular synchronization events in
front of the portfolio board, allow for
better decision making…

4th Principle:
Validate Changes in Small Increments
A portfolio of safe-to-fail experiment will help emerging options that can then be
vetted and tested, before being implemented, significantly reducing risk.

The traditional approach to change
management…
…focused on standardization, before stabilization…
t
Design
Documentation
Rollout
Fix Issues
> 9-10 months…
if you create a change project and plan it in a
traditional way you are doing it wrong!

The ORGANIC approach to change
management…
…focused on stabilization with emergent standardization…
Design
Rollout
Doc
Rollout
Doc
Rollout
Doc
≤ 12 weeks t
Design
Rollout
Doc
Rollout
Doc
Experiments allow for
better approaches to
emerge
If you say we implant pull then you should allow people to pull the changes!

Agile Strategy Map

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
-

Strategy Map from
May 2016
-> strategic
alignment within
project with multiple
agile teams
Tactical board to the Strategy Map
-> created for alignment on tactical
actions related to each Success
Factor

Strategy Map from
May 2016
-> presenting relation
from GOAL and
company Vision
Tactical board to the Strategy Map
—> focus only on 2 main Success
Factors

5th Principle:
Optimize Flow

Remove or Reduce dependencies

Optimize End to End Flow
Not This!
This! End To End

ORGANIC Agility - No recipes

Agility in not a Team aﬀair. Great teams in a bad system suck.
Agility is an outcome of culture, behavior, rituals, of the whole organization.
It can be achieved only through an evolutive approach.
It starts with awareness & understanding.
It requires constantly adapting to context and situation.
It is based on a dynamic and distributed leadership model.
So…

If you believe to claims and nice presentations…
If you don’t own it…
If you don’t use an incremental approach to minimize risk…
If you don’t adapt to to your context and culture…

You!

References

Copyrights notice
All material produced in this presentation is protected by the Creative Common
License 4.0 (by-nc-sa).
The brands and logos of ORGANIC agility (www.organic-agility.com), agile42, Enterprise Transition Framework ETF (http://
agile42.com/etf/), Team Coaching Framework TCF (http://tcf.agile42.com/) and Agile Strategy Map (http://www.agile42.com/en/agile-
transition/agile-strategy-map/) are Copy Rights and Trademarks of agile42 GmbH, and agile42 International GmbH and can’t be reused
without written authorization

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