Learn the mindset you need to support an Agile change across organisational structure, processes, culture and teams. Leaders and managers are critical enablers in helping their organisation be successful, yet their role in an Agile environment can be quite different from what they are used to. In this workshop, you’ll learn about the Agile mindset and what it means as a leader to create the right conditions for Agile to thrive. We’ll focus on the pragmatic aspects of Agile leadership, the role of leadership in Agile transformation, and how to support cultural changes, as well as the structures and operating models to align teams, programs and portfolios and help them work in harmony. During this workshop you’ll learn: About the Agile mindset and why it’s important for leaders How mindset, culture, and values influence your ability to be Agile How to create a high-performance culture Practical skills for helping you set up and support Agile teams, programs and portfolios Pragmatic techniques for scaling an Agile mindset Unlocking the metrics for measuring your organisational agility. This workshop is suitable for: Managers embarking on an Agile transformation Line managers, Product Owners and Business Owners who want to get the most out of their Agile journey Portfolio, Program and Product Managers who want to get the most out of Agile ways of working.

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STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR AGILE LEADERS
DRIVING BUSINESS AGILITY
Nexus
E.A.T.
DEVOPS
PO Sync
Flow
Continuous Improvement
Agile is an
umbrella term.
Agile is not a
methodology!
Agile is a way of
thinking that seeks
alternatives to
traditional project
management by
focussing on products,
outcomes and value.
Reduces Risk by using
Incremental, iterative
work cadences, known
as “Sprints”
WHAT IS AGILE?

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over processes
and tools
over comprehensive
documentation
over contract
negotiation
Individuals and
interactions
Working products Collaboration
over following a
plan
Respond to change
Agile Manifesto
“We are uncovering better ways of developing [products]
by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value… ”
12 PRINCIPLES OF THE AGILE MANIFESTO
Our highest priority is to
satisfy the customer through early and continuous
delivery of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late
in development. Agile processes harness change
for the customer's competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from
a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with
a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must
work together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give
them the environment and support they need, and
trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying
information to and within a development team is
face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done – is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and
adjusts its behaviour accordingly.
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14
Source: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

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Agile is a
mindset.
Encompasses values,
principles, and
behaviours.
It’s a contemporary
way of working for
everyone –
executives, leaders
and teams.
ITERATIVE CYCLES – DEMING CYCLE
Do - Implement the
Plan. Collect data
Plan - Establish objectives. Start on a small scale
Check - Study the results and the data
Adjust - Make
corrective
action and
improvements

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HOW IS AGILE DIFFERENT?
AGILE TRADITIONAL
Requirements Design Implement Verify
• Value-driven
• Status measured by actual delivery
• Build-in quality
• Iterative
• Fast-feedback
• Continuous improvement
Vs
• Plan-driven
• Status measured tasks % complete
• Check quality only downstream
• Delivery of value only at the end
• Improvement lessons learned at the end
TRADITIONAL VS. AGILE APPROACH
Agile
Value (and priority) driven
Valued epics and features drive estimates
Resources and Time are fixed, Scope is estimated
Development is iterative and incremental
Focus is adaptive
Demonstrate progress by delivering value every two weeks
Quality is built in with continuous validation (testing, acceptance
reviews, standards compliance checks)
Optimises smaller, economically sensible, batch sizes for speed of
delivery of valued features
Leverages frequent multiple concurrent learning loops
Work is organised for fast feedback
Multidisciplinary, cross skilled team with knowledge of the product
invested in the whole team through shared experiences.
Continuous learning.
Waterfall/Traditional
Schedule driven
Plan creates the cost, schedule, estimates
Scope is fixed, resources and time are estimated
Development is phase based , controlled so that multiple
phases may occur in parallel
Focus is predictive
Demonstrate progress by reporting on activity and stage
gateways
Product quality at the end after extensive test/fix activities
Batches are large (frequently 100%)
Critical learning applies major analyse‐design ‐build‐test loop,
with multiple iterations of build and test
Process is tolerant of late learning
Handovers between analyse‐design‐build‐test phases with
knowledge invested in SME’s across multiple teams .
VS

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AGILE LEADERSHIP
OUR FOCUS AS LEADERS
Development
Team
Scrum Master
Product Owner“What” Challenges:
“How” Challenges:
“Who/How” Challenges:
“Grow Agility”
Agile Leaders

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Exercise
minutes
Challenges of
the Agile Leader
5
PURPOSE
Discover what participants want
to change to be a good Agile
Leader
11
Have a look at the current state of Agility
in your company and answer the
following questions:
• What challenges do you see to make that
change?
• What do you think needs to change so that
your organisation have the Agility?
12
DECISION‐MAKING IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD
• Simple
everything is known
• Complicated
more is known than
unknown
• Complex
more is unknown than
known
• Chaotic
very little is known
Source: Stacey RD. Strategic Management and
Organizational Dynamics: The Challenge of Complexity. 3rd
ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2002.
Scrum
Simple

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EMPIRICISM
EMPIRICISM
TRANSPARENCY
TRUST
INSPECTION
ADAPTATION
REASONS AGILE INITATIVES FAIL
46% Culture at odds with core agile mindset and values
41% Lack of experience with agile frameworks
38% Lack of Leadership/management support
38% Lack of support for cultural transition
38% Inconsistent agile practices and processes
Source: VersionOne (2016) State of Agile Report

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AGILE LEADERS
To support and lead the Agile Transformation, Agile leaders create an
environment where:
Teams focus on building
high quality, high value
solutions for customersPeople are more
important than ideas
People continuously improve and
develop each other
Failure is a necessary
consequence of doing
something new
People trust each other, even
when things go wrong
People are encouraged to
test hypothesis in order
to learn and improve
“
Our job as managers in creative
environments is to protect new ideas
from those who don’t understand that in
order for greatness to emerge, there
must be phases of not‐so‐greatness.
Protect the future, not the past
- Ed Catmull, President of Pixar and Disney
LEADERS GROW AGILITY
“

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LEAN AGILE LEADERSHIP
LEAN AGILE LEADERSHIP - OUR CHALLENGE
It is not enough that management commit
themselves to quality and productivity, they
must know what it is they must do.
Such a responsibility cannot be delegated.
—W. Edwards Deming
…and if you can’t come, send no one
—Vignette from “Out of the Crisis,”, W. Edwards Deming
“ “

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SAFe® LEAN-AGILE PRINCIPLES
1-Take an economic
view
2-Apply systems
thinking
3-Assume variability;
preserve options
4-Build incrementally
with fast, integrated
learning cycles
6-Visualise and limit
WIP, reduce batch sizes,
and manage queue
lengths
7-Apply cadence,
synchronise with
cross-domain
planning
8-Unlock the intrinsic
motivation of
knowledge workers
9-Decentralise
decision-making
WSJF
5-Base milestones on
objective evaluation
of working systems
1. Where does your organisation stands in embracing a Lean-Agile mindset?
2. Pair up. Discuss the results of the self-assessment. Do you have similar
low or high scores?
ACTIVITY: ASSESSING A LEAN-AGILE MINDSET
Plan-based delivery
Fear of speaking up
Silos
Status quo
Standardisation
Command and control
management
Value-focussed
delivery
Psychological safety
to speak up
Flow
Innovation
Relentless
improvement
Leadership
2 31 54 6
2 31 54 6
2 31 54 6
2 31 54 6
2 31 54 6
2 31 54 6

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TAKING ACTION: IMPROVING THE LEAN-AGILE MINDSET
1. Pair up with another pair (groups of 4).
2. Compare your scores.
3. Choose one of the lower scored factors.
4. Brainstorm 1 action you could take to improve this area.
5. Write down one idea and add it to the Backlog.
A system must be managed. It will not manage
itself.
Left to themselves, components become selfish,
independent profit centers and thus destroy the
system…
The secret is cooperation between components
toward the aim of the organisation.
— W. Edwards Deming
APPLY SYSTEMS THINKING
“
“

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APPLY SYSTEMS THINKING - TYPES OF SYSTEMS
• The ecosystem of all your products
• Collection of technical components
• A team of people working together to deliver value
• A team of teams
• The whole organisation
CHANGE AND CULTURE

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• Long-term detailed plans
• Assign and control the work
• Maximize capacity and effort
• Keep all on schedule
• Driven by meetings and reports
• Intervene to fix all problems
• Provide external motivators ($, job title)
25
A Mindset and Behavioral Shift for Management
• Goals, vision, direction
• Foster the environment
• Help remove impediments
• Attend Sprint Reviews
• Share incremental feedback
• Manage for value
• Autonomy, mastery, purpose
PREDICTIVE MANAGEMENT EMPIRICAL MANAGEMENT
Are you going to be impacted by the change, or are
you going to help lead the change?
Change means changing behaviour, not just tools
Awareness Desire Knowledge Action Reinforcement
• Set the vision
• Establish the roadmap
• Communicate the
nature of change
• Set expectations
• Set short term learning
and behavioural targets
• Communicate the
benefits of change
• Identify the expected
behaviour
• Create change support
mechanisms and
frameworks across all
levels
• Leaders walk-the-walk
• Demonstrate through
behavioural modelling
• Reward and reinforce
the expected behaviour
• Celebrate learning
• Celebrate victory
• Train people
• Reflect on experiences
• Share lessons learned
• Support expected
behaviour with
experienced people
• Transfer knowledge
• Refine the roadmap
• Set new short term
and behavioural
targets
Source: Zen Ex Machina (2016) Agile Essentials

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WHERE DO WE START?
Reflect,
improve and
align existing
processes
3-6 months
Scale
learnings to
new teams
5-18 months
Start small,
with the
basics
1-3 months
• Choose an agile framework
• Choose a Product Owner
• Train the team when they’re
ready to start
• Establish a Product Backlog
• Coach the Team
• Choose a Scrum Master
Add patterns
and processes
2-4 months
• Build upon learnings
incrementally
• Add processes on top of
the agile framework
• Identify, define and
repeatable patterns
• Learn and improve through
experimentation
• Adjust Branch processes that
impede agile teams from
delivery
• Adjust governance, roles and
responsibilities
• Establish tactical and strategic
inspect/adapt cycles for
leadership and executive
• Share lessons learned across
the Branch
• Assess readiness of other
teams to adopt an agile
framework
• Train teams just-in-time
• Add scaling support
frameworks as required
Source: Zen Ex Machina (2016) Agile Essentials
DEVELOPING CAPABILITY AND MATURITY
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VALUE DOESN’T FOLLOW SILOS
BUILD CROSS-FUNCTIONAL AGILE TEAMS
 Optimized for communication and delivery of value
 Deliver value every two weeks
Three roles:
▸ Agile teams are cross‐functional, self‐organizing entities that can define, build
and test, and where applicable, deploy increments of value
- Scrum Master
- Product Owner
- Development Team

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TEAM FOCUS
COLLABORATION OVER COORDINATION
To motivate people who work beyond basic tasks, give them these three
factors to increase performance and satisfaction:
• Autonomy — Our desire to be self directed. It increases engagement over
compliance.
• Mastery — The urge to get better skills.
• Purpose — The desire to do something that has meaning and is
important. Organisations that only focus on resource optimisation without
valuing purpose will end up with poor customer service and unhappy
employees.
Source: Pink, Daniel H. Drive: (2009) The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Riverhead Books, New York, New York
CENTRALISE vs DECENTRALISED DECISION MAKING
• Infrequent - Not made very often
and usually not urgent
(example: internationalisation
strategy)
• Long-lasting - Once made, highly
unlikely to change
(example: common technology
platform)
• Significant economies of scale –
Provides large and broad
economic benefit
(example: compensation strategy)
• Frequent - Routine, everyday
decisions
(example: Team and Program
Backlog)
• Time critical - High cost of delay
(example: point release to customer)
• Require local information -
Specific and local technology or
customer context is required
(example: Feature criteria)
Centralise De-centralise

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WHEN TO DELEGATE
Source https://management30.com/product/delegation-poker/
DEFINING AN EPIC

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DEFINING A FEATURE
Has our
investment
been worth it?
• Has product delivery improved?
• How much happier are users and
business?
• Are employees empowered?
• How do we know?

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Exercise
minutes
Current State
3
To understand what you measure
today, and why
37
What type of measures do you track today?
Individually, write down each of the
measures you currently track on separate
sticky notes.
Activity Output Outcome Impact
Measuring activities and outputs
might create undesirable
consequences and may not align
to our outcomes
Are developers busy?
Are test first practices
being used?
Is the team velocity
increasing?
Are developers integrating
code frequently? How
frequently?
What is the quality of
the code?
Percentage
completed?
Source Evidenced Based Management Guide
https://www.scrum.org/resources/evidence‐based‐management
Is build automation
present?

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ACTIVITY
Count actions taken
% complete
IMPACT
Reflect on effect on the organisation



OUTCOME
Reflect on change to
users/customers
Measuring activity just tells where time was
spent, not what value was produced
PROGRESS VALUE
OUTPUT
Count things produced
• Success =
• All requirements delivered…
• By agreed-upon date…
• For an agreed-upon cost
• “On track” = project follows plan,
hits milestones
• Problem: focus on activity and
output, not outcomes and value
40
TRADITIONAL MEASURES DON’T FOCUS ON VALUE
• Success = value is maximized
• Quality and capability are
sustainable
• Focuses on outcomes, not activity
and output
TRADITIONAL AGILE

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AGILITY
BUSINESS VALUE
UNREALISED
VALUE
(UV)
CURRENT
VALUE
(CV)
ABILITY TO
INNOVATE
(A2I)
TIME TO
MARKET
(T2M)
MARKET
VALUE
ORGANISATIONAL
CAPABILITY
Source Evidenced Based Management Guide. scrum.org/resources/evidence‐based‐management
EVIDENCE BASED MANAGEMENT (EBM)
Leading Indicators Lagging Indicators
• Employee satisfaction
• Customer satisfaction
• Usage index
• Revenue per employee
• Product cost ratio
• NPS (Net Promoter Score)
CURRENT VALUE
How happy are our customers? stakeholders? employees?
Is satisfaction, happiness, repeat business improving or falling?

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CUSTOMERS VALUE
• What is our
Value
Proposition?
• Why do our
customers work
with us?
• What outcomes
do they want
from our
products?
• How would we
measure that!
We believe [doing this] for [these people]
will achieve [this outcome]. We will know
that this is true when we see
[this measurement] changed
Feature Customer
Measure
Outcome

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Leading Indicators Lagging Indicators
• Competitor strength/weakness
• Customer acquisition or defection
• % of new vs Existing customers
• Market share trends
• Overall market growth/decline
relative to market share trends
• Change in Share Price
UNREALISED VALUE
Can any additional money be made in this market?
Is it worth the effort and risk to pursue?
Should further investments be made to capture Unrealised
Value?
• Potential future
value that could
be realised if we
were able to
perfectly meet
the needs of all
potential
customers

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Leading Indicators Lagging Indicators
• Reduction in # handovers
• Frequency of build success
• Build pass/fail trends
• Release stabilisation trends
• Mean time to repair (MTTR)
• Cycle time
• Lead time
• Time to learn
• Release frequency
TIME TO MARKET
How long does take?
• Idea to outcome?
• Improvement to realisation?
• How fast can we learn from new experiments?
Leading Indicators Lagging Indicators
• Time spent context switching
• Reduced time to make decisions
• Time for innovation and knowledge building
• Technical debt
• Defect and production incident trends
• Innovation rate
• Installed version index
• Usage Index
ABILITY TO INNOVATE (A2I)
What’s preventing the organisation from delivering new value?
What’s preventing customers/users from benefiting from that
innovation?

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As low-value features
accumulate, more
budget and time is
consumed
maintaining rather
than innovating
IMPEDIMENTS TO DELIVERING VALUE REDUCES A2I
Maintaining multiple code branches or
product versions
Complex or monolithic application architecture
Insufficient production-like environments to test on
Lack of operational excellence
Lack of decentralised decision-making
Spending too much time fixing defects or
reducing technical debt
Innovation and
building new
functionality
vs.
Incremental business
change to expand
capacity
vs.
Maintaining business
operations
WHAT % BUDGET TO SPEND ON INNOVATION?
Source: 2016-2017 Global CIO Survey N=1081
Incremental business change
18%
58%
2010 2016-17
Source: Forrester, October 2010, 2011 IT Budget
Planning Guide For CIOs
Business operations
Incremental business change
Business innovation
Business operations
16%
26%
57%
29%
Business innovation

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• Measure success in terms of value and
outcomes, not output and progress.
• Celebrate success and learn what helped
create it.
• Focus on improving results. EBM provides a
holistic view.
• Maximize learning to become wiser and
stronger.
• Do the best you can. The result will be far
better than fearing failure and doing little.
51
CONCLUSIONS
FIN
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IN /ZENEXMACHINA