Sustainable Agile change is about achieving consistent and lasting adoption of agile techniques across an entire organisation which includes broad communities of people and practices. The IJI approach helps introduce and adopt change and then assures that the change “sticks” so organizations can achieve not only rapid self-sufficiency but can continue to evolve and improve, even as personnel and corporate direction changes.
What is Sustainable Agile Change?
Defining your Agile Change Initiative
Like all endeavors an Agile Change Initiative needs to be defined; which ensures direction is provided and improvements are aligned to business goals. This drives the continual evolution of the operating model, and ensures that maximum value is derived from the investment in change. The operating model evolves continuously to improve value and efficiency.
The Agile Change Initiative should have its own clearly articulated vision. This vision describes the intent of the Agile Agile Change Initiative in simple, easy to grasp language. It is something that everyone can reference to determine whether their actions will help fulfil the intent of the Change Initiative. From the vision, a roadmap is created, which will allow the organisation to achieve the vision for the agile change.
Agile Practice Hubs
Agile Practice hubs are the focus for guidance and learning materials, harvesting new and evolving practices from the communities and sharing these for wider usage. Many organisations struggle with maintaining consistent levels of professional practice, whilst at the same time dealing with many different types of endeavors and enabling teams to innovate and refine their approach to respond to their own unique challenges and opportunities.
A practice-based approach enables the composition of processes from an eco-system of practices, which ensures a consistent approach, while flexibility is achieved by composing the appropriate practices for particular types of work. Our Essence in Practice TeamSpace™ and WorkBench™ team productivity products bring life to these ideas for organizations.
A practice is a repeatable approach to achieve something specific and does not live in isolation. Supporting information to help achieve fast and consistent adoption often surrounds it, such as training materials, including slide packs from presenters, coursework and reference materials.
Agile Coaching Hubs
The agile coaching hubs will build the capabilities of teams in those practices provided through the practice hub, with training and agile coaching activities. Initially communities will be seeded and directed by the Agile Change Initiative, supported through the provision of Agile Coaching Hubs.
It is critical that internal coaches are developed to ensure sustainability of the Agile Change Initiative to meet the evolving needs of the business. As well, internal agile coaches help ensure that the business will not become reliant on external consultants long term.
The Agile Coaching Hubs help establish agile capability in the product lines and development teams, which will then seed the building of communities.
Communities of Practice
Communities of Practice are groups of people that are utilizing shared practices. Different members within the community will have different levels of skills at the practice, the more skilled being able to support and assist the less skilled.
The communities are set up to nurture, sustain and take ownership of new and evolving ways-of-working. They become increasingly autonomous, self-sufficient, self-organising and self-directing as agile and lean thinking becomes embedded in the organisational culture.
A Community of Practice is typically an informal organisation that exists outside of normal organisation management reporting structures; community members still report to a supervisor, but also actively participate in a broader community.
Recognizing and Measuring Achievement
In the same way that Agile Software Development is often described as being all about creating “great software”, workplace accreditation can be thought of as a tool to help create “great people and teams”. An accreditation model provides for structured measurable uplift through an organisation’s initial Change Initiative and into the future. The model defines the skills and expertise levels and identifies the number of people for each level and for each practice.
It is an aspirational certification model suited to individuals who want recognition for their existing skills, individuals who want to increase their skills to meet the demands of their projects and organisation (career advancement), and those individuals who are just starting out.
By offering an accreditation scheme, an organisation is able to measure and monitor the correct levels of competency for each practice level and strengthen the career development opportunities for employees.
Creating Sustainable Agile Change - e-Pub Series
Learn more about Sustainable Agile Change in our Creating Sustainable Change e-Pub Series. Key sections include:
- Creating Sustainable Change
- A Practice Based Approach
- Communities of Practice
- Creating a Sustainable Coaching Network
- Establishing a Measurement Framework
Trusted by Industry to Deliver Sustainable Change
IJI believe in ensuring that the change you want sticks and that your investments pay off. For more information on the large scale, sustainable change successes we have enabled, take a look at our case studies.