Areas of flexibility
Translation of the article “Domain of Agility” by Evan Leybourn was done by Lilia Alekseeva (Agile Evangelist, Sberbank) with the permission of the author.
Agile does not mean Scrum, and Agility cannot be reduced only to Agile.
Over the past few months, I tried to form a simple model that would help to reveal the concept of Agility and the interaction between its constituent elements. Now I want to present you the result of this work - three different forms of flexibility (Agility) - business, technical and process. In my opinion only the presence of all three elements allows us to create an Agile-organization.
')
Process flexibility (Process Agility) . I will start with it, because this area is usually associated in people with the concept of Agile. This area focuses on the work of teams and projects, that is, on the delivery of value. Most of the existing frameworks: Scrum, SAFe, LeSS - mainly focuses on this level (it is fair, however, to note that many Agile scaling frameworks also partially cover the area of Business Agility).
Technical flexibility (Technical Agility) . Technical maturity is initially considered the cornerstone of flexibility. One of the earliest and most fundamental frameworks of Agile, Extreme Programming (XP), is almost entirely devoted to technical flexibility. Most modern engineering practices such as Test-Driven Development (development through testing), pair programming, and even refactoring take their roots from XP. But technical flexibility is not limited to engineering practices from the software development industry. Any area of work can and should be "technically" flexible. First of all it concerns all supporting processes, for example, such as financing, functioning of economic services and others. What does flexibility mean to them? This is their own internal Time-to-Market. An example familiar to any department head of any large company: a plan for recruiting new employees is submitted to the personnel department and approved with them a year in advance. And if in the middle of the year a new project unexpectedly started, and people are required, then there are no bets on them, and the selection can be started only in the new year. (Translator's note). Changing such processes is supported by new Agile practices: Beyond Budgeting and others.
Business agility in general (Business Agility) . This is the youngest area. By and large, organizations are only now beginning to think about business flexibility as a separate area. For the past twenty years, while individual teams have become flexible, the main deterrent has been, as a rule, interaction with neighboring teams within the same unit. Today, when whole divisions and parts of companies become flexible, the rest of the organization becomes the key limiting factor. In my experience, divisions such as finance, HR, and the project office become the main sources of constraints on the organization’s overall flexibility.
Business Agility is generally in its infancy. Unlike the other two areas, there are almost no formal methods and approaches described in the framework of any frameworks. Beyond Budgeting, Holacratia and Leadership as a Servant (Servant Leadership) are probably the three most mature and recognizable concepts in the Business Agility area. Personally, I believe that over the next 5-10 years we will see the explosive growth of various methods, tools and approaches to ensure business flexibility, which are consolidated into harmonious frameworks.
Ps . If you are interested in materials on the transformation of processes in large companies, we recommend the Enterprise Agile Russia group on Facebook. We will discuss approaches to scaling, such as SAFe and LeSS.
Agile does not mean Scrum, and Agility cannot be reduced only to Agile.
Over the past few months, I tried to form a simple model that would help to reveal the concept of Agility and the interaction between its constituent elements. Now I want to present you the result of this work - three different forms of flexibility (Agility) - business, technical and process. In my opinion only the presence of all three elements allows us to create an Agile-organization.
')
Process flexibility (Process Agility) . I will start with it, because this area is usually associated in people with the concept of Agile. This area focuses on the work of teams and projects, that is, on the delivery of value. Most of the existing frameworks: Scrum, SAFe, LeSS - mainly focuses on this level (it is fair, however, to note that many Agile scaling frameworks also partially cover the area of Business Agility).
Technical flexibility (Technical Agility) . Technical maturity is initially considered the cornerstone of flexibility. One of the earliest and most fundamental frameworks of Agile, Extreme Programming (XP), is almost entirely devoted to technical flexibility. Most modern engineering practices such as Test-Driven Development (development through testing), pair programming, and even refactoring take their roots from XP. But technical flexibility is not limited to engineering practices from the software development industry. Any area of work can and should be "technically" flexible. First of all it concerns all supporting processes, for example, such as financing, functioning of economic services and others. What does flexibility mean to them? This is their own internal Time-to-Market. An example familiar to any department head of any large company: a plan for recruiting new employees is submitted to the personnel department and approved with them a year in advance. And if in the middle of the year a new project unexpectedly started, and people are required, then there are no bets on them, and the selection can be started only in the new year. (Translator's note). Changing such processes is supported by new Agile practices: Beyond Budgeting and others.
Business agility in general (Business Agility) . This is the youngest area. By and large, organizations are only now beginning to think about business flexibility as a separate area. For the past twenty years, while individual teams have become flexible, the main deterrent has been, as a rule, interaction with neighboring teams within the same unit. Today, when whole divisions and parts of companies become flexible, the rest of the organization becomes the key limiting factor. In my experience, divisions such as finance, HR, and the project office become the main sources of constraints on the organization’s overall flexibility.
Business Agility is generally in its infancy. Unlike the other two areas, there are almost no formal methods and approaches described in the framework of any frameworks. Beyond Budgeting, Holacratia and Leadership as a Servant (Servant Leadership) are probably the three most mature and recognizable concepts in the Business Agility area. Personally, I believe that over the next 5-10 years we will see the explosive growth of various methods, tools and approaches to ensure business flexibility, which are consolidated into harmonious frameworks.
Ps . If you are interested in materials on the transformation of processes in large companies, we recommend the Enterprise Agile Russia group on Facebook. We will discuss approaches to scaling, such as SAFe and LeSS.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/320158/
All Articles