A brief introduction. Last week I put out a post on my LinkedIn feed talking about implementing Agile. My post was:
“I’m increasingly surprised how #agile is pinned as “the way we grow FAST” with a huge amount of pressure put on the Delivery Team to “just be agile”. Agile starts at the #leadership level and flows down. If leadership can’t adopt it first, true success cannot be achieved.”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dankaho/
The origin of this comment came from a number of articles I’ve read that tote the benefits of Agile. One commonality observed was that NONE mentioned leadership when talking about rolling out agile. Maybe it was assumed that leadership already adopted it wholeheartedly? I’m not sure, but what’s important to realize is that Agile adoption flows top-down and leadership needs to adopt it FIRST before anyone on any team can start taking action to “be agile”.
Prerequisite
Before you jump in, I highly recommend you get an Agile Coach, Scrum Master, or someone experienced implementing Agile at the leadership level. Whomever you choose needs to prove they have the experience leading Agile transformation. Do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions or need help applying Agile to your unique situation .
STEP 1: Big Picture Thinking
As a leader, before you can start, you need to be clear on what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re goal oriented, there is a strong chance you already have your goals written out. If you have your goals in your head, write them down. This will help you get very clear on what you’re trying to achieve (and makes it easier to distribute to your team when the time comes). As a standard, you should have 5-10 goals for any given year. If you need help, I highly recommend reading Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt.
For small business owners, sole proprietors, or even a parent trying to manage their home, this is something as simple as starting with your “why statement”. Simply ask yourself, “why am I/we here doing what we do?” The answer to this question will drive the initiatives you’ll be planning.
Once you have your goals and/or “why statement” established, start writing down all the initiatives you need to achieve to reach the next level of <insert your unique situation here>. Your first cycle through this will give you a euphoric feeling; however, you’re not done yet! Cycle through them again and break down your goals into objectives (or smaller chunks) that can be achieved in a shorter period of time. If you need help determining what a “smaller chunk” should be, get a subject matter expert in the room to help out.
STEP 2: Determine Value
Once you have all of our initiatives broken out, you need to establish the value you intend to provide from implementing the initiative. It doesn’t matter how much money you have in the bank, you need to prove the value of what you’re trying to achieve. This is an important step as it justifies the resources required to implement your plan. As a leader, if you can’t create a value statement for what the initiative offers, I would argue it doesn’t truly offer value.
Make sure your value statement includes KPI’s. Using KPI’s not a bad thing (nor is it nerdy!). In general, anybody doing anything needs to see that they are achieving value from their investment. Creating KPI’s give you a series of data points that you use to measure the performance of what you’ve implemented and how it is performing. It sets a base standard for what your initiative needs to achieve. This might be tough at first but, if you really think it through, I’m sure you can come up with at least two quantifiable KPI’s.
Just as in Step 1, once your done with this first round, go back and reassess the value statements and further groom the vision statements. By the end of this step, you have completely inventoried what you want to achieve and the value it brings.
STEP 3: Dependencies and Constraints
Every initiative will have dependencies and constraints. Dependencies and constraints could be as simple as money, people, and seasonality. Take it easy on this part… this is the initial road-mapping session so you don’t need to dig into task planning yet. If you know what your dependencies and constraints are, take the time to document it so your team can see what they need to account for. Eventually dependencies and constraints will become a part of task planning.
STEP 4: Required Delivery
Keep this simple. If there’s a time frame this needs to be done by, write it down. It’s good to be clear about timing for completing your initiative. A few examples are:
- A trade show the company goes to every year and the initiative “needs to be done less than 3 weeks before the trade show begins”.
- If you’re a product company, you might need this initiative to be ready for the seasonal release you’re planning for.
- If you’re a technology company, you might have a quarterly release cycle that you need to consider.
While Agile is a more fluid approach to completing initiatives, the reality is, your average business runs on some kind of a plan and you need to take this into consideration. Do not get sucked into the “we are Agile, we don’t make a plan” mentality. Further, do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, write “ASAP”. Don’t be that guy… you know what I mean. If you think “ASAP” is appropriate, send me a message on LinkedIn and let’s talk about it.
Take Action!
Agile, or an Agile Transformation, can be extremely valuable for leadership within an organization:
- Aligning your team with your vision and value statement for each initiative sets expectations on the outset, minimizing confusion giving a sense of direction.
- It provides a way to break down large initiatives into bite-sized chunks opening up the possibility to implement large initiatives quicker.
- It provides short and valuable feedback loops on the work being released allowing you to pivot as needed, when needed.
- It allows you to leverage delegation, creating an opportunity to provide a growth trajectory for those that are looking to scale up their responsibilities in the team.
- It can free up margin for leadership to do what they were originally hired to do… LEAD!
What I’ve outlined sounds simple, but it is not easy. Follow these 4 steps and revisit your plan weekly. Your typical business owners and leadership teams are flying by the seat of their pants and to ask them to sit down to build out a backlog of initiatives is a challenge in itself. Don’t let the “I’m busy” trap stop you! As I said before, I highly recommend you get an Agile Coach, Scrum Master, or someone experienced implementing Agile at the leadership level. If you have ANY questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!