Posts Tagged ‘Agile Portfolio Management’
A Recipe for Handling Cultural Conflicts in Devops and Beyond
My Agile 2010 workshop “How We Do Things Around Here In Order To Succeed” will weave together four trends that I am witnessing in my practice:
- The ascendance of Agile portfolio management in a world characterized by loosely coupled processes
- Devops dynamics are becoming more and more characteristic of end-to-end Agile/Kanban patterns
- Viral spread of technical debt metrics in software governance
- Increasing use of boundary objects in the enterprise context
The workshop is structured around three case studies/exercises that will take about two-thirds of the allotted time (the morning of August 9). The other third provides the theory and tools to be used in the three workshop exercises and (hopefully) in many future engagements participants in the workshop will carry out. Deep technical knowledge is not required – the workshop targets any Agile practitioner who has conceptual grasp of culture, software development, IT operations and portfolio management.
The #1 takeaway from the presentation is the details you need to know about creation and capture of lasting value through end-to-end Agile initiatives.
Here is the workshop agenda (still subject to some minor tweaking):
- Introduction to Cultural Framework
- Exercise #1: Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Culture
- Change Behavior, Not Culture
- When Organizations Clash
- Exercise #2: Conflicts in Devops
- The Agile Flywheel
- Exercise #3: Using Technical Debt as a Boundary Object in Devops
- Bringing Organizations Together Through Enlightened Governance Loops
I look forward to meeting you in the workshop and learning from your experiences and insights!
Israel
Apropos has been Open Sourced
Erik Huddleston, Walter Bodwell, Stephen Chin and I unveiled Apropos – the Agile Project Portfolio Scheduler – a month ago in the LSSC10 conference in Atlanta, GA. The system is now available as open source. Click here to go to the home page of the project and download the software. It will enable you to:
- Synergies R&D with downstream organizations such as Operations, Professional Services, and Sales
- Increase delivery value through organization-wide alignment of priorities
- Achieve continuous improvement by whole process feedback loops
- Gain realtime visibility into delivery status and potential blockages
The core concept of Apropos – multiple parallel feedback loops – is demonstrated by the following process control diagram:
Figure 1: Process Control View of Apropos
Enjoy Apropos, benefit from it and please give us feedback!
The Executive’s Workshop for Scaling Agile to The Enterprise
Readers of this blog are well aware of my keen interest in enterprise level Agile. I am now offering a specialized workshop for executives on this topic.
The Executive’s Workshop for Scaling Agile to The Enterprise
This one day workshop and free follow-on coaching service prepares executives for their roles in large-scale Agile implementation.
This workshop is ideal for building a shared understanding of your company’s Agile goals and practices amongst members of the leadership team. It illustrates how executives could/should engage in the Agile process in a meaningful manner, and includes strategies for addressing common challenges. Your team will see how to govern Agile effectively, and most importantly, you’ll learn proven practices for attaining the operational, financial and business benefits of a successful enterprise-level Agile implementation.
Objectives
Agile is shown to cut the cost, improve the flexibility and shorten time-to-market of software-driven projects. Upon completion of this service, executive teams will be able to:
- Scale Agile to the enterprise level
- Minimize risks associated with large-scale Agile rollout
- Apply Agile practices in development and beyond
- Galvanize the team around a shared, cross-functional Agile vision
Approach
The Executive’s Workshop for Scaling Agile to The Enterprise service is divided into three parts, each designed to help company leaders accelerate their adoption of Agile.
Part I: Preparation via phone interviews and web-based coaching. The workshop leader works with your executive team to gather context, discuss logistics and focus the on-site workshop on your needs.
Part II: One day on-site workshop is delivered through combination of presentation, examples, exercises and participant discussion.
Part III: Free telephone coaching and mentoring with the Workshop Leader for six months after the workshop. The objective is to help executives respond effectively to the challenges they encounter in the course of implementing Agile.
On-Site Workshop Details
Leading an enterprise adoption of Agile requires that you understand the key concepts, principles and practices of Agile without getting bogged down in technical details. You must learn techniques for handling the expected “noise” associated with organizational change while identifying the critical tasks needing your attention and leadership to succeed. The workshop is designed to address these challenges with a minimal investment of time.
Here is an overview of the key topics you will add to your experience set:
Explaining the Rationale for Agile to Your Company
- Why now?
- What is the state of the art in Agile and what is our goal
- Expected return on our Agile investment
How The Agile Process Fits into Your Company:
- Understanding Agile as an example of other common, iterative, quality-oriented processes
- How Agile works with other software development life cycle processes
- How to run a heterogeneous software development environment that mixes Waterfall, Agile and other methods
- Connecting Agile to your budgeting process
- How to perform governance and portfolio management with Agile
How to Implement Agile:
- Choosing suitable projects for Agile methods
- Rollout strategies that mitigate risks
- Keeping departments aligned during the Agile rollout
- Defining the social contract for Agile
- How to make Agile sustainable in your particular culture
- How Agile impacts your partner eco-system
- Succeeding with off-shoring and outsourcing
Setting Up The Agile Enterprise:
- Determining your performance metrics for Agile
- How to negotiate Agile contracts
- Achieving breakthrough innovation through Agile
- Business designs that utilize the power of Agile
Price and Availability
- Limited to 12 people per workshop
- Please contact me at isrgat@gmail.com
The Agile Executive 