An Agile Vision for the Organization — 10 Guiding Principles
Why even have a vision? Isn’t the Agile Manifesto enough? So, there is something very crucial to building an agile culture in an organization and it starts with communicating intent with just enough specificity. This intent needs to be understood and embraced by all levels of the organization. The executives must support and embrace these principles and our teams must appreciate and embrace the principles as well.
What follows are ten simple concepts, embodied by one word, followed by one sentence that clarifies the intent of the principle and then explained further with a paragraph providing any further necessary examples or explanations.
1. Teams. We work in self-managing, autonomous teams
We believe in having all of the required skills on-team so that the team is independently capable of delivering the solution in its entirety. We believe in long-lasting teams that own the solutions they build with the necessary responsibilities delegated to them by their managers. Teams own their own processes and should optimize and simplify their processes to suit their needs, as guided by the Community of Practice and Center of Excellence. We ensure each team has three critical and commonly understood roles: the Product Owner who defines and prioritizes requirements for the business, the Technical Owner who owns and guides the technology and architectural decisions and the Agile Leader (or Scrum Master) who owns and guides the team through agile process challenges and removes obstacles as needed.
2. Delivery. We produce valuable outcomes iteratively (i.e. working, tested software each sprint) as our measure of success
We use the term sprint on software teams with the intent of working in a short cadence of one or two weeks so as to keep focused on solving smaller, achievable successes. We do this through embracing engineering and devops practices for continuous delivery, producing business value through working, tested software updates on a regular cadence, with quality baked-in. We strive to automate all testing and all devops processes so that we can optimize for customer-driven value. For all products and programs (regardless of whether we are building software), we focus on realizing the most important outcomes first.
3. Empiricism. We are product-focused and customer-driven
We ensure the software we build is business-value driven, with tight customer feedback cycles, utilizing practical metrics to guide us. We strive to not build products or features unless we have evidence they are wanted and needed by our customers.
4. Mindset. We embrace change with an agile mindset
We adhere to the agile manifesto, using scrum, kanban skills, and a consistent vocabulary, which amounts to a collection of common agile practices in our toolbox that embodies our spirit and culture. We recognize that change is constant and we inspect and adapt regularly to ensure future success.
5. Minimalism. We build solutions with agile at scale using the least amount of process necessary
When working with large teams, teams of teams, programs and platforms, we look at known scaling frameworks for validation (SAFe, DAD, LeSS, Nexus) but ultimately decide how best to model our behaviors as a group. We share a single backlog on a team of teams whenever possible and utilize portfolio prioritization to manage our capacity and team sizes. We embrace a reusable platform-based strategy for common services and utilize an incremental runway mindset for solving emergent architecture and large business problems.
6. Collaboration. We embrace tight business integration and collaboration between teams
We ensure our business drivers from sales, marketing and finance are in alignment with both product management and technology delivery. We ensure our technology drivers are captured in advance as themes that manifest themselves as architecture enabler epics and components. Our product teams communicate our release notes and product roadmaps frequently to spread awareness and increase collaboration and preparedness. The product management function serves to balance the needs an inputs from the business with the constraints and capabilities of technology.
7. Mission. We embrace our organizational strategy, mission and vision
We make sure our products align with our business value strategy, portfolio priorities, and financial goals. We rely on and involve our executive team in key decisions to help steer and support. We frequently communicate the business drivers and customer needs for the solutions we build so that everyone on our teams knows why we build the things we do. And we encourage our team members to ask questions about why we build the things we do because we recognize that improves our ability to delight our customers.
8. Improvement. We enjoy our work and strive to continuously improve
We all contribute to our culture by improving ourselves, our processes and taking responsibility for creating a positive environment where everyone has a voice and everyone enjoys the work they do. We are committed to involving our organization in the community, where we share our purpose and focus on hiring great people to join in our mission. By improving ourselves and our processes, it increases our ability to be seen as a top destination employer in our city.
9. Trust. We trust our colleagues and assume positive intent in our communication with each other
By assuming positive intent, we respect our colleagues and establish trust. With trust, we collaborate better. We value emotional intelligence, psychological safety and the ability to communicate clearly, disagree amicably and resolve our differences. We take ownership in following up with colleagues to close the loop, and both welcome and appreciate a ‘trust first but verify’ approach in our communications with one another.
10. Learning. We embrace a culture of learning and celebrate the learnings from our failures
We strive to learn rapidly and produce the right features faster by embracing experimentation and a hypothesis-driven product strategy, recognizing a freedom to fail and encouraging investments that lead to increased learning. We also encourage our teams and individuals to focus on their own learning and recognize that a small, regular percentage of their time spent learning benefits the team and our greater organization. We encourage learning through many methods: individual study, pairing, team knowledge sharing and through participation in our Agile Community of Practice.
About the Author: Brian Link is the author of AgileMisconceptions.com (also available on Amazon) and the owner of Practical Agilist, LLC. Brian provides leadership and coaching services as an Agile Coach at LeanDog. Follow Brian on Twitter @blinkdaddy or LinkedIn, and subscribe to his newsletter.
