This article is a rather comprehensive guide written to help managers, for most parts C-level, to get a hint on the kind of implications you will find when setting up a Lean & Agile Centre of Excellence (LACE). Use it as a checklist in your planning and, if reasonable for you, follow the practical advice.
Background and the why
In a successful Lean-Agile transformation, a critical step is to incorporate a Lean & Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) into the organization. The LACE should be long-lived to guide the organization in the never-ending desire to improve.
Just like even the best athletics, with experience since childhood, need a coach.
Make the transformation sustainable and don’t go back to older ways of working.
Be aware of the culture
The challenge
In the western world, organizations tend to dimension their staff to handle conditions without failures, whereas Toyota is staffed to handle also ever occurring failures. Traditional organizations in the western world, are likely to drive the Lean-Agile transformation as a single project and think:
“Great, we have now successfully implemented Lean and Agile! It means, the LACE is not needed anymore.”
Organizations that have adopted the mindset of Toyota may think:
“Great, we have now made our first mistakes and learned some things. The LACE will keep on challenging us to make more valuable mistakes and step by step to help us improve.
Relentless improvements – steady unit
Available practice and research tell us it is tough to start by changing culture. It is about beginning to change behaviors which in combination with your leadership will change the culture
Advice
Do not delegate the culture change to the LACE, whose mission is to explain and guide in creating habits and behavior. The message needs to come from you.
Above value streams
In the implementation road map of SAFe, the creation of the LACE comes before identifying value streams and ARTs. It is indeed helpful for the LACE to be involved in the early discussions about the organizational design and to be able to understand the history of the transformation.
Experience shows it is tough for management to ensure that all members of teams and ARTs understand their purpose.
Funded
Credibility
To be listened to
Stable and authorial
Employees - Consultants
The target of the journey
Defining and communicating a vision is the very core of Leadership and Change Management. It is not enough to say, “We are going to be Agile.” It is not enough to say, “We are going to implement Scrum, XP, Safe, or Less.” To be clear, you need to explain why and the basics of what and how. For example, “We need to be on top of the market, and today we are slower than our competitors. That’s why we need to shorten time to market and improve quality. We will do it by removing our functional silos, remove the current project model, promote transforming leadership, focus on optimizing the throughput, and much much more.”
With a clear message, you will show that you know what you are talking about and avoid a lot of confusion regarding the target. Be aware of the immense knowledge in your organization, and your employees will undoubtedly scrutinize any message you give.
Today agile transformation comes more and more from top management. Not seldom the only thing which is spelled out is, “We are implementing Agile!”. This is far too unclear and ambiguous if you want to buy in and drive from your organization.
Some organizations think they will be able to start the agile journey by defining their Agile framework from scratch—this a receipt for failure. A proven and mature framework like Scrum or Scaled Agile Framework has so much built-in knowledge. This knowledge is accessible on the web, in literature, in training classes, and by certified coaches. A standard framework also makes it easier to benchmark and collaborate with customers and suppliers.
Using a standard framework does not mean <that> you can do all parts as is. It means you have a starting point, something to decide on, and to hold on to. Especially for the LACE, it is essential to agree on the target framework. If it is unclear
May change as you learn
Travel plan
In the same way, a clear vision is essential in the change process; the way to reach the target condition is equally important. People may have difficulties to distinguish target and journey.
An agile
Change management Kotter is good Switch good Länka
Ivar Jacobsson Guiding coalitions, coach hub, and change backlog.
A transformation is very much going into unknown territory, so what could fit better than an Agile approach, including a change backlog. A change backlog makes it easier to steer on what is most valuable and the actual speed of progress. The backlog will also give you who is a leader, great practical insights into what you want your Product Managers and Product Owners to do.
A change backlog is often perceived as abstract in the beginning, and it takes both discipline and patience to make it with a useful structure and not an endless list of activities.
A change of coach backlog works just the same as any backlog.
Typical change backlog of an agile transformation would look like:
Portfolio Epic: Release train
Program Epic: Program backlog process
Feature: Populated program Kanban
Feature: Semi content responsible Product Management
Story: Features of the product backlog prepared in the backlog before next PI
Story: Features of the product backlog prioritized with WSJF
Note that these are not activities. This is an organizational change that you put in production. Activities are what you do like doing a wsjf training event or a facilitating a feature creation workshop or setting up the Kanban whiteboard.
Use a coaching backlog
If you do not intend to use a change backlog for your endeavor, there should at least be a coaching backlog. Similar challenges as any agile team
A change of coach backlog works just the same as any backlog
WIP
Most valuable deliveries
Without the coaching backlog, the work quickly gets scattered, with activities without strategic gains.
Time for alignment and development
If you have met at least two Lean-Agile Coaches, you most likely have experienced that they are not 100 % aligned. This is sometimes very frustrating.
Development of the coaching knowledge is
Development of techniques for coaching, training, worshipping, and more.
Prata om och inte med Ses som en lekgrupp som man inte förstår
Define and use maturity paths
Maturity paths may be used for a Team, Program, Solution, Portfolio, or in principle, any long-lived working group. By establishing maturity paths
This not some kind of judgment of how skilled people are. It is something to have a discussion around, which are properties of a system with ownership.
Progressive working agreement
It’s sometimes hard to be an Agile coach. Differences in experience and personality are challenged when working together in trying to give, sometimes very critical, developers the same message. Some coaches like to work alone as others want to involve others, some like to be well prepared as others like to run directly into a meeting and
Agile coacher får höra det ena och det andra Ta det till chefer skvallra
Coacher springer fortare och förslår saker som inte alltid tas emot bra.
An Agile coach often wants to make changes in the organization more swiftly than most managers.
Agreement between managers and Agile coaches may be especially helpful:
Manager: “I am open to being challenged in my role as manager to the limit where I say no. I will also explain why I say no.”
Agile coach: “I will try to propose valuable changes for our organization, and I will be sensitive and respectful when you tell me to stop.”
Prepared responsibilities
A coach cannot typically, and should not, take all organizational decisions. Decisions most times require a managerial position.
Multidisciplinary team
A Lean-Agile transformation involves many different disciplines. Just like in traditional product development, the idea of organization round functional silos will inevitably make the change slower.
It means, the LACE will be best equipped with all significant knowledge areas like leadership, HR, process, and technique.
Both trainer and coach
Training and coaching go hand in hand. When the same person is doing the training, a relation is created, which is extremely useful when you go into coaching mode.
In some organizations training is
Obviously, there is a resource problem if you have just a few coaches in the LACE. It is easy to fall back into old thinking and purchase training from another supplier, maybe cheaper, when it is needed.
Support COPS
Most people are not used to taking responsibility for collective knowledge growth and knowledge coordination. They are used to someone else, typically managers and other central roles. True
Use multiple communication tools
Workshops, training, and seminars
Agile emergency room
Document guidelines, references, workshop results, organizational design
Blogging, articles, and newsletters
Wall posters
Measure
Measurement is, as always, the key for taking appropriate actions and motivate the reason for what you do. For a LACE without a real product visual product delivery
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