My keynote talk on "Scaling and Sustaining Agility" at the Continous Delivery day meetup organized by Societe Generale in Bangalore, Oct 5

1. Scaling and
Sustaining
“Agility”
Tathagat Varma
Knowledgepreneur
http://thoughtleadership.in

2. What is agility?
The ability of a “body” to
• anticipate potential issues and avoid or mitigate
them as required,
• sense, analyse and comprehend unexpected
situations as they unfold,
• respond quickly and gracefully to unplanned
changes,
• exploit unexpected opportunities before they
dry up, and
• initiate potential game-changing ideas well-
ahead of the market.

3. What is NOT agility?
framework!
process!
method!
tool!

4. Agile Manifesto
http://agilemanifesto.org

5. So, what fosters agility?

6. Individual level

7. Growth mindset

8. Deep mastery

9. Self discipline

10. Deep passion

11. Continuous learning

12. Team level

13. Clear-cut goals

14. Team chemistry

15. Meaningful autonomy

16. Frequent feedback

17. Self organisation

18. Social fun

19. Organisation level

20. Sense of purpose

21. Radical transparency

22. Open communication

23. “Safe to fail” experiments

24. Reject groupthink

25. Conducive environment

26. Involved leadership

27. Strong culture
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225064362_Kenyan_and_Ethiopian_Distance_Runners_What_Makes_Them_So_Good

28. How to scale agility?

29. Business alignment

30. Product vision

31. Clear goals

32. Scalable teams

33. Work agreements

34. Defined processes

35. Standard tools

36. Interim milestones

37. Quantifiable progress

38. Demonstrable “product”

39. Customer feedback

40. Actionable learnings

41. Closing the loop

42. Recap
• Agility is an outcome, not an ingredient or a
recipe! Most importantly, achieving agility
requires investing in people.
• Scaling agility entails overheads of process,
methods and tools. However, if the underlying
teams haven’t learnt to be agile at unit level,
scaling them will only lead to more chaos!
• Sustaining agility requires nurturing a culture
of transparency, autonomy, collaboration,
experimental learning and business alignment.