Why stop at your IT department? Or an Agile approach to Change Management Business agility is more than the organization’s IT shop adopting an agile delivery method. Business agility depends on three core capabilities: rapid delivery, strategic sensing, and customer rapport. As such it builds resilience to change as a strategic imperative and eventually it allows businesses to build a strategic advantage in driving change. Investments in “agile” from an IT perspective will not increase business agility. So what does a company need in order to successfully drive change rather than react to it? We’ll talk about how creating a resilient organization starts with rapid delivery and why many major organizations are turning their attention to less costly on-demand releases. We’ll look at how customer rapport is the new driver of operational efficiency, where not building something is invariably cheaper than optimizing the operational cost of building anything at all.

1. A N A G I L E A P P R O A C H T O
C H A N G E M A N A G E M E N T
R E G I O N A L S C R U M G AT H E R I N G - T O R O N T O , C A N A D A

2. L O O K I N G O U T WA R D
A F T E R A L M O S T 4 0 0 Y E A R S T H E M I N G D Y N A S T Y
C O L L A P S E D I N L E S S T H A N A D E C A D E

3. • Lifespans of big
companies are getting
shorter than ever
• An increasing number of
corporate leaders will lose
control of their firm’s
• About half of the S&P 500
will be replaced over the
next 10 years
- I N N O S I G H T E X E C U T I V E B R I E F I N G
“We’re entering a stretch of accelerating change
in which lifespans of big companies are getting
shorter than ever.”
www.innosight.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Corporate-Longevity-2016-Final.pdf

4. C O M P L E X I T Y I S T H E
N E W B L A C K , R E S I L I E N C E
I S T H E N E W O R A N G E
• The pace of change is
undermining companies
• The goal is no longer
stability or domination
• Rather experimentation
and rapid response,
resilience to complex
change

5. R E S I L I E N C E
“Resilience is the capacity of
a system to absorb
disturbance and reorganize
while undergoing change so
as to still retain essentially the
same function, structure,
identity, and feedback”
[Brian H. Walker, 2004]
“Anti-fragility is a property of
systems that increases in
capability, resilience, or
robustness as a result of
stressors, shocks, volatility,
noise, mistakes, faults,
attacks, or failures”
[Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2012]
A N T I - F R A G I L E

6. A N T I - F R A G I L I T Y
A N D R E S I L I E N C E
• Fragility defines stable,
optimized, expert
systems
• Resilient organizations
build capabilities that
allow them to adapt
• Anti-fragile organizations
seek symbiosis and
diversity
https://dzone.com/articles/software-from-fragile-to-antifragile

7. P U T P E O P L E F I R S T
S M A L L , D E D I C AT E D T E A M S E X C E L
1

8. H O W A G I L E A R E
Y O U ?
• Divide number of people
(FTE and contract) in IT
function by 10
• How many teams do you
actually have?
• Express ratio as percentage
R AT I O
A C T U A L /
P O T E N T I A L
U P P E R
Q U A R T I L E
> 7 6 %
A B O V E
M E D I A N
> 5 3 %
B E L O W
M E D I A N
< 5 3 %
L O W E R
Q U A R T I L E
< 3 2 %
explore.versionone.com/state-of-agile/versionone-11th-annual-state-of-agile-report-2

9. C R O S S - F U N C T I O N A L
T E A M S A R E T H E
N O R M
• “This is the way we used
to work”
• Complex problem
spaces require different
capabilities
• In order to recruit the
best...

10. T H E W E S T R U M M O D E L
S E R VA N T L E A D E R S H I P B U I L D S R E S I L I E N C E
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1765804/pdf/v013p0ii22.pdf

11. D E L I V E R O F T E N
S H O R T E N I N G T H E C Y C L E T I M E
2

12. 0
200
400
600
800
1,000
1,200
1,400
1,600
2014 2015 2016
Deploys per Year
Deploy Frequency
Low performers High performers
L E A R N T O D E L I V E R
M U C H FA S T E R
• Defines learning cycle
• Removes need for
Command & Control
(delivery is the
confirmation of progress)
• Builds capability (more
on that later)
State of DevOps Report 2016 (Puppet Labs + DORA)

13. 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
< 1 week ~ 1 week > 1 week > 1 month
Percentage Respondencts
Release Frequency
Alpha (2017) Dzone (2018)
D E P L O Y F R E Q U E N T LY
H O W L O N G D O E S I T TA K E T O G E T A C H A N G E I N T O C U S T O M E R S ’ H A N D S
https://alphahq.com/blog/frequently-product-managers-run-experiments-ship-new-features/

14. H O W O F T E N
C A N Y O U
D E P L O Y ?
D E L I V E RY
F R E Q U E N C Y
U P P E R
Q U A R T I L E
< 1 W E E K
A B O V E
M E D I A N
~ 1 W E E K
B E L O W
M E D I A N
> 1 W E E K
L O W E R
Q U A R T I L E
> 1 M O N T H
https://dzone.com/storage/assets/8389652-dzone2018-researchguide-devops.pdf
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
< 1 week ~ 1 week > 1 week > 1 month
Percentage Respondencts
Release Frequency
Alpha (2017) Dzone (2018)
https://alphahq.com/blog/frequently-product-managers-run-experiments-ship-new-features/
• On average, how often
do you deploy to
production (so your
customers can see it)?

15. R E D U C E T I M E T O M A R K E T
I F N O T T E C H - S A M E P R O B L E M …

16. VA L U E F O C U S
D E L I V E R I N G VA L U E N O T A C T I V I T Y
3

17. M E A S U R I N G S U C C E S S O F A G I L E
2 0 1 7 S TAT E O F S C R U M A N D V E R S I O N O N E S TAT E O F A G I L E S U R V E Y S

19. - A L A N W E I S S
“Ask your customers to be part of the solution.
And don’t view them as part of the problem.”

20. B C A A & E V O
“Not more of the same thing,
but more from the same team.”

21. D I S T R A C T I O N
C A N B E D E A D LY
• Volkswagen has 23.7B Euros
on hand
• It isn’t the 30B Euros in
damages that will kill off VW
• It’s the lost time and focus as
the industry shifts

22. 0
10
20
30
40
50
< 1 week < 2 weeks < 6 weeks Rarely, if ever
Percentage Respondencts
Experimentation Frequency
Alpha (2017)
VA L U E F O C U S
• How frequently do your
teams validate the value
they deliver?
E X P E R I M E N T
F R E Q U E N C Y
T O P 2 5 % < 1 0 D AY S
T O P 5 0 % > 1 0 D AY S
B O T T O M 5 0 %
R A R E LY, I F
E V E R
https://alphahq.com/blog/frequently-product-managers-run-experiments-ship-new-features/

23. E X P E R I M E N T S T H AT
VA L I D AT E F E AT U R E
D E C I S I O N S E V E RY 1 0
D AY S O R L E S S
M O R E T H A N 3 / 4 O F
Y O U R D E L I V E RY
C A PA B I L I T Y W O R K A S
A G I L E T E A M S
R E G U L A R LY R E L E A S E T O
C U S T O M E R S I N U N D E R
A W E E K

24. T H A N K Y O U
D AV E S H A R R O C K
@ D AV E S H A R R O C K
D AV E . S H A R R O C K @ A G I L E 4 2 . C O M