Kanban, Lean and Agile mysteries
Mattias Skarin
The Value Responsibility shift – Evolving Beyond the SAFe and LeSS frameworks
2019-12-12 – 06:30 by Mattias Skarin and Neil Cook
Are you struggling with improving at a fast enough pace? Perhaps you started your Scaled Agile journey by applying SAFe, parts of SAFe, or maybe even LeSS.
What I’ve found is that once companies have started to apply a certain model, which represents one school of thought. they fail (or struggle hard..) to evolve beyond the basic cookie-cutter recipe. Sometimes it takes close to an existential crisis to force a leap in evolution. So improving beyond the basics, is undoubtedly hard. Yet, wasn’t the whole point with applying Agile to create the capability to continuously improve, to adapt?
The point with this blog is to give you a visualization, of how you can improve beyond SAFe (or any scaled agile framework for that matter).
Imagine that you are on a field trip visiting different companies with a camera on your shoulder. What would you see? We created this illustration by extracting empirical examples from companies, on different stages on their improvement journey (but not describing just one). We hope that this inspires you to try things out beyond the basic cookie-cutter recipe.
[Neil]: “The idea for this post came about during a recent discussion between myself and Mattias. We recently engaged with Jan Grape & Mattias from Crisp to help us look at the next phase of our Agile journey and it was during this that Mattias shared some of his observations about the path along which companies like ours often evolve.
When Mattias summarized them by sketching up the Value Responsibility Shift, I immediately said, “‘that’s it, that’s exactly what I have been trying to communicate’. This put my thoughts it into context and improved upon it because it went beyond the time horizon I had been looking at. I said to Mattias ‘we need to share this’, and so here it is.”
First a reminder:
Or as I would phrase it – “Mind over matter”. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at the model.
The Value Responsibility Shift
How to read it
As you improve over time, a responsibility shift happens. Agile teams improve their responsibility towards value, while the reliance on process and governance to deliver this, decreases. Think about it: Can a process create value? No, people do. Yet, what we govern and measure, is often processes. We rarely measure the number of hurdles put in place that makes creating value virtually impossible. As our knowledge grows, we can (and should..) simplify the effort required to deliver one unit of value. And we shift our expectations of responsibility.
In the center ribbon, are a few examples of evidence you can look out for that proves that you are there. This is of course not a linear journey. We are not trying to say that you cannot increase your focus on the customer and usability until you have the ability to release on demand, but more that until you can release at any time with little fanfare, releasing consumes so much of your focus that it is hard to fully shift your focus to the customer and usability.
The Challenge: Taking things away
One important aspect during the value responsibility shift is that you are ready to take things away. Stuff that you considered important before, needs to be removed. One example of these things are metrics. Once your speed gets quick enough, or your delivery becomes predictable enough, it’s pretty useless to measure it. There is simply very little information gain there in it. It’s more important to measure value outcome instead. To be able to throw things away as we improve matters, since we have limited mental bandwidth (Team Topologies book calls this “team cognitive load”) thus deciding how we spend it, matters.
A few similar models
There are other models that describe similar thoughts. By knowing them, this allows you to steal the best of all 🙂
- “Journey to product teams” John Cultler
- The Wardley Doctrine, Simon Wardley
Take it from here!
We hope that this inspires you to improve beyond the basics of frameworks.
Mattias & Neil
This blog is co-authored with guest Neil Cook who works as an Agile coach and RTE for SimCorp, a financial software company based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Agile in Public sector and the “Play with the thought” Digitalisation kit
2019-10-01 – 09:44
I just got back from Agile Islands 2019. I really encourage people who haven’t been there to pay it a visit. It’s refreshing to get back with a new insight and idea every time I visit the conference.
Anyway: Here are the slides from my presentation
Let me also share the workshop kit I used.
The “Play with the thought” Digitisation Kit.
- The challenge template (print in A1)
- The play markers – future technologies that will impact us (print on cardboard paper)
- An example for inspiration (print on A4)
The Product Roadmap Agility Checklist
2019-06-10 – 06:00
How self driving car company AID builds its organisation using Agile – interview with the CEO
2019-05-31 – 07:55 by Mattias Skarin and Jan Grape
How do you grow, innovate, and deliver – at the same time? AID (Audi’s unit for self-driving cars) uses Agile to build its organisation at the same pace as their product. We interviewed their CEO Karlheinz Wurm on why they have chosen to do so. We also sneaked in a question – how is it (really) to get feedback as a leader?
What is Agile marketing – new article
2019-02-19 – 19:38
Consumer behaviors are transforming and the speed of IT development is accellerating. Launching new products is becoming ever easier. This means new challenges – and new opportunities – for marketing departments. The companies that learn to master Agile marketing, in a faster changing world, stands a better chance of building long-lasting relationships with their customers.
Innovative companies like Zalando and Telenor are already applying Agile tools inside marketing. However, what is Agile marketing all about? In this article we’ve summarised the key ingredients:
- More time to create
- Cross-functional teams
- Data-driven insights
- Engage with audience through social media
Read the full article here “Agile marketing in a nutshell”
The CTO Questions: 10 questions that help you gauge the current state of your tech operations
2019-01-16 – 21:28
Ever heard this conversation play out?
Manager 1: “We should adopt scaling framework Y.”
Manager 2: “But scaling framework Y doesn’t have a recipe for baking cookies. So we need to do X.”
Manager 3: “Whut? You’re both wrong. We have Agile teams. We’re good!”
In fact, each statement above can be wrong. So the question is, how would you know?
As a coach, it never ceases to surprise me how often management teams lack a shared understanding of their current state of tech operations. If members of a leadership team do not share a common understanding of the current state, it’s easy to fall into the traps of process religion (“my tool is better than yours”), or status quo bias (“why change? From my perspective, everything seems just fine”), or just sheer complacency, “I don’t need to improve, they do”. One piece of solid advice, the last thing you want to do as the leader is to be oblivious to the current state of affairs.
My preferred method of learning the current state is to always start with an “outside-in” view. Assume your operations are a black box and look at the output first, then delve into how the cogs operate inside. Answering these 10 questions helps you do that:
Value oriented
- Do we create innovations that give us unique marked advantages? How many per year?
- What is our lead time from idea to delivery? From idea to customer value? Sample data from 2-3 projects.
- What is our ROI profile? Do we invest first, work long and hard for months and years and hope to reap the business benefits later? Or do we deliver value continuously? Typically Agile?
- Do we have the development capacity to take on all the good business opportunities that present themselves? What opportunities have we let slip by?
Quality oriented
- How often can we do releases with quality that include a cross-section of our tech stack?
- How often do we have slippage on big projects? How much slippage?
- What proportion of support to business features is clogging up our development pipeline?
Engagement and operations indicators
- How many projects are there running in parallel in our organization right now? Do we allow skilled people to work with focus?
- Do we regularly work overtime to meet deadlines?
- Do we have high personnel turnover for people in coordinating positions?
Of course, you don’t need to answer all the questions above. But getting the facts on the table is the key to building a shared understanding of where you are at, so the management team can start to pull in the same direction when improving.
Building Great Release Train Engineers – a talk with Mattias & Yuval
2018-09-26 – 14:01
In the scaled Agile framework, one key role is the Release Train Engineer (RTE). But who should I look for to fill this role? What are the first few process improvements experienced RTE’s typically do? Yuval Yeret (AgileSparks) and Mattias Skarin (Crisp) took the time to discuss the traits of a good RTE.
What are the traits of a good RTE?
Yuval: The easy answer to this question is that you are looking for a Scrum master for a team of teams. Going beyond that, when it comes to specific traits, you are looking for someone who cares about process and improvements, someone who has the ability to orchestrate things. But at the same time, someone who also knows when to step back and let the teams organize themselves. A good RTE is a great communicator and can see and understand what is happening.
Mattias: Firstly, a good RTE should be a people person, someone you’d like to talk to and bounce ideas with. Someone who builds trust and energy with their presence. In essence, a good RTE is the Uber Scrum master across teams. Secondly, a good RTE is systematic and makes sure the process events are run and planned in advance. Thirdly, a good RTE should be a good problem solver.
Slides from Agile Islands 2018 -“Decision making under uncertainty”
2018-09-25 – 19:55
Åland has one of the coolest visions out there – build an Agile society. They also arrange Agile Islands, a small conference but with sharp content. This year I had the pleasure to speak, so I decided to shed some light on “Decision making under uncertainty”, which is a fascinating subject. Here are the slides.
Cheres
Mattias
Agile in Marketing
2018-08-27 – 10:03
What happens when you use Agile in marketing? Zalando have been using Lean and Agile tools inside marketing for some time. That makes up an unique and interesting case study, from a company pushing the boundaries.
Here’s an interview with Julia Kummel, sharing their experiences from the journey:
psst: Do you want to learn how to get started with Agile in marketing? Try out brand new Agile Marketing class in September.
/Mattias
Using Lean and Agile in racing, interview with formula driver Linus Lundqvist
2018-06-05 – 08:17
Racing is essentially product development on steroids.
For a number of years I’ve been following the development of a promising young racing driver – Linus Lundqvist. Anyone with a little bit of knowledge about racing,knows that there are many components that need to work together, in order to forge success. Talant – yes. Resources – yes. But – as important – is how you put them to use. Here’s where Lean and Agile thinking comes into play.
We got the chance to interview Linus and his race engineer at LL Motorsports, Bo Hanner, on how they have used Lean and Agile thinking, in order to keep an edge on competition.
Where is Linus now? While it still early in the season and many races to go, Linus has put himself in a favourable position, as a frontrunner in the Formula 3 UK championship.
If you would like to dig deeper and learn how a race team works, or how they use Lean/Agile to keep an edge on competition, then take the chanse and meet Linus and LL motorsports here in Stockholm on October the 18:th, at the “Agile Procurement for Business Agility” conference.
10 kanban boards and their context – now in french
2018-01-15 – 22:13
Yep! The collection of Kanban boards now is now available in french. Big thanks to Nicolas Mereaux who made it happen!
Here’s the link to “10 tableaux kanban et leur contexte” (fr).
(the english 1.5v is available here )
On Scaled Agile approches, interview with Yuval Yeret
2018-01-11 – 14:18
Yuval is coming to Stockholm to teach a Scaled Agile class (Implementing SAFe) in January. I know Yuval from the Kanban community from a number of years back. We invited him because we know he shares the same pragmatic view on things as we do in Crisp. We made the interview in order for our audience to got to know him a little bit. I could think of no better way than putting him on the spot with a few tricky questions 🙂
Among them:
- Can you elaborate on the pro’s/cons of different approaches to scaling? (LeSS, Large Scale Scrum, SAFEe, Enterprise kanban)
- What should companies that goes down the path of SAFe pay more attention to?
- If I do face resistance when applying scaling practices, what are my options?
- What will I learn if I attend the SAFe class in January?
A key quote from the interview:
“If you don’t pay attention to the principles, the practices applied will deteriorate to ‘for show’
Case: Real World SAFe at SimCorp
2017-12-08 – 11:43
Not every company starts from a green field. Many carry legacy. So how do you kickstart Agile and get traction in an organisation with scale? We can learn lessons from SimCorp, a successful provider for asset management solutions, who runs 500 developers across 4 sites and went from 0 to 8 release trains in 14 months. Here’s their story.
Interview – How SimCorp got going with Scaled Agile (12 min)
with Neil Cook
Presentation – Real World SAFe at SimCorp (from team to portfolio, across 8 relese trains in 14 months)
with Mattias Skarin
Agile Architecture with SAFe – Evolving architecture in a scaled environment
with Jan Grape
psst: If you’d like to learn how you can get traction with your own Scaled Agile transition, join our “Implementing SAFe SPC4 class” in January 23-26. We have handpicked trainers with deep Agile experiences for the class, trainers that shares our pragmatic mindset. You’ll also meet me and Jan Grape, so lots of opportunities to discuss Scaling challenges, regardless of you favourite choice of approach. Ds.
Slides from Devops Greece 2017
2017-11-09 – 19:19
Just got back from Athens and Devops Greece where I talked about “Using Kanban in the field, and how we got management buy in to do so”
Two key takaways are:
- Shift leadership behaviours, in order to shift your culture. The good news is: You can all exericise them, they are not personality traits.
- The invisible change in the case studies is we shifted leaderships behavours in parallell with implementing process tools. I give example of a few.
Real World SAFe – Leapfrogging a successful waterfall company into Scaled Agile
2017-10-04 – 07:00
The secret sauce? It’s all about experimenting, sometimes in hats 🙂
How do you leapfrog a successful waterfall company into Scaled Agile? How do you transition into Agile when you have legacy?
When your company is already successful in what it does and when it carries legacy, transitioning into Agile is a more complex challenge than starting off Agile in a green field environment. After all, companies that are successful in what they do (one way or another) tend to carry legacy. So we need to learn to improve in this kind of scenario too.
In this case study, I’ll walk through the steps SimCorp took to shift into Scaled Agile and the challenges they faced. You will also find deeper insights, such as how you can find your value streams, how we worked with the portfolio roadmap and some of the behavior shifts we look for when transitioning into a Lean/Agile environment.
You can download the case study here.
Slides from “Passion for projects 2017”
2017-03-14 – 16:34
Today I met a crowd I do not bump in to all that often; project managers. I decided to share insights from Agile projects, stretching from Hospitals to Digitilization, how they simplified and speeded up their pre-studies. Learning how to do so well, helps avoiding the “we have to speed up implementation, to make up for lost time” syndrome.
Yes, the “black window” backwards bike, was there too 🙂
Slides in english, are available here.
Slides in swedish, are available here.
What is Agile – easy to grasp material for the non-techie
2017-02-13 – 05:00
I frequently get the question (often from people outside IT): “how can I quickly understand what Agile is?”. I’ve collected a suite of links and videos over the years to help people grasp the basics concepts in 10 min or so. I thought I’d share them with you.
(pls note: the list is intended to give people a quick introduction, short and sweet. The intent is not to cover all aspects.)
Brief explanation of Agile (8 min video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-lavaMkxU&t=3s
How a Product Owner works – “PO in a nutshell” (12 min video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE
Article highlighting cultural aspects – Experimenting, Awesome people, Deliver continuously, Safe to try
https://www.infoq.com/articles/modern-agile-intro
Behaviours displayed by agile teams – 12 seemingly normal things agile people do
https://blog.crisp.se/2016/04/04/mattiasskarin/12-seemingly-normal-things-agile-people-do
Case: Agile at Scale with 200 people @ LEGO (50 min video).
– Pay attention to how engagement/responsiblity was created for both team and department deliveries, and how positive energy was nurtured.
I hope you find it useful. I expect this list to evolve over time, so don’t be surprised if new links pop up here in the future.
Cheers Mattias
Hur Karlstad sjukhus byggdes på tid och budget med Agila kontrakt
2016-12-20 – 13:49
Karlstad sjukhus har i flera omgångar byggts om och byggt ut. Samtliga hus har levererats på tid, budget och med en fungerande vårdverksamhet från dag 1. Sjukhuset har sparat 300 miljoner åt Värmlands läns landsting. Lösningen? Effektstyrd upphandling med Agila kontrakt och Partnering. Vad skapade förutsättningarna för att lyckas? Vi intervjuade Lars Nilsson, som ledde upphandlingen av Karlstad sjukhus.
(How Karlstad hospital was built on time, on budget and with working medicare from day 1, using Agile contracts). Read the interview here (in swedish)
http://agilakontrakt.se/hur-karlstad-sjukhus-upphandlades-med-ratt-effekt-pa-tid-och-budget-del-1
Stephen Bungay on Agile Strategy
2016-10-06 – 08:31
Last month, we had the pleasure of bringing Stephen Bungay to Crisp in Stockholm to share with us his wisdom and insights on how to use Strategy under uncertain conditions.
I find this topic interesting, since the interative nature of Agile can trick management into believing either that they do not need to have a direction, or that a few abstract statements would serve the purpose.
In my mind, nothing can be further from the truth. In a dynamic, fast paced environment, more attention needs to be focused on finding, communicating and revising your direction. The question then becomes, “How can we do a good job of it?” Stephen has studied how leaders do this (from the military to Formula 1) and has translated the strategies to fast-paced business environments. Interestingly, he notes, “Strategy is not a science. It’s a practice, which each generation needs to rediscover.” I think we would do well to do the same within Agile environments.
Apart from Stephen’s “Art of Action” class, which was highly recommended, we also hosted an open evening on the topic “Keeping Direction” which combined the practical experiences from LEGO with Stephen Bungay’s insights. The slides for the talks are available in PDF from the links below:
.
- Evolving direction at LEGO – Eik & Mattias
- Navigating in uncertainty – Stephen Bungay
Also check out Sami’s excellent podcast with Stephen at http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com/stephen-bungay-and-strategy-under-uncertainty)
Cheers
Mattias
Riding a backwards bicycle – Keynote at Agile Islands 2016
2016-09-27 – 22:52
The Agile ambition at Åland (a group of Islands between Sweden and Finland) is quite astonishing. Besides being home to a bunch of cutting edge tech companies (who have been using Agile at Scale for 8+ years), they are also experimenting with using Agile in their society. Hm, Sweden suddenly feels sooo 90’s..
I had the privilege to keynote at their first Agile conference – Agile Islands 2016. I wanted to bring something extra, so I brought with me a backwards bicycle in order to demonstrate how hard it is to adapt to changing conditions, even though we intellectually understand what we need to do.
(conversation in Swedish, with the instructions “use the pedals” and “pick up some speeed”. Yep they speak swedish in Åland)
The Black Phantom II
I you would like the slides from the presentation, they can be downloaded here.
Cheers
Mattias
Introducing Lottie Knutson – speaker at Fastfeedback 2016
2016-08-17 – 20:38
During extraordinary situations and crises, some people stand out and shine. One of these was Lottie Knutson. Lottie led the Crisis team at Fritidsresor during the Tsunami disaster in 2004. While governments were struggling to figure out what had happened, Lottie’s team was already hitting the ground running.
Lottie will be speaking at Fast Feedback 2016, in Stockholm on Sept 21st-22nd. She will be sharing her insights and experience on how to prepare a leadership team for uncertain and critical events. We got a chance to talk with her.
What are you active in right now?
The fall has just started with board meetings and travel. I’ve decided to eat more greens (vegetables) and to do more walking. For the walking, my new favorite app, BBC World News, will come in handy.
What will your seminar at Fast Feedback 2016 focus on?
Lessons learned from quick change and dealing with crises at work.
You were quite active during the tsunami disaster and your leadership inspired many. What were the lessons learned from that?
The importance of being unpretentious, and how not to be fazed by the constant battle with internal bureaucracy and politics.
Thanks Lottie! Looking forward to seeing you at Fast Feedback.
10 kanban boards and their context updated – v1.5
2016-07-04 – 15:11
Hi!
I’ve updated the Kanban boards collection with examples from departements outside IT, Product portfolio and Corporate Legal.
- Download “10 kanban boards and their context” as pdf
SAFe @ LEGO – Video from LKCE 2015
2016-05-28 – 10:33
Hi!
Here’s the video of our presentation “Learnings from SAFe @ LEGO” at LKCE 2015.
psst: Meet LEGO f2f at this years Fastfeedback conference 2016 (Stockholm, Sept 21-22:nd). This years focus topic is “Strategy – Turning insight to action”.
Cheers
Mattias
Insights from Nordics first Agile contracting conference
2016-05-17 – 15:44 by Mattias Skarin and Mia Kolmodin
OK, technically speaking, it was called a networking day. But that wouldn’t do justice to the content here.
The main thing we got out of the ACPN Agile contracting conference was the three different perspectives from lawyers, customers and providers. That gave us a unique insight into the challenges and questions from each party.
Some cool facts:
- Founders of both the Danish Agile contract (K03) and the Swedish Agile contract attended the conference.
- Agile contracts were used in large projects (up to €120M) by customers in Finland and Denmark.
- Customers who have used Agile contracting in big projects have been really successful. We saw impressive results in one case: Danish Business Authority (a €60M program) delivered their projects on time using Agile contracts and at the same time managed to reduce service calls by 40%, case handling time by 69% and improve one time pass by a whopping 92%!
Insights and reflections from the conference:
- Agile contracts are being used in large public sector programs in both Denmark and Finland. The Finnish Agile contract (€1.2 Billion) was a direct order from the Finnish Ministry of Finance and a precondition to get the funding. You can’t help but wonder why Sweden is trailing.
- A driving force behind the adoption of Agile contracts in Finland is the tight budget conditions.
- Time and materials contracts are not recommended for parties who work together for the first time. A target price model works better because it gives both parties the incentive to deliver on time.
- Code camps where you develop a small part of a software solution together in 1 day, is the method of choice to learn about the provider’s maturity and skill level. It forces both parties to look under the hood which reduces risk.
- During code camps and provider evaluation, the providers are generally paid time and materials for their participation. This is a fair trade between the customer who wants to find the best skill for the job, and the providers, who provide the options.
- Legal issues are not a constraint to Agile contracting but getting the wrong lawyer as advisor is. The best choice for mid- to large-size IT projects is to create a small procurement team consisting of an Agile specialist, a software architect, a lawyer with Agile contracting experience and 1-2 customer representatives. This gives you the benefit of having software, legal and business /user experience and perspectives.
If you want to read more about the conference and including a short video summary – check out:
- http://agilakontrakt.se/insikter-fran-nordens-forsta-konferens-om-agila-kontrakt
(note: text in Swedish).
The conference was organized by Crisp & Nordic River (Sweden), Best Brains (Denmark) and Codento (Finland).
12 seemingly normal things Agile people do
2016-04-04 – 20:17
Last week, I got this great question from Faraz (a manager for an energetic customer support crew) who is experimenting a lot with getting more Agile. “What seemingly normal things do Agile people do?” I realized that we rarely talk about the small things that effective Agile people do. What makes a great difference is rarely the big sweeping change programs, but rather, the small everyday things we do without thinking about it.
So here’s a list of 12 seemingly normal things Agile people do which we don’t pay much attention to that can make a big difference.
Whiteboard problem solving
#slowtofast podcast with Nordnet CIO Dennis
2016-03-21 – 17:02
Hi!
I recently did a podcast together with Dennis (CIO Nordnet) on #slowtofast. I walked into the podcast thinking it was going to be about Kanban and Enterprise Agile. Right! 🙂 Dennis hit me with these simple questions..
- The essential elements of proper Product Management
- The management principles of an Agile leader
- How the Swedish culture is beneficial for using Agile
- How to get started with an Agile transition
- How to make an Agile culture stick
- How to handle failure
All hard questions, and all so essential to get right. Here is the podcast:
If you are into Product managment and UX you’ll find more interesting topics in Marcus and Dennis podcast Slowtofast.
Cheers
Mattias
Kanban and Scrum – now with Polish translation!
2016-02-10 – 07:34
The Kanban and Scrum minibook is now available with Polish translation. Great thanks to Zbigniew Zemla for the translation!
Pobierz tutaj (aka polish for “get it here” ):
http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook
Cheers
Mattias
5 ways to find slack when your team is under pressure
2015-12-18 – 06:00
I recently recorded a webinar where I walk through 5 ways to find slack (to invest in critical improvements), when a team is under high pressure.
Enjoy!
http://leankit.com/blog/2015/11/real-world-kanban/
Video – Learnings from applying SAFe @ LEGO
2015-12-11 – 12:59
Hi!
Here’s the video me and Eik’s presentation – “Learnings from SAFe @LEGO” (presentation at LKCE – Lean Kanban Central Europe, Nov 2015).
Best quote: “..this looks exacly like what my 6 year son does in kindergarden” 🙂
Cheers
Mattias
LKCE 2015 Slides – Learnings from applying Safe @ LEGO
2015-11-20 – 18:47
Just back from Lean Kanban Central Europe 2015. A great conference that keeps pushing the limits.
At the conference I gave a talk together with Eik aka “Captain Agile” from LEGO. We walked through how they introduced SAFe, how they involved other departments and most important, how they experimented their way forward. (Me and Henrik iterated as coaches during the transition).
Here are the slides.
Cheers
Mattias
