Blog

“Overcome Transformation Impediments with Outcome-Driven Agility” Presented at Southern Fried Agile 2019

By: David Hawks | Oct 22, 2019 |  Agile Coaching,  Agile Transformation,  Leadership,  Slides

As the rate of market disruption increases, it’s now more important than ever that organizations gain the ability to respond, adapt, and thrive. This is why many companies are embarking on Agile transformations. However, few of them ever realize that level of agility and many struggle to realize the benefits Agile promises (speed, quality, engaged employees). For that reason, many organizations give up before they see results. 

In this workshop at Southern Fried Agile 2019, Agile Velocity Founder and Chief Agilist David Hawks explained common impediments to agility and how implementing Agile develops new capabilities across the organization.

Key Takeaways From “Overcome Transformation Impediments with Outcome-Driven Agility”:

  • The impacts of four key impediments slowing or preventing significant gains
  • An understanding of how an organization develops new abilities by implementing Agile practices and how those abilities result in organizational agility 
  • The ability to assess their current state of agility and where to focus near term
Blog

“Make Shift Happen: Harnessing Culture for Change” Presented at Keep Austin Agile 2019 by Steve Martin

By: Steve Martin | Oct 09, 2019 |  Agile Transformation,  Leadership,  Slides,  Video

  Culture is listed in many surveys as one of the biggest barriers organizations have in adopting Agile frameworks. While it is true that culture can be a blocker for change, culture can also be used to help accelerate adoption and transformation. Being able to identify and understand how culture is used at your organization is an important first step in any Agile framework adoption.

In this workshop at Keep Austin Agile, attendees learned how to determine which culture(s) are present at their company and how to harness it in order to make shift happen.  For additional reading, check out our Business Outcomes series:

Blog

“Are We There Yet? How to Know You Have Achieved Agility” Presented at Keep Austin Agile 2019

By: David Hawks | |  Agile Transformation,  Leadership,  Slides,  Video

In this workshop at Keep Austin Agile, David Hawks discussed the importance of being outcome vs. practice-driven and how that will lead to sustained impact and organizational agility. Attendees worked together to break down desired business outcomes into core capabilities to help them determine where their organization is and provide them with action items to focus on next.

Key Takeaways:

  • An Agile transformation is an organization-wide change
  • Descale to reduce complexity in the system and help an organization scale
  • Outcome-driven organizational agility frames an Agile transformation based on the business outcomes an organization is trying to achieve

Learn more about being outcome-driven in our Business Outcomes series:

Blog

Horse Before the Cart – An Outcome-Oriented Approach to SAFe® Transformations Presented at Agile2019

By: Mike Hall | Aug 14, 2019 |  Agile Transformation,  Slides

Leaders often ask, “Will implementing SAFe® lead to my desired outcome?” This is like asking, “If I put the cart in front of the horse, will the horse push it?”

SAFe® is all about events, roles, responsibilities, cadence, scaling, and process. It can read like a set of prescriptive rules and top-down regulations–some agilists even claim that SAFe® is not agile!

In this workshop at Agile2019, Mike Hall shared an outcome-oriented approach to a scaled agile transformation. Instead of starting with the framework, Mike starts with a business objective. Attendees explored what agile outcomes will influence an organization towards a certain business objective. And collaboratively prioritized capabilities within these outcomes to drive improvement. Then, attendees used SAFe® constructs to realize the capabilities in order to achieve the desired business objective.

Key takeaways from “Horse Before the Cart – An Outcome-Oriented Approach to SAFe® Transformations”:

  • How to apply an outcome-oriented approach to a SAFe® transformation
  • The ability to map agile transformation outcomes, agile capabilities, and SAFe® constructs to lead an organization towards a desired business objective
  • How to integrate outcome-oriented thinking into your organization 
Blog

“HR Agility” Presented at ATX HR June 2019 Meetup

By: David Hawks | Jun 25, 2019 |  Agile Transformation,  Scrum,  Slides

In today’s business, the current rate of disruption and increasing amount of global competition require organizations to treat their employees differently. In this new workforce dynamic, it is more imperative than ever for organizations to foster empowered teams and inspired workers.

At ATX HR, David Hawks discussed how HR agility enables focus, innovation, engaged workers, adaptability, and happy customers. 

Key Takeaways from “HR Agility”:

  • An understanding of the current state of the global marketplace 
  • Why an organizational-wide mindset shift is required to support Agile teams 
  • How Agile practices and values can attract and retain top talent

Please excuse the autofocus issues in the video, we are iterating on how to avoid this problem in the future.

Blog

“Leadership Agility” Presented at Agile Leadership Fest 2019

By: David Hawks | Jun 05, 2019 |  Agile Transformation,  Leadership,  Slides

What got you here as a leader is not going to get you to the next level. Faster rate of disruption and a new workforce dynamic are demanding leaders work differently.

In this workshop at Agile Leadership Fest, David Hawks discussed key mindset shifts leaders need to make to thrive in this new world.

Key Takeaways from “Leadership Agility”

  • We are living in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous world–faster rate of disruption, new technology, and increasing competition are changing the way we work.
  • The 21st-century workforce is made up of knowledge workers who seek autonomy, therefore, leadership styles must change.
  • 4 mindset shifts leaders should make to optimize the full value stream.
Blog

“Be The Change: Transform Your Organization Through Servant Leadership” Presented at Global Scrum Gathering Austin 2019

By: Brian Milner | May 28, 2019 |  Agile Transformation,  Leadership,  Slides

“Revolutionary Ideas do not change institutions. People change them.” – Robert K. Greenleaf.

People over Process is the very first value in the Agile Manifesto. So why do we often begin our transformations focused on processes? Organizations will pay far more attention to what you do than to what you say–if we want to create a culture of Servant Leadership then we need to begin by serving.

In this session at Global Scrum Gathering Austin, Brian Milner dives into the benefits of a Servant Leadership influenced organizational transformation approach.

Key Takeaway from “Be The Change: Transform Your Organization Through Servant Leadership”

  • Understand how Listening, Empathy, Foresight, Commitment to the Groth of People, and Persuasion help unlock new approaches to coaching an organization through a transformation.
Blog

“Make Shift Happen: Leading Change” Presented at Global Scrum Gathering Austin 2019

By: Steve Martin | |  Agile Transformation,  Leadership,  Slides

Change is hard. Despite our best efforts, approximately 70% of change initiatives fail. For the 30% that did not fail, there was most likely tension along the way. The truth is, change is inevitable and organizations do not change… people do.

In this session at Global Scrum Gathering 2019, Steve Martin discussed how organizational change is a mindset shift that begins with leadership.

Key Takeaways from “Make Shift Happen: Leading change”

  • Competitive advantage is temporary – constant change is the “new” status quo
  • Employees at all levels experience fear of change
  • We need to shift focus on the processes of change management and towards leading the creation of change “engines” that harness change
Blog

“Why Transformations Get Stuck” Presented at Global Scrum Gathering Austin 2019

By: David Hawks | |  Agile Transformation,  Article,  Leadership,  Slides

In this world of exponentially increasing market disruption, it is more imperative than ever for organizations to not only achieve operational agility (efficiency, speed, etc.), but also organizational agility (speed to respond to market change).

In this session at Global Scrum Gathering 2019, David Hawks showed attendees how leaders can guide their organization’s past top Agile transformation impediments and accelerate the momentum towards true organizational agility using a proven transformation framework, the Path to Agility®

Key Takeaways From “Why Transformations Get Stuck”:

  • The impacts of four top key impediments slowing or preventing significant gains.
  • An understanding of how an organization develops new abilities by implementing Agile practices and how those abilities result in better agility and impact an organization.
  • The ability to assess their current state of agility and where to focus near term

For more on our approach to building lasting business agility, you can check out our Transformation Services page.