What is Backbriefing?

Backbriefing A3
Backbriefing A3

I talk about Backbriefing a lot in conference presentations and will have mentioned it in a number of blog posts. In particular I put together a Backbriefing A3. However, I don’t think I’ve ever really described what I mean by backbriefing or what it involves. Time to rectify that.

Background

I first learned about backbriefing in Stephen Bungay’s book The Art of Action where he talks about it as part of Directed Opportunism. It is an approach to close what Bungay calls the Alignment Gap between Plans and Actions. This is where there is a difference between what a plan suggests people should do, and what they actually do. Rather than creating more detailed plans with more detailed instructions, Bungay suggests instead to allow people to create and implement their own plans to meet an intent, and to check for alignment with a backbrief.

Thus backbriefing is a process with which people can check their understanding of the intent of their work and whether their plans will meet that intent.

Process

Typically this involve 3 steps:

  1. The brief – the initial description of the work. Leadership briefs the group being asked to carry it out, not in terms of a plan but in terms of the intent, such as what goals and aspirations are. Thus the brief describes the problem statement.
  2. The backbrief – a replay of the understanding of the work. The group briefs back to the leadership what they heard, including their plans for how they will carry it out. Thus the backbrief re-describes the problem statement along with an initial solution.
  3. Feedback and adjustment – a review to clarify the work. Together everyone revises the articulation of the intent and the work. This could be due to misunderstandings in communication, or to take into account new information learned from the backbrief. Thus the feedback and adjustment refines both the brief and the backbrief.

Practice

The A3 template I created is the way I do backbriefing in practice where it is used primarily for steps 2 and 3 above. The various sections cover the understanding of the brief (Context, Intent and Higher Intent) as well as the initial proposal for carrying out the brief (Team, Boundaries, Plans). As the A3 is populated and reviewed, its can be updated to deflect any feedback and adjustment.

In the context of the X-Matrix, I like to start with backbriefing for the initial set of Tactics, where teams are given a Tactic as their brief and use the Backbriefing A3 to create understanding and alignment around what they are being asked to work on. This then becomes part of the Catchball process to translate the organisational strategy into the daily tactical work.

Postscript: I have followed up this post with another one on Backbriefing and the Curse of Knowledge.

Strategy as Enabling Constraints

Training Plan

In one of my recent presentations, I talk about 3 Cs of “Imposing” Agile; Coherence, Constraints and Curiosity. That idea, along with some of the content made it into a whitepaper I wrote last year. A key part of that, and one of the 3 Cs, is the idea of using constraints, and specifically of strategy as a form of constraint. The talk has helped my clarify some of my thinking, and know I want to try and write that down to formalise it some more.

I’ve mentioned my love of running in previous posts, and just before Covid-19 hit us a year ago I was training for a marathon. I like to do one a year, which is enough of a challenge without letting it completely take over my life. Marathon training requires discipline – at least it does for me when I set myself goals and try and beat my Personal Bests (PBs). To maintain the discipline I use a training plan (the picture above) and I like to think of it as a form of constraint which guides my progress through achieving certain paces, times and distances in the lead up to the race. As an example of a constraint, it can be useful to help look at constraints in a number of ways.

To begin with, I could use the training plan in a couple of ways.

  1. I could rigidly follow it to the letter, running the prescribed routines, in the prescribed order, on the prescribed days.
  2. I could use it as a guide and influence, running similar routines, but with flexibility of order and on days that are convenient to me.

In other words, I could uses the plan in a context free way (ignoring my lifestyle, calendar, health etc.), or a context sensitive way, (allowing for my lifestyle, calendar, health etc.) and each would result in different outcomes from injury and failure to PBs and success. This is how Alicia Juarerro describes constraints. More generally she says that:

constraints constitute changes in probabilities

Lean UX 2015

She uses the example of white noise, which has no constraints and with which every pattern is equally probably. Adding constraints makes different patterns more or less likely. Thus adding, removing or changing constraints will alter the likelihood of different outcomes.

Similarly, Dave Snowden uses the language of governing and enabling constraints.

  • Governing constraints are expected to produce a high probability outcome. They are more causal and repeatable, and they limit action regardless of context.
  • Enabling constraints are expected to produce a wider range of outcomes, albeit with lower probability. They are more catalytic and probing, and they allow for more freedom of action depending on context.

For my training plan example, I can use the plan to either govern my routine such that I repeat it as prescribed, or to enable my routine such that it helps me choose how I run.

It’s important to note at this point that context free / governing constraints, or context dependant / enabling constraints, are neither good nor bad. Instead it’s more useful to think about what constraints are currently in place, how appropriate they are, and how they could be adjusted. With a training plan some people are strongly motivated by the rigid structure, whereas my preference is to have enough structure to ensure I am making progress, but with the adaptability to fit around my work and home life. If I find I’m not making the progress I would like, however, I might choose to follow the plan more strictly again.

What’s this got to do with strategy? I like the definition of strategy from Henry Mintzberg:

Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions

Henry Mintzberg: Patterns in Strategy Formation

This implies that strategy involves people thinking for themselves, which thus means that strategy can be a form of context dependant and enabling constraint. I’ve previously blogged about strategy as choices and using even-over statements.

Further, given Richard Rumelt’s definition of Good Strategy as having Diagnosis, Guiding Policies and Coherent Actions, then the diagnosis is what provides the dependant context, and the guiding policies are the enabling constraints.

If we consider strategies to be context dependant and enabling constraints, then we can think about how to frame strategy by considering how to adjust the constraints in order to allow people the right amount of freedom. For example:

  • Are we allowing people to make their own choices or are we making more decisions for them?
  • Are we asking more questions or giving more answers?
  • Are people having to think for themselves or follow instructions?
  • Are we describing an outcome we want to achieve or an activity we want people to perform?
  • Are we giving people a direction to move towards or a plan on how to get somewhere?

To reiterate, goal is not to try and contrast good with bad, but describe a tension where we want to find the right balance. If we feel that there is too much freedom, and as a result a lack of clear alignment, then we can consider how we could tighten the constraints so that they are more governing. If we feel that there is not enough freedom and as a result a lack of empowerment or creativity, then we can consider how we loosen the constraints to make them more enabling.

To wrap up and summarise, I would say that thinking about strategy in terms of constraints, and specifically enabling constraints, helps with understanding what a good strategy is and how it can help by providing enough of a boundary to create alignment, but also enough space to allow people to be creative and innovative in the action that they take.

Strategy Deployment and SAFe

This is a slightly different variation on my series of posts comparing Strategy Deployment and other approaches. SAFe is definitely not a form of Strategy Deployment, but it does include references to strategy, so this post is more an exploration of how SAFe could work alongside Strategy Deployment.

First, lets get the usual caveats out of the way. I’m not specifically pro or anti SAFe. It has lots of good ideas in it, and they’re not always appropriate. I did my SPC in 2013 and I’ve worked with organisations where it has been helpful, and where its been a disaster. My goal in this post is to try and help understand when and how SAFe can work well more often, by looking through a Strategy Deployment lens. I’m not interested in “No True Scotsman” (or “Deckard Defence” which I’ve just been introduced to) type arguments.

This post has been in draft for a long time as SAFe tends to be a divisive subject. It was only while attending the recent virtual European SAFe Summit and watching talks and chatting with people about strategy, that I came to enough clarity to describe what has been bothering me.

Strategic Themes

Lets first look at where Strategy sits in the SAFe Big Picture.

SAFe includes Strategy at the Portfolio Level as a set of Strategic Themes which guide the Portfolio Vision, and thus the Portfolio Backlog and the Lean Budgets. As such, SAFe uses Strategy to define and fund Value Streams, and the Epics that flow through them. In other words, in SAFe the Value Streams are Tactical investments, and Strategy is implemented through product delivery. As such the usual iterative and incremental techniques work well to allow the products to evolve and emerge based on feedback.

That’s fine when strategy is directly related to the product or service that you are delivering, and when you already have the capability to effectively deliver it. However, what happens when your strategy is more about organisational transformation? What happens if SAFe itself is the Tactical investment, and Strategy is implemented through agile transformation?

I don’t think there is anything explicitly in SAFe which addresses this scenario, even though it is probably the case that most SAFe stories are about the transformation, rather than the product delivered. Experienced coaches will adapt to context and adjust SAFe so that it too can evolve and emerge iteratively and incrementally, aligned to strategy. Without that, however, SAFe easily becomes just another process to be implemented by the book.

Strategy Deployment

What I believe SAFe is missing is an Inspect and Adapt (I&A) cadence at the portfolio level. It’s all very well having I&A cadences in the teams and value streams, but what if the strategy itself is not having any business impact? How does an organisation know if SAFe is helping meet strategic goals, and how does it steer towards better outcomes if necessary?

While SAFe includes the feedback cadences to treat product development as a hypothesis to be tested, it does not contain any feedback cadences to treat SAFe, organisational change, or the strategy itself as a hypothesis to be tested. There are no dynamics of strategy deployment with collaborative exploration of ideas across the whole organisation and nested PDSA cycles around the whole transformation.

I’m slightly wary of suggesting adding even more into SAFe, but given the effort that’s gone into the “Big Picture” and all the other detail in there, I’d prefer to have the strategy and strategy deployment cadence explicit, such that all the other ideas can be treated as options to be experimented with.

I should note that SAFe does now include the Measure & Grow element as “the way a portfolio of value streams evaluates its progress towards business agility”. However, it is also to “determine improvement steps”, so while I can see how the assessments can be used to provide evidence of progress, if I”m being cynical, it feels generic (i.e. not context specific) and more like a SAFe Maturity Model. There is an expectation that SAFe will provide Business Agility, where’s in fact that is just a hypothesis.

There are also KPIs for each Value Stream which are informed by the Strategic Themes, although these still seem to be delivery focused.

Conclusions

In conclusion, it seems to me that SAFe’s focus is on the strategic delivery of a portfolio, but not on the strategic transformation of the organisation. There is no explicit strategy deployment cadence, and as a result any transformation is likely to be treated as a plan to executed rather than being allowed to emerge through experimentation and feedback.

My recommendations for anyone using SAFe for their agile transformation would be to answer the follow questions:

  1. What is the business True North you are heading towards?
  2. What Aspirations do you hope that SAFe will help you achieve?
  3. What Strategies have led you to choose SAFe?
  4. What SAFe Tactics help implement those Strategies?
  5. What Evidence will you regularly review to give feedback on how well SAFe is serving you?

Of course, those are the elements of TASTE and can be visualised on a X-Matrix! By overlaying an X-Matrix on top of a SAFe Transformation, I believe there is a greater chance of adapting the framework as necessary to help an organisation itself adapt to its unique context and situation.

Comparing Strategy Alignment Frameworks

Mattias Skarin has recently posted a comparison of three strategy alignment frameworks – OKRs, Spotify Rhythm and Art of Action Strategy Briefing. I have already posted about these approaches in the past (OKRs, Spotify Rhythm, Directed Opportunism), as well as others, and I liked the way Mattias compared them side by side. In this post I want to add another two into the mix – Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX) and my own TASTE X-Matrix.

I’d recommend going and reading Mattias’s post if you haven’t already so you’re familiar with the context for this one. I’m also assuming that you are familiar with both 4DX and what I call the TASTE X-Matrix as I won’t be explaining them in any detail. Note that when Mattias refers to strategy alignment, I would generally refer to strategy deployment, but I’m pretty sure we mean the same thing!

The Overview

First the summary table. I have kept Mattias’s assessment and added 4DX and the TASTE X-Matrix to the right. I have also added a new Capability (visualisation of status and progress) to the bottom.

CapabilitiesOKRsSpotify RhythmStrategy Briefing4DXTASTE X-Matrix
Setting of goalsyyyyy
Measurabilityyyyyy
Prioritisation(y)yyyy
Identifies main effortyyy
Communicating intent and whyyyy
Transparent “line of sight” to the topyyy
“Is it achievable” feedbackyyy(y)
Self-assessment of achieved objectiveyyy(y)
Situational awarenessy(y)
Freedom/boundaries conversationyy(y)
Has plenty of easy-to-access material in the topicyy
Visualisation of status and progressy

Rationale

4DX

I think of 4DX as an advanced version of OKRs so that’s what my comparison is most similar to. The Wildly Important Goal (WIG) sets the goal, and that WIG and the Lead Measures are by definition measurable. Identifying the Lead Measures brings with it prioritisation and the Cadence of Accountability is around identifying the main effort. The Cadence of Accountability is also the forum for “is it achievable” feedback, the self-assessment of the achieved objective, and freedom/boundary conversations. Finally the Compelling Scoreboard is something I find unique to 4DX and the reason I added the new capability of visualising status and progress.

TASTE X-Matrix

Mattias refers to Hosin Kanri as a framework he could have included, and I think what I am calling the TASTE X-Matrix is close to what I think he means by that. I should also add that with the TASTE X-Matrix, I am not just referring to the X-Matrix A3 on its own, but in combination with Backbriefing and Experiment A3s. Given that the Brackbriefing A3 is heavily influenced by Stephen Bungay’s Strategy Briefing work, then my comparison is very similar to that.

With the TASTE X-Matrix, the Aspirations set the goals, Evidence is measurable, Tactics are prioritised in accordance with Strategy, and the True North and Strategy identify the main effort. The whole matrix, with the various correlations, provides transparent line of sight to he top. The remaining capabilities I have marked as (y) are because they are more associated with the Backbriefing and Experiment A3s than they are with the X-Matrix A3.

Undesirable Consequences

I’d probably frame the undesirable consequences more as risks and challenges, and many are shared by all the approaches. With regard to 4DX and the TASTE X-Matrix specifically I would add:

  • 4DX’s focus on a single Widly Important Goal (WIG) can drive undesirable behaviour with such a narrow focus. The example in the book about Lance Armstrong hasn’t aged well given what we now know if the way he cheated to achieve his WIG.
  • The nature of the TASTE X-Matrix as an A3, along with its related Backbriefing and Experiment A3s, can lead to a focus on the documents rather than the conversations around them. A3s can easily become yet another instruction that get handed down.

Summing Up

I was say that the Pros and Cons of 4DX are more like those of OKRs. 4DX is relatively easy to get started with, and adds some elements which address the communication weaknesses of OKRs.

Similarly, the Pros and Cons of the TASTE X-Matrix are more like those of the Art of Action Strategy Briefing – not surprising considering its influence for Backbriefing. Given it is just my take on the topic, its not surprising that there are not a lot of examples or supporting materials.

Going back to Mattias’s post, what I liked about it was the way it looked at the various approaches from difference perspectives as a way of thinking about strengths and weaknesses, similarities and differences. Hopefully I have added something to that so that, in Mattias’s words you can:

“steal the best ideas and improve […]. Mastery is the craft of continuously upping your game.”

Option Orientation with Reverse Wardley Mapping

At the start of the year Mike Burrows posted about an idea he called Reverse Wardley, with some background to where it came from. As one of the sources of the idea I thought I should say some more about my thinking that led to it. Mike has also called the approach Option Visbility, and in writing this post I am preferring the name Option Orientation. Taking a set of existing options, and orientating oursleves with them such that we know how we should move next.

To explain the origins, lets first make a disctinction between sensemaking and categorisation.

  • Sensemaking is where the data precedes the framework. We position a set of data in a blank space, and then draw lines around it.
  • Categorisation is where the framework precedes the data. We draw lines in a blank space, and then position data between the lines.

Cynefin is intended to be a sensemaking framework, and exercises such as Four Points Contextualisation are designed to use it this way by placing items on a blank canvas, relative to the four corners, before any lines are drawn around them. The question that seeded the creation of Option Orientation is whether we can consider a Wardley Map to be a form of categorisation, in that data is added to a pre-defined evolutionary framework? And if it is, what would it look like to use a Sensemaking approach to create a Wardley Map? Hence the original name Reverse Wardley.

I should be clear that I am in no way saying that Wardley Mapping needs improving. Nor am I suggesting that sensemaking is any way superior to categorisation. Both are equally useful in context. These were just thoughts that occurred to me while listening to Dave and Simon talk at their “Snowden/Wardley Masterclass” last December.

I voiced these thoughts and discussed the questions with Liz Keogh, who came up with the idea of integrating with Agendashift. As I posted in the Agendashift Slack channel which Mike’s post references.

Liz and I have just figured out how to use Wardley Mapping to create the Transformation Map. Muwahahaha.

The basic idea is to take the FOTO outcomes that get used in 4-Points, and re-use them in a Wardley Map, so the Transformation Map is more of a Wardley Map than a Story Map.

Vertical axis is “distance” from the customer.

Horizontal axis is ambiguity of solution (which may or may not relate to the Cynefin domains)

I recommend reading Mike’s post for his interpretation of that quote and how he applied the thinking.

Here’s the way I have facilitated it.

  1. Rather than starting with a Blank Wardley Map and add the items starting from the top of the valeu chain (i.e. most visible) down, we start with a blank canvas, and an existing set of previously generated items (e.g. Agendashift outcomes)
  2. The items are first moved onto the hoizontal axis in order of relative ambiguity.  First I’ll ask for the most abmigious to be placed furthest left. Then for the least ambigious to be placed furthest righ. Then another random item to be placed relatively inbetween. Then another, and so on, until all have been placed realtively.
  3. The items are then moved vertically in order of visibility to the customer (which can generate a good discussion about who that is!). First I’ll ask for the most visible to be placed highest up, keeping its horizontal postion. Then for the least visible to be placed lowest down, still keeping its horizontal placement. Then another random item to placed relatively, and another, and so on, always maintaining the horizontal placement.

Now we have an Option Orientation Map such as the one below, which was generated with a Miro (aka Realtime) Board. Sorry that its (intentioanlly) not readable. The details are client specific, and it’s the overall look and effect that I hope is more useful.

Given something like the above we can now ask some questions about it:

  1. Which items would we like to move up/down/left/right? We can annotate this on the map with arrows to show desired movement.
  2. How do the items relate to each other? We can draw links between items to show relationships.
  3. Which items should we choose to work on? We can circle and name important groups or themes.

Thus the map gives us the context to make some strategic decisions on what needs to be done next as part of a continuous transformation effort, and can be revisited over time to re-align and renew direction.

Blending Agendashift and the Four Disciplines of Execution

Immersion blending a fruit smoothie with strawberries, raspberries, bananas and almond milkI’ve blogged about my thoughts on Strategy Deployment and Agendashift (as well as how to use Agendashift with the X-Matrix) some time ago, and more recently I wrote about Strategy Deployment and the Four Disciplines of Execution. Over the last few months I have had the opportunity to combine the two models, and this post will give a high level overview of how I did that.

TL;DR: I used the various elements and activities in Agendashift to generate the inputs into the Four Disciplines of Execution.

Here’s a longer explanation.

  1. The Agendashift Discovery exercises Celebration-5W, True North and FOTO lead to the Plan an a Page, which provides a set of outcomes that can be used to identify and define the 4DX Wildly Important Goal(s). One (or more) of the medium or long term outcomes can be selected and refined to use the 4DX template “from X to Y by When”. It’s also worth noting that the short term outcomes can also give some guidance towards the 4DX Leading Measures (see 3. below).
  2. Then the Agendashift Exploration activities of debriefing the assessment, selecting high leverage prompts to work on, and using FOTO again, generates more outcomes which can be used as input to identify the 4DX Leading Measures. Selected short term outcomes, either from the Plan on a Page (see point 1. above) or from the assessment prompts, can be used to feed an ODIM exercise, moving from the Outcomes, to Decisions, to Insights and finally to Measures.
  3. Both the WIG (from 1. above) and Leading Measures (from 2. above) inform the 4DX Compelling Scoreboard as usual with no additional work needed from Agendashift
  4. Agendashift Mapping and Elaboration lead to Experiment A3s, which is where the seeds for action can be found and around which people collaborate on discovering and evolving their own solutions.
  5. Finally, the Agendashift Operation element is implemented with the 4DX Cadence of Accountability. The weekly (or more frequently if appropriate) meetings review status of the A3s, look at the current scoreboard, and agree actions for the following period. As Experiment A3s are completed, or the WIG and Leading Measures are progressed, new experiments and indicators can be identified and chosen.

The two approaches worked together almost seamlessly with only minor modifications to the core Agendashift workshops being needed to launch the Four Disciplines of Execution. This is something I tend to do anyway, as I have a preference to identify Evidence (as per TASTE) before exploring Tactics to minimise measures being influenced by confirmation bias.

Its definitely something I’ll try again and would recommend giving it a go. Let me know if you’ve had similar experiences.

 

Strategy Deployment and the Four Disciplines of Execution

This is another post comparing my views on Strategy Deployment and other approaches. This time the Four Disciplines of Execution (or 4DX), described in the book of the same name.

I’d heard about 4DX from a few people over the last years; notably Hakan Forss and Matt Wynne. I finally got around to reading the book, found it immediately useful, and started incorporating the ideas into my work with a few organisations.

This is how I see the four disciplines relating to Strategy Deployment and TASTE.

Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important

This is the discipline of Focus, asking “if every other area of our operation remained at its current level of performance, what is the one area where change would have the greatest impact?”. This focus is defined as a Wildly Important Goal (WIG) in the form of a statement “From X to Y by When” which describes the current situation the future ambition and a timescale. This WIG should be both “worthy” and “winnable” and the formula can be used as the Aspiration in TASTE.

Note: While 4DX encourages a single WIG I’d caution against focussing too strongly on one measure at the expense of other measures. The example of Lance Armstrong having the Tour de France as his WIG hasn’t stood the test of time very well!

Discipline 2: Act on Lead Measures

This is the discipline of Leverage, with a lead measure being defined as one where “it’s predictive of achieving the goal and it can be influenced by the team.” Again, its worth considering when the lead measure might also lead to negative consequences and pay attention to those as well. Lead Measure are a form of Evidence in TASTE

Discipline 3. Keep a Compelling Scorecard

This is the discipline of Engagement, and as such the compelling scoreboard “tells the team where they are and where they should be, information essential to team problem solving and decision making.” Thus the compelling scoreboard is a visualisation of both the Aspirations and Evidence in TASTE.

Discipline 4. Create a Cadence of Accountability

This is the discipline of Accountability, and provides a forum for each team member to answer the question “What are the one or two most important things I can do this week to impact the team’s performance on the scoreboard?” as well as reporting back on achievements from the previous week. Thus this regular cadence, either daily or weekly, provides the mechanism for a Catchball process, where people can collaborate on discovering and evolving their own solutions to move the Lead Measures (Evidence) to achieve the WIG (Aspirations). The Cadence of Accountability is how work is progressed as the Tactics in TASTE. 

As you can see, 4DX can be mapped directly on TASTE, with the only major missing piece being the Strategies. This conclusion is very similar to one I described when I wrote about Strategy Deployment and OKRs. However, as with OKRs, I’d recommend 4DX as a relatively quick (although not necessarily easy) way of getting started with Strategy Deployment.

Deploying Strategies as Choices

ChoicesWhile I don’t claim to have any expertise in strategy development, I do have ideas and opinions on what a good strategy looks like. One important aspect is that strategy is more about choices and decisions, and less about planning and execution. Richard Rumelt describes this in terms of Guiding Policies in his Strategy Kernel (which I described in a post on Good Agile / Bad Agile), and Roger Martin has his Strategic Choice Cascade of questions (which I described in a post on Playing to Win). One of my favourite quotes on strategy is from Henry Mintzberg in his paper on Patterns in Strategy Formation where he defines a strategy as “a pattern in a stream of decisions”.

A technique I’ve been using recently to help people frame their strategies as choices is “Even-Over Statements“. As that write-up describes, this is an exercise in getting people to explicitly state the choice of one positive outcome even over another positive outcome. Two important points that I highlight are:

  1. The choice is between outcomes, and not outputs or activities. In other words there is still freedom to decide how to achieve the outcome.
  2. Both outcomes are positive, emphasised by the phrase “even over”. The choice should be a difficult tradeoff, and not a simple differentiation between good and bad.

In a recent workshop this exercise led to a very tough, but ultimately valuable and productive conversation, where initially different groups were advocating for diametrically opposed choices. Some suggested choosing A even over B, while others proposed choosing B even over A. The discussion led to a deeper understanding of the the various perspectives and eventually a choice that everyone could agree with and align with.

By defining strategies as choices in this way, we can see how strategy can be used as an enabling constraint, guiding people in the decisions that they make, yet still allowing them to use their skills, experience and knowledge to choose how they actually implement those decisions. In the context of TASTE, the Strategies are Guiding Policies which enable decisions about what Tactics to experiment with, in order to achieve the Aspirations and move in the direction of the True North.

As a final thought, it’s not difficult to spot the similarities between “Even Over Statements” and the Agile Manifesto‘s value statements. I’ve already blogged about interpreting the manifesto as a set of strategic statements. What would happen if those statement were choices between two positive outcomes? As a very quick and simplistic example we could say:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Through this work, we have come to choose:

  • Enabling individuals and interactions even over common processes and tools
  • Developing working software even over providing comprehensive documentation
  • Collaborating with customers even over sticking to contractual obligations
  • Responding to change even over keeping to planned commitments

That is, while the items on the right are good choices, we prefer to choose the items on the left.

As I’ve said before, my intent is not to supersede the Manifesto, but to provide a lens with which to look at it through. I believe that considering Agility as a set of strategic choices in this way in this can be a vert powerful exercise. I’d be interested to hear  how others would articulate those choices – let me know in the comments!

Strategy Deployment and the Agile Industrial Complex

RozgwiazdaThere has been much debate online, and in particular on Twitter recently, about the imposition of Agile and the Agile Industrial Complex. See Ron Jeffries’ recent blog for more context. It’s an important topic. I have seen plenty of imposed Agile which I would call Incoherent Agile. Agile processes imposed as Best Practice without any coherence or alignment with the challenges that they are intended to be addressing. As a result the promised benefits aren’t realised, the people become demoralised and ultimately Agile is blamed.

I’ve refrained from getting directly involved the debate so far, but I do have a view, which I hope to explain here.

Lets first look at the idea of imposition. As usual, Cynefin provides a useful lens to look through with its four domains and associated forms of constraints.

  1. The Obvious domain has Rigid Constraints, which allow no freedom of choice
  2. The Complicated domain has Governing Constraints, which allow a little freedom of choice
  3. The Complex domain has Enabling Constraints, which allow a bounded freedom of choice
  4. The Chaos domain has No Constraints, which allow complete freedom of choice

When we impose something, we are effectively imposing constraints. Cynefin suggests that imposing no constraints will lead to Chaos, which we generally don’t want to happen (unless it’s an intentional, short and transitionary state). Thus imposition is not necessarily good or bad and it’s more important to consider the nature of the imposition in context, and whether we are imposing the right degree of constraint.

That leads to the question of what we are imposing in an Agile Transformation.

Much of the backlash against imposed Agile is a reaction to Agile imposed as a Governing or Rigid Constraint, where leadership decides which frameworks, processes or practices are to be implemented as the standard approach, leaving little or no room for variation or experimentation by the people actually doing the work.

This is exactly the sort of experience which led my interest in Strategy Deployment and the X-Matrix. It’s why I am a proponent of Agendashift and why I like the concept of the Engagement Model. I regard a Strategic approach to Agile Transformation as one where leadership sets Enabling Constraints, within which the solutions can emerge from the people closest to the problem.

Therefore, by choosing to use an Engagement Model, whether it be Agendashift, OpenSpace Agility or my own TASTE approach, I believe you are still imposing that Engagement Model on an organisation. The important distinction is that with an Engagement Model you are imposing Enabling Constraints. With Agendashift, those constraints have a strong focus on outcomes. With Open Space Agility those constraints come from the chosen theme or purpose. With TASTE, those constraints are defined by strategies and evidence.

All this means that we can impose Enabling Constraints, and invite people to participate within those constraints. That’s not to say that everyone should always be an agreeable participant. We don’t necessarily want everyone to be obedient and compliant. Engagement should allow for rebels and cynics to question the approach and keep everyone honest.

Much of the debate I have observed has been between Invitation as a force for good, versus Imposition as a force for evil. What I have hopefully shown is that the two are not mutually exclusive and that instead of arguing and fighting we should be working to help organisations impose the right levels of constraints and inviting people to collaboratively engage within them.

TASTE Impacts, Outcomes and Outputs

As part of preparing material for the Agendashift and X-Matrix Masterclass I’m running with Mike Burrows next month, I started thinking about how the idea of Impact, Outcome and Output (that blog is from 2012) could be overlaid onto the TASTE approach. Back then I described the relationship between them as:

Outputs create Outcomes which have Impact

Give the outcome-oriented perspective of Agendashift, we can reverse this and rewrite it as:

Impact is a result of Outcomes which are generated by Outputs

We can then map Impact, Outcomes and Outputs onto TASTE by breaking Outcomes into long term, medium term and short term as follows.

  • True North – the Impact we want to have
  • Aspirations – the long term Outcomes we hope to achieve
  • Strategies – the medium term Outcomes we hope to achieve
  • Evidence – the short term Outcomes we hope to achieve
  • Tactics – the Outputs we want to deliver

Obviously that breaks the Acronym slightly, but the model is still the same.  We can see this by overlaying onto the X-Matrix Template

This seems like a useful way of framing the relationships between the various elements of the model and I’m looking forward to exploring and experimenting with the idea during the masterclass.

Tickets are still available if you’d like to be part of the experience and can get to Brighton for October 9-11. And you might as well stick around for Lean Agile Brighton the following day!