Proudly Serving Texas

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Texas Agile 3 = Transformation

Transform the structure, processes, and experience of your organization to realize value faster with happier customers.

True transformation can't simply be imposed from above without embracing new ways of working and acceptance of the need to evolve and adapt.  Formalizing what we have learned is the goal here.

Texas Customers

Some information I know about Texas is I believe the state was admitted or ratified to the United States around or about 'December 29, 1845'.  Texas is located around latitude '31' and longitude of '-100' and has a population of roughly '29,145,505 million'.  If I remember correctly the capital is 'Austin' and the largest city is 'Houston'. 

Planning the Agile Transformation

1. Define Team - Create a list of who will participate.
2. Launch Change Fast - Use proven launch patterns designed around people, processes and tools.
3. Facilitate Learning - Bring defined team along on the journey, ready to perform.
4. Focus on Culture - Establish a shared vision, embed ideas, and galvanize action.
5. Build Capabilities - Target coaching and interventions to accelerate self-determination.
6. Regulatory Concerns - Understand the regulatory areas and account for them throughout the agile process.

Track Agile Transformation Progress

Utilize an agile tool working through transformation epics, features, stories, tasks to gain further familiarity with the tool.

Define your agenda and goals for transformation success requires Product, Agile and Modern Engineering, Architecture and Software Development to work together.  Taking an agile iterative approach to deliver value to customers faster with frequent feedback loops.

Creating the culture, tools, and practices to deliver high-quality and feature rich solutions so when you meet you can have an exciting kickoff and be ready to communicate the important questions.

Why Are We Transforming?

For long-term strategic planning we need to:

1. Improve responsiveness to customer needs/goals
2. Eliminate Bottlenecks
3. Align on Feedback Loops
4. Abilityh to Outpace Competition
5. Empower Innovation
6. Attract and Retain Top Talent
7. Define Transformative Enterprise Tools

What is Our Agile Statement?

We need to focus on the why now.  Let's agree on an agile statement like - 'We need to transform to increase centricity around our customers, improve responsiveness to customer needs/goals, keep pace with competitors, empower innovation, and retain & attract top talent.'

What is Our Transformation Journey?

Ok, we agree on our 'Agile Statement' now let's recognize not everyone in the organization is at the same level of transformation and at the level of execution to be successful.  We need to align ourselves to the various lines of business.

Define Line of Business (LOBs) to align with.  Examples:

1. Traditional Customer & Business Centric Projects
2. Agile Teams in IT
3. Agile Teams in Business and IT
4. Ring fenced Agile teams
5. Full Agile in Product Model

What is the Value?

An agile enterprise sees Increased Revenue, Reduced Costs, Happier Customers, Reduced Risks, New Learning/Feedback.

What is the Outcome?

1. Frequently and responsibly deliver value with quality and satisfaction.
2. Frequently deliver small iterative solutions to learn quickly, reduce risks, adapt and achieve value early and often.
3. Quality to deliver reliable and sustainable solutions that reduce incidents, failures, outages and rework, while continually striving for technical excellence.
4. Responsibly deliver in accordance with regulations, compliance, security, governance, risk and data privacy.
5. Delight around delivery outcomes that delight customers, engage employees, and positively impact society and environment.

Develop an Agile Registry

High Level Objectives

1. Document answers to all the questions we have defined above
2. Reposition for growth and responsiveness
3. Deliver on Requested Backlog
4. Focus on Customers
5. Model New Technologies
6. Align on Desired Metrics
7. Align on Gransparency

Concentrage on Agile Registry Flexibility

Independently upgrading Agile Components like Angular for libraries, microservices and work separately to speed up initial implementation, ongoing care of the tools while product and delivery teams change.

1. Define the core registry architecture (Ex: .Net Core with Microservices) for more robust applications with increased flexibiliy and ability to scale.
2. Redesign applications incorporating known customer prioritized needs while developing a backlog of work items around future requests.
3. Communication around customer needs via a published plan, transparent backlogs, cadence meetings and actionable demos.
4. Showcase model new technologies to encourage mindset shifts in technologies.

If at any point you decide to reach to me just know the area codes I am familiar with for Texas are '210, 214, 254, 281, 325, 346, 361, 409, 430, 432, 469, 512, 682, 713, 726, 737, 806, 817, 830, 832, 903, 915, 936, 940, 956, 972, 979'.  For Agile 3 = Transformation assistance you will find my rates very reasonable for Texas.  Now just keep in mind my time zone is 'Eastern Standard Time (EST)' and I know the time zones in Texas are 'Most of the state: Central Standard Time (CST) / El Paso and Hudspeth Counties: Mountain Standard Time (MST)' in case you wish to call me.  Anyway let me continue.

Calendar the Kickoff Cadence

Schedule the Agile Transformation kickoff far enough out and when you feel there is enough progress that you know a timeline on completing Presentations etc.  Heck if you have an agile tool use it to work through transformation epic, feature, stories, tasks to gain further familiarity with the tool.

Develop a List of Agile Agreements

Any standards we come up with should be listed as 'Agile Agreements' and in the 'Agile Registry'.  This would include:

1. Roles
2. Terminology
3. Pointing
4. Acceptance Criteria
5. Definiton of Done
6. Boilerplate Tasks by Role
7. Cadence for Kanban or Sprints or Scrumban
8. Agreed upon Hours In a Day (Ex: 8 hours - 1 hour for lunch - 1 hour for meetings/disruptions = 6 workable hours in a day)

Simplify User Experience

Ok, we all know the customer is what the focus is so let's jump into aligning on a role-based control panel as the UI.  For new users we should desire to engage users in a simple, intuitive UI.  Perhaps, configurable roles which streamline the experience and maintenance.  Encourage everyone to engage in conversation, ideas and feedback.

Let's start creating the cadence by scheduling recurring meetings around Daily Standups, Product Owner Feature Grooming, Team Grooming, Scrum of Scrums, Sprint Closeouts / Sprint Kickoffs (2 week intervals for instance) with potential demos and retrospective of what went well and what didn't.

Team Focused Objective

Accelerate transformation with new ways of working and future-proof it by embedding change into your culture.  So, how do we do this?  Well, to compete in a digital-first world, organizations need to realize the potential of every person.  We work from within to help people and teams at every level to embed new ways of working.  This helps the entire organization build capability and rapidly gain traction in its evolution.

You know, I don't make it out to Texas much but I would like to see the 'Mockingbird' state bird.  I am a little familiar with the Texas 'Texas Blue Bonnet' state flower as well.  However, I do not know much about Texas's state tree the 'Pecan'.  Fishing is fun to me perhaps I would like reeling in the Texas 'Guadelupe Bass' state fish.  Anyway, sorry I went off topic.  Let me continue.

Sink or Swim

At some point if folks just do not past the mustard during the transformation phase it's time to think of other roles the individual can provide within the organization or simply say goodbye.  Hey, did you know that in Cherokee there is no goodbye?  They say 'Donadagvhoi' which means 'Until we meet again'.  Swerve!  Sorry, I just had that thought.  Ha!

Ok, let's move on...

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