I was reading an article from Mike Hall of Agile Velocity entitled The Most Important Question to Answer for Successful Agile Transformations. I’ve known Mike for quite a while and he’s an incredibly practical and skilled agile coach. So, I really wanted to explore the question. Point being…he had me “hooked”.
In the article he talked about how establishing a Business Objective was a crucial first step in any agile transformation effort. I’ll reframe it to be—your Compelling Why.
9 Typical Business Objectives
Mike spoke about Agile Velocity’s, Path to Agility framework having 9 business objectives that they typically try to uncover with their clients:
Employee engagement
Customer satisfaction
Quality
Speed
Predictability
Innovation
Market responsiveness
Productivity
Continuous improvement
I’ve also seen all of these come into play with client business objectives (or Why’s) after some teasing out in our discussions.
But I want to react to a few of these, so that’s where I’m going next.
But first, what about Compelling?
The first thing I want to add to Mike’s thoughts is the notion of “compelling” and changing Business Objectives to a Compelling Why.
I think it’s important to establish why we’re are doing something. It’s more than an objective or goal. It’s the one thing that’s causing us to entertain an agile transformation.
You see, transformations are, how should I say it, Freekin’ Hard. It’s about changing the entire landscape of your company. You don’t want to go in willy-nilly with something around –
Gee, Let’s go Faster or Let’s start Increasing Customer Satisfaction.
While those are certainly goals or objectives, they’re not compelling enough for me. They don’t connect enough to me or my thinking. And they’re probably not realistic.
Part of creating a Compelling Why is:
Connecting it to my current reality
Making it exciting, something I want to be a part of
Having it creates a picture of the future state
Making it matter to me, not only professionally, but personally
Creating it such that it aligns up and down thru the organization
Making it Big, Hairy, and Audacious.
I hope you get the sense of what I’m talking about. It needs to get the organization’s blood pumping in the morning and make us want to dive-in and get going.
Perhaps another way of saying it is—it’s a Compelling Cup of Joe ;-)
Now, I have a few specific reactions to Mike’s business objectives.
Specific Reactions
Speed should not be a business objective. It’s too multifaceted. And it’s far too easy to game it. For example, there’s the old joke that if you measure software testers by the number of bugs they find, they’ll find LOTS of bugs. But they will be trivial bugs that will defocus the team’s efforts.
Innovation is much too nuanced to put it on the list alone. You need safety, experimentation, and collaboration for it. You also need to create time and space for it and hire diverse and creative people. Again, it’s too general of an objective for me.
Employee engagement is another objective that is, again, far too nuanced. For example, it doesn’t necessarily capture joy and fun as part of the equation. That is, is the team truly engaging in something that creates excitement, enthusiasm, energy, and spirit? I’ll wrap it up in a word. Are they working with Joy?
I guess I could go on nit-picking, so I’ll stop there.
Wrapping Up
You see, I don’t have a problem with what Mike wrote. I actually like it. It’s thoughtful and helpful and correct. Thanks, Mike for sharing it!
But I simply don’t think it’s enough.
It needs to be more nuanced. And speak to the interaction across the objectives that are mentioned. For example, my colleague Jim Grundner, just wrote a nice post around Dueling Metrics where he explored, for example, how Speed and Quality might have some “tension” between them.
I also think Mike and their team needs to focus more on the compelling nature of their objectives. How to re-energize them and make them more real and more connectable.
And finally, I like the use of the term why instead of a business objective or goal. Why is broader and more nuanced. I think it also lends itself to storytelling as a means of communicating it.
So, what is your Compelling Why for embarking on an agile transformation?
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.