Automotive Business Agility Playbook
Altran Innovation Factory
VISUALIZE ITERATE EXPERIMENT SELF-ORGANIZE TO SEE TO MOVE TO IMPROVE TO SCALE
Business Agility is the ability
to compete and thrive by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative business solutions.
Dean Leffingwell, the creator of Scaled Agile Framework SAFe® (2020)
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A Playbook to Drive Business Agility in the Automotive Industry
Kick-off is done. Some games have already been played. But the race for championship is still open. The future mo- bility market has become a different league. New competi- tors such as Tesla and Google position themselves as can- didates for the cup. But one thing is still true: anyone who rests during the current state or thinks too soon about the championship will be punished. If you want to concentrate on the success of the next game by taking the next steps toward the agile transition, this playbook presents the right moves. It provides hands-on options for immediate use to encourage business agility at all levels of your organization.
In today’s mobility market, where autonomous taxis are a reality1 and we will see flying cars within the next three years2, the most important capability is the speed with which an organization can sense and respond to the needs of its customers. We will skip over the obvious sense of ur- gency to innovate, because we assume that everyone who finds this playbook understands the need to keep up in this regard. We will not talk about culture or cultural shift, be- cause that's the natural result of changed behaviors and not the other way around. Instead, we will focus on hands-on practices to accelerate learning throughout the whole or- ganization. Because innovation is nothing more than learn- ing to do things differently. That’s it, let’s start.
1 Waymo’s Autonomous Taxi… (12/2019) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-05/waymo-s-autonomous-taxi-service-tops-100-000-rides 2 Uber and Hyundai are planning to offer flying taxi rides by 2023 https://www.techradar.com/news/uber-and-hyundai-are-planning-to-offer-flying-taxi-rides-by-2023
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Content
1 The Field and the Plays ...... 6 5.3 Experiment to Improve ...... 27 2 Business Agility ...... 8 5.4 Self-Organize to Scale ...... 31 3 Agility Starts at the Top ...... 11 6 Putting All Together ...... 36 4 The Role of the Coach ...... 12 7 Case Study ...... 36 5 Plays ...... 12 7.1 The “Plays” at a leading OEM ...... 36 5.1 Visualize to See ...... 12 7.2 Activities of an Agile Coach ...... 39 5.2 Iterate to Move ...... 21 8 Final Whistle ...... 41
The Authors
Frank Schultheiss Dr. Roland Wolfig (Case Study) Dr. Holger Dierssen (Case Study) Thorsten Wefers (Article 5.2.4)
VISUALIZE ITERATE EXPERIMENT SELF-ORGANIZE TO SEE TO MOVE TO IMPROVE TO SCALE
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Innovation is hard. It’s not only hard to come up with a commercially successful innovation, but it’s even harder to build an organization capable of creating such innovations time and again.
Harvard professor Gary Pisano in CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION – The DNA of Sustained Innovation (2019)
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1 The Field and the Plays
This playbook is designed for all positions. It offers specific options for action at different flight levels: from strategy to portfolio and team level. Inspired by the playbooks in Amer- ican football, where players can find their team's plays, this playbook introduces moves to encourage business agility at all levels of your organization. The goal is the same: vic- tory in the competition.
Why not start with an analysis and a sixty-page assessment paper? Isn't that the foundation for designing a solid inno- vation strategy? It’s a considerable approach. Most of com- panies do it anyway. The interesting thing in that is, the out- comes of such kind of assessments are quite similar. The probability is very high that your organization is missing a tolerance for failure, a willingness to experiment, collabora- tion, flatness and an agile mindset. For most leaders and employees this is nothing new. Just because a threat is huge doesn’t mean that a response has to be. On the con- trary, companies would actually be much better off taking a more incremental approach to transformation over time.3 That’s why this playbook focus on the power of iterations. They empower the capabilities to innovate faster.
3 Discovery-Driven Digital Transformation, McGrath, McManus, Harvard Business Review Issue 05/2020
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Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Mike Tyson— in less colorful words: agility comes from responding more quickly than the rate of change of the competition.
Experimentation Works – The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, S.H. Thomke, Harvard Business Review Press (2020)
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2 Business Agility The outcome of business agility is the ability to innovate: to be competitive and successful by quickly serving market changes and new opportunities with innovative business solutions. In this context, innovations are new and econom- ically successful products and solutions. Based on the Inno- vation Landscape Map of Harvard professor Gary Pisano4, these kinds of innovations can be classified into four cate- gories: • Radical Innovations (new technologies like electric cars), • Disruptive Innovations (new business models like Uber), • Architectural Innovations (new business models and new technologies like E-Scooters), and • Routine Innovations (existing technology and business model like regular next models of a car).
Business Agility is required to explore the Innovation Landscape Map
Fig. 1: Innovating “outside the home court”: radical, disruptive and architectural.
4 Gary Pisano, CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION – The DNA of Sustained Innovation, Public Affairs (2019)
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Neither OEMs nor traditional suppliers are able to fully de- fine the technological requirements of new systems in ad- vance5. New technologies, business models and markets obviously have many uncertainties. Economic success can- not be planned on the drawing board, just as in a football match not all moves can be planned in advance, without paying attention to the course of the game. Long-term plan- ning is replaced by a selection of options that are validated during implementation and adapted to reality6.
Good Bye Plan, Welcome Iteration
New options have to be gained from shorter learning cy- cles. This iterative approach is the foundation of innovation. The speed at which a company can run through these learn- ing cycles defines the degree of business agility. For the "fast game" it's required that everyone along the value stream, from the management to product development to marketing, finance and others, understands agile methods and, if necessary, can also apply them in order to continu- ously provide innovative, high-quality products and ser- vices faster than the competition.
Cross-functional teams that have all the skills to develop in- dependent solutions have established themselves as the standard for fast innovation cycles. The traditional line or- ganizations with their hierarchical functional silos slow down due to long decision-making processes and delayed handovers. While some OEMs are already lining up, most of them are far behind regarding agile and fast software de- velopment as well as the necessary changes in the value streams7. The moves in this playbook are designed to grad- ually improve business agility at all levels of the organiza- tion through hands-on options for action and accelerated learning cycles.
5 Automotive Software and Electronics 2030 White Paper, McKinsey & Company (2020) 6 A Refresher on Discovery-Driven Planning: https://hbr.org/2017/02/a-refresher-on-discovery-driven-planning 7 Automotive Software Quality - Was OEMs heute für morgen beachten müssen, Deloitte White Paper (2017)
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Every sports team needs a coach. The same goes in business. Any company that wants to succeed in a time where technology has suffused every industry and where speed and innovation are paramount, must have team coaching as part of its culture.
Eric Schmidt, “Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook…” Alphabet Inc. (2019)
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3 Agility Starts at the Top Some leaders get it, others need to. For organizations to em- brace agile ways of working, their senior executives have to change their ways of working. There’s a lot at stake. Entire companies, or divisions of companies, are making huge in- vestments in transformation programs in pursuit of agile’s many benefits. These include greater speed, better product and service quality, lower costs, and heightened customer ori- entation. But if leaders don’t change their own behaviors, they will limit the return their companies can realize on their agile efforts.8
An organization’s managers, executives, and other leaders are responsible for the adoption, success, and ongoing improve- ment of the competencies that lead to business agility. Only they have the authority to change and continuously improve the systems that govern how work is performed. Moreover, only these leaders can create an environment that encourages high-performing agile teams to flourish and produce value. Leaders, therefore, must internalize and model leaner ways of thinking and operating so that team members will learn from their example, coaching, and encouragement.9
Business agility is the ability of an organization to rapidly adapt to market and environmental changes in a productive and cost-efficient way. Although agility can exist in individual teams by applying agile principles, business agility is achieved when a company is operating in an agile manner at scale. Put simply, scaling agile is an enabler of business agility.10
A novel approach to leadership starts with a new way of being; as Warren Bennis memorably said, “... the process of becom- ing a leader is much the same as the process of becoming an integrated human being.” Leaders wishing to transform their organizations must begin by transforming themselves — not the other way around.11
8 BCG on Agile - How CEOs Keep Agile Transformations Movin, White Paper, Boston Consulting Group, 2018 9 Lean Agile Leadership: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/lean-agile-leadership/ 10 Capgemini, “Agile organization: From buzzword to reality,” July 2017. 11 McKinsey&Company, „Leading agile transformation: The new capabilities leaders need to build 21st-century organizations“, October 2018
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4 The Role of the Coach This playbook is designed, so that everyone can work with it independently. It provides practices for all company levels: from top management to portfolio to individual employees at team level. Since the competition for successful innovations is a team sport, sooner or later other teammates must be in- volved. And just like in sport, one role can be very useful here: the coach. Agile coaches are not absolutely necessary to start the next steps towards more business agility. But an experi- enced coach can help with questions, coaching, give trainings and facilitate workshops. In this way, competencies and capa- bilities can be expanded throughout the organization.
5 Plays
5.1 Visualize to See An attentive player must always see what is happening on the pitch. This chapter presents the tactics how organizations can improve their capability to process information through visu- alizations. Like a good overview of the pitch, visualizing work- flows drives productivity in the office environment.
Figure 1: Visualizing work to create a common base for communication.
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The awareness of managers that visualization can create a common base for communication, and that this common base sometimes needs to be actively created and maintained, is im- portant in itself. The effectiveness of visual communication is intuitive to most people, but it does not seem as intuitive to visualize work that is not naturally visual.12
A tool from the factory floor can be the key to more productive work for knowledge workers. Workflow management systems can also be a core part of the "journey to lean”, providing a solid basis on which to track and improve performance. The clear, visual representation of work is something that workers and leaders find useful and satisfying too. To summarize, visu- alization supports important human cognitive functions. The following moves are designed to leverage this potential to drive Business Agility.
5.1.1 Visualize Goals In sports, “he knows where the goal is”, means "he’s a good striker". On the pitch, it’s obvious where the goal is. This is not the case in business. If you ask different employees about the top three priorities of the company this year, would you get the same answer from everyone? It’s obvious that it is much more effective to play with visible goals, to make sure all em- ployees are aligned and moving the company in the same di- rection. This is even harder in business than in sports, because the goals here are hidden under the surface and they are mov- ing too. One more reason to make the goals visible, that are usually hidden in different documents, systems and brains. The following practices are simple, easy to adopt and de- signed to let your team at any time “know where the goal is”.
Figure 2: From the pitch in the office: the scoreboard gives direction.
12 Lindlöf, Ludvig. (2014). Visual Management - on Communication in Product Development Organizations.
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Scoreboards (Figure above) are simple and powerful tools to visualize your north star metrics and the current state of achievement. Imagine you walk through your company and see in every office space the top 3 Objectives for each team on a specific team wall. Together with the connected over- arching business unit goals cascading up with the supported company goals. All you need is a few sticky notes and some space on a wall to make the goals visible across all levels as shown in the figure below.
Figure 3: Goal Boards make visible «where the goal is «
The responsibility over the specific formulation of goals should be there, where the implementation is executed, to avoid micromanagement and to increase the commitment to achieve self-defined goals. Don’t apply cascading goals down to individual objectives, it’s too much overhead13 and a further risk is that important goals that are specific to an individual’s unique job may be omitted if there isn’t an obvious link to a superior’s goal.14
13 Why individual OKRs don’t work for us https://hrblog.spotify.com/2016/08/15/our-beliefs/ 14 3 Popular Goal-Setting Techniques Managers Should Avoid: https://hbr.org/2017/01/3-popular-goal-setting-techniques-managers-should-avoid
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There is a huge body of knowledge in the area of Objective and Key Results. It’s not the aim of this practice to cover this method or the whole goal setting process. The purpose of the Goal Board itself is, to align team and unit goals with strategy by visualizing “where the goal is”.
5.1.2 Visualize Value Streams A Value Stream is the sequence of activities an organization undertakes to deliver on a customer request, and it includes the dual flows of information and material. Most value streams are highly cross-functional: the transformation of a customer request to a good or service flows through many functional departments or work teams within the organization.15 The pur- pose of value-stream mapping is to identify and remove or re- duce "waste" in value streams, thereby increasing the effi- ciency of a given value stream.16
The aim of a Value Stream Map is to identify and visualize the process along the Value Stream. Therefore, the first thing that we have to identify is the demand side—what we want to de- liver and what the work items are. We need to define the item that we are going to trace throughout the process. This could be an external order or an internal request. The easiest way to map a value stream is an adapted Kanban system. Use a white- board, sticky notes and Simple Brain Writing (chapter 5.4.3.) to create the first version and then revisit it, iterate and improve.
Figure 4: Example map of the activities and system to fulfill a customer need
15 Karen Martin, Mike Osterling, (2014): Value Stream Mapping, S. 2. 16 Depository, Book. "34 for Quality : John Bicheno : 9780951382943". www.bookdepository.com. Retrieved 2018-03-22.
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There are two different types of value streams:
• Operational Value Streams — the necessary steps to deliver end-customer value “from order to bill”. • Development Value Streams — all steps to build the systems, products or services that enable the opera- tional Value Streams (see figure above).
Value Stream vs. Project and Process
A major difference to projects is that Value Streams are de- signed for the long-term and without an end date. This is nec- essary because the development approach of car software is now basically the same as the development of operating sys- tems for computers or smartphones: there will be constant up- dates to all cars in the future, as Tesla is already doing. In con- trast to processes, Value Streams are at a higher level and bun- dle the underlying people and processes (see figure above).
Value Streams and Agile Release Trains
Figure 5: Example Value Streams across functional silos
Thousands of people are involved in the development of car software, usually across companies, countries and continents. In order to organize this, additional structures are necessary.
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Various methods such as Scrum, Kanban and scaling frame- works are applied for this. In the terminology of the leading scaling framework SAFe®, the organizational units that oper- ate within a Value Stream are called Agile Release Trains17. An Agile Release Train is nothing more than a term for a group of several agile teams that develops a product or service along with the stakeholders within a Value Stream: from the creation of the requirements to delivery.
5.1.3 Visualize Work Visualizing work with Kanban boards is a real success story at Bosch Automotive Electronics. “Using Kanban for develop- ment, especially the Kanban boards, is one tool moving us to- wards becoming a learning organization.”, the two managers of Bosch, Dr.-Ing. Hans-Oliver Ruoß and Dr. Andreas Haugeneder, reported in an interview.18 At VOLVO IT, the vis- ualization of the “intangible service” workflow on the Kanban board contributes to identify the source of bottlenecks, which have been removed through effective communication and better linkages between tasks.19
According to the Kanban principle “start where you are”, the starting point is to map the current process, how the work flows from “start to ready”. Therefore, you need to identify the demand side (what is requested?) to map the dominant steps of work to fulfill the requests. The steps necessary to meet the requirements can practically be viewed as a service that serves internal or external customers. In the first step, the service is made visible and then optimized. Managing dependencies and connecting strategy with execution is done by linking the different systems and levels (see figure below). A company is from this perspective nothing more than a set of services. The aim of Kanban is to make these services visible and fit for pur- pose20, to delight the customers.
At Bosch, “Linked Kanban boards were the second step for transparency in the decision-making process and steered us towards what was most important: The customer is our focus and our effectivity increased”.
17 Agile Release Trains: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/agile-release-train/ 18 Practical Kanban - From Team Focus to Creating Value, Klaus Leopold, Leanability Press (2019) 19 Kanban Implementation from a Change Management Perspective: A Case Study of Volvo IT (2014) 20 Fit for Purpose: How Modern Businesses Find, Satisfy, & Keep Customers, David J. Anderson, Alexei Zheglov, Blue Hole, (2017)
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Innovation needs iteration. None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes.
Thomas Edison
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5.2 Iterate to Move Like the formation in team sports, iteration is the basic system of play for business agility. Iterations provide the foundation for execution and systematic learning cycles. High time pres- sure and complexity increase the need to continuously im- prove processes and skills, just like a woodcutter needs time to sharpen his ax or better learn to use a chainsaw.
Iterations provide on one hand, the function to improve effi- ciency (doing things right) and on the other hand the effective- ness (doing the right things). Borrowing another often-heard metaphor, what is the worth to getting better at climbing a lad- der to only find out it’s propped against the wrong wall? The Iterations are made to discover both during the execution cy- cles. Lean principles are in place to optimize the delivery of the maximum value in the shortest sustainable lead time and agile processes focuses on discovery and adaption of the right path of the solution.
Figure 6: Example Iteration with basic Iteration Events
Improving organizational structures with specific instructions usually fail in complex systems: too many uncertainties make it impossible to reliably predict a given optimization plan. For this reason, integrated learning cycles are required: The Itera- tions, which
a) Identify potential for improvement, b) Verify through practical application, and c) Adapt if successful.
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5.2.1 Anatomy of the Iteration Iterations are the building blocks to achieve business agility. Each iteration is a standard, fixed-length timebox, where teams or groups of teams deliver incremental value according to the customer needs. Iterations connect all the people, re- sources and processes in place, to get the work for a specific context done and identify the best options to improve during the next iteration. Just as usual in agile teams, iterative "Plan- ning-Sprint-Review-Cycles” are run through, which ensure the continuous improvement.
This principle can help any division of business improve effi- ciencies, meet customer demand and collaborate towards a common goal. The systematic approach of “Planning-Doing- Review-Cycles” not only foster the flow of information and the transparency of the work to be done. They set the purpose for the period of the iteration and make it visible for all collabora- tors and stakeholders. Instead of individual employees focus- ing only on isolated tasks, they are connected in the iteration to play a part in the broader picture and gain a better under- standing of how their work fits into the whole. Short daily or weekly standup meetings are checkpoints for what has already been done and what has to be completed.
Basic Iteration Events21
• Iteration Planning: It aligns all team members to the common goals and objectives that are to be achieved during the execution of the iteration. • Iteration Review: The review is where the teams demonstrate the result of the execution to relevant stakeholders, and receive feedback on what they’ve produced. The iteration review provides the oppor- tunity to assess progress as well as making any adjust- ments ahead of the next iteration. • Iteration Retrospective: This is a regular event where agile team members discuss the results of the iteration, review their practices, and identify ways to improve.
21 Iterations: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/iterations/
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• Daily Stand-up Meeting: Every day, team members meet to coordinate their activities and share infor- mation with each other about progress toward the iter- ation goals.
5.2.2 Split Roles for Process, Content and Implementation Even if many coaches are good strikers, they will not score the goals. There should not be one person responsible for the or- ganization of the iterations, the content and the implementa- tion. In agile teams, the role of the scrum master or agile coach is responsible for the processes, the product owner for the content and the team of experts for the implementation.
Basic Iteration Roles to Serve the Customers
• The Process Owner (Scrum Master or Agile Coach) is responsible for the performance of the overall system, the processes and improvement initiatives. They sched- ule and facilitate the iteration events (planning, review, retrospective and daily stand-up meeting) and foster the agile practices. They ensure transparency and align- ment about the (A) input, the (B) execution and the (C) expected output of the meetings, agile practices and it- erations. • The Content Owner (Product Owner) has the content authority of the work items: They are responsible for the discovery, preparation and the prioritization of the work, usually collected in a backlog. They decide which features or topics will be realized in the next iteration. • Implementation Owner is the domain expert in the agile team and responsible for the development or pro- duction and the quality of the output. They are focused on the execution of the work items.
è Together they form the cross-functional agile team. Even if there are specific responsibilities for the roles, the collaborative decision making is one of the essential values of agile teams.
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5.2.3 Applying Iterations at all Levels of the Organization It’s a common myth in business, that agile iterations of “Plan- ning-Sprint-Review-Cycles” are just a handy thing for develop- ers. But to drive business agility, they are mandatory from team level, to program, to portfolio and strategy level. Gener- ally speaking, optimizing the entire system brings the most value. The ability to make quick, informed decisions, through regular updates, planning and review events can benefit de- partments across an organization – for leadership teams to R&D, to marketing, to sales, to human resources, and more.
Figure 7: Iterations at different levels have different timeboxes
5.2.4 Iteration Rules in Agile Frameworks Most organizations decide to use an agile framework like Scrum, Kanban or SAFe®, where Iterations play a major role. Like every game in sport, the agile frameworks have their rules, helping us to focus on the real value creating actions. But what happens if you apply an agile framework without fol- lowing the rules? In most cases the game will probably end up in chaos, because the rules are not balanced in the right way.
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On the other hand: Did you ever played a game for a long while and then started to adapt the rules? This could be valu- able and bring you to an extra level of playing. And that also happens with a good agile play. After you get some experi- ence you discover new ways of the play: you inspect and adapt!
The Japanese concept Shu-Ha-Ri22 describes the stages of learning to mastery. Simplified put: Follow the rule – break the rule – be the rule. It is obvious that you should not start with the third step. So, if you start working with iterations by using a framework, give it a try to start with the rules. Ever better: get a coach to teach you the agile play.
5.2.5 Success Factors, Benefits and Metrics Obviously, it takes time to adapt the next steps based on the experience of the iterations. But following a plan without re- sponding to change is not an alternative, and needs time too. The advantage of an iterative approach is a better survivabil- ity and product market fit—measurable through time-to-inno- vation, faster release cycles and customer satisfaction scores.
Figure 8: Cycle times of features, initiatives or new products are success metrics.
22 https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ShuHaRi.html
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Don’t fly blind, see how the power of experi- ments works for you.
When it comes to improving cus- tomer experiences, trying out new business models or developing new products, even the best expe- rience, intuition and big data alone don’t work. What does? Running disciplined business experiments.
Experimentation Works – The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, S.H. Thomke, Harvard Business Review Press (2020)
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5.3 Experiment to Improve Many managers mistakenly believe that experimentation is about throwing many ideas against the proverbial wall to see what sticks—a technique known as “spray and pray”. That’s not at all what happens in disciplined Testing, which can isolate variables and establish cause and effect.23 A company’s ability to enhance its processes and structures at speed is deeply af- fected by its capabilities to experiment.
5.3.1 Regular Retrospectives as Foundation for Improvement The retrospective is the adjust step for the overall iteration. Here, the team evaluates its process and reviews any improve- ment item it had from the previous iteration. They identify new problems and their causes—as well as opportunities to create experiments that enter the Improvement Backlog (chapter 5.3.2). This regular reflection is one of the ways to ensure re- lentless improvement is happening within each team. Iteration retrospectives may also identify systemic problems that will need to be addressed at the next level.24
23 Experimentation Works – The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, S.H. Thomke, Harvard Business Review Press (2020) 24 https://scaledagileframework.com/iterations/
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Effective retrospectives are a little more sophisticated than just coming together and going through a “what went well and what can we improve” discussion. There are certain rules and 5 phases (see below). You can support each phase with activi- ties to spark ideas and interaction.
The 5 Phases of a Retrospective
Phase Description 1 Set the stage Give people time to “arrive” and get into the right mood. 2 Gather data Help everyone remember; create a shared pool of information (everybody sees the world differ- ently). 3 Generate insights Why did things happen the way they did? Iden- tify pattern, see the big picture. 4 Decide what to do Pick a few issues to work on and create concrete action plans of how you’ll address them; add ex- periments to the improvement backlog. 5 Close the retro- Clarify follow-up; appreciations. spective Abb. 2: The structure of retrospectives.
Regular iteration is also important here in order to initiate con- tinuous learning cycles. If the planning, implementation and review run in 2-week iterations, retrospectives should always take place at the end of the iterations.
Figure 9 : In- and outputs of the Iteration Retrospective
5.3.2 Improvement Backlog Managing, tracking and visualization of improvement initia- tives is the goal of the Improvement Backlog. This is usually done in the form of experiments. It’s a prioritized list of action items the team comes up with during its Retrospectives. The most common recommendation is that the team collectively chooses the top one or two items in the “Decide what to”
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phase of each Retrospective and then decides how to imple- ment them and how to demonstrate success. Just like user sto- ries, Team Improvement Backlog items need to have ac- ceptance criteria and a definition of done. In general, items teams add to their improvement backlogs are public in keep- ing with the agile values of openness and transparency.
5.3.3 Improvement Kata The Improvement Kata is a simple and practical four step pat- tern to tackle specific improvement initiatives. It is based on the process improvement practices used at Toyota for manu- facturing and related processes for improving, adapting and innovating. It helps to structure personal improvement initia- tives and serves as canvas for team workshops to tackle im- provement items gathered at the end of retrospectives or from the Improvement Backlog. In this way, the target state is ap- proached experimentally with a scientific approach.
Figure 10: Improvement theme–simple and practical Toyota Kata
The Improvement Theme is a tool in the form of a poster that is used as canvas to work on and visualize the progress of improve- ment initiatives. The poster consists of four areas:
1. Now/Problem – Description of the current situation.
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2. Definition of Awesome – How would we like it to be? 3. Next Target Condition – 2-6 weeks from now, what has changed? 4. First Steps – Three slots for three sticky notes that de- scribe the first (next) actions we will take?
This tool is a living document, preferable put up next to other team boards at the team wall. Once or twice a week the team reviews the theme and agrees upon new actions as they get completed. When several weeks has passed the team will re- view the theme again. If they want to continue on the same theme, they identify a new “Next target condition”. Otherwise they create a new Improvement Theme poster. The Swedish consultant Jimmy Janlén wrote a detailed description of the four steps and how he uses the Improvement Theme in Work- shops25.
Figure 11: Example Improvement Theme Board
25 Improvement Theme – Simple and practical Toyota Kata https://blog.crisp.se/2013/05/14/jimmyjanlen/improvement-theme-simple-and-practical-toyota-kata
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5.4 Self-Organize to Scale Self-organization should not be confused with "everyone does what they want". For many decisions, it is more efficient if they are made by experts in cross-functional teams. The manager's role is then to support the teams with guardrails and vision, as shown in the authority matrix (Figure 12).
Figure 13 : The authority matrix shows different levels of self-organization.
5.4.1 1-2-4-All 1–2–4-All is one of the most applied facilitation techniques from the Liberating Structure collection. Within 12 minutes you can simultaneously engage everyone in generating ques- tions, ideas, and suggestions. Regardless of how large the group is you’ll engage every individual in searching for an- swers. You can tap the know-how and imagination that is dis- tributed widely in places not known in advance. Open, gener- ative conversation unfolds. Ideas and solutions are sifted in rapid fashion. Most importantly, participants own the ideas, so
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follow-up and implementation are simplified. No buy-in strat- egies needed! It is simple and elegant!26
Figure 14: 1-2-4-All is a powerful tool to generate ideas and suggestions
5.4.2 Open Space “Open Space” is a technique for running meetings where the participants create and manage the agenda themselves. Ses- sions can be for between five to 2000 plus people. This method is ideal if you want participants to gain ownership of an issue and come up with solutions. Participants agree on the areas of discussion that have importance for them and then take responsibility for facilitating the sessions.27
26 http://www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/ 27 https://www.mind.org.uk/media/9684099/open-space-method.pdf
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Open Space works best when the work to be done is complex, the people and ideas involved are diverse, the passion for res- olution are high, and the time to get it done was yesterday. It’s been called passion bounded by responsibility and a simple, powerful way to get people and organizations moving where it’s needed most.28
5.4.3 Simplified Brainwriting Brainwriting is a technique similar to Brainstorming and Trig- ger Sessions. There are many varieties, but the general pro- cess is that all ideas are recorded by the individual who gen- erated them. They are then passed on to the next person who
28 https://openspaceworld.org/wp2/what-is/
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uses them as a trigger for their own ideas.29 In a simplified ver- sion the sticky notes with the ideas are gathered on a wall and clustered by the group as a team work.
Brainwriting has the advantage of generating multiple ideas in parallel. In traditional group brainstorming, only one idea can be presented at a time (a serial process). In brainwriting, you can have the entire group writing ideas at the same time.30 With timeboxes of 5-10 minutes you will probably not gain the perfect solution in the first round, but the aim is to get the best result in the given timebox. You can cluster and refine the re- sults in the second round.
29 https://www.mycoted.com/Brainwriting 30 https://www.usabilitybok.org/brainwriting
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The Future is Faster Than You Think.
If autonomous taxis in 2020A, flying cars in 2023B, and nearly one third of the transportation market earnings for autono- mous ride sharing services in 2030C weren’t enough, Elon Musk promised that for the price of an economy airline ticket, his rockets will fly you “anywhere on earth in under an hour”.D
A Waymo’s Autonomous Taxi… (12/2019) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-05/waymo-s-autonomous-taxi-service-tops-100-000-rides B Uber and Hyundai are planning to offer flying taxi rides by 2023 https://www.techradar.com/news/uber-and-hyundai-are-planning-to-offer-flying-taxi-rides- by-2023 C Automotive Insights, Automotive Competence Center at Roland Berger (1/2016) D The Future is Faster Than You Think, Diamandis/Kotler, PHD Ventures and Steven Kotler (2020)
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6 Putting All Together Strategically agile firms run where the ball will be, skate to where the puck will go and venture to where the customer is not…yet. Agile strategy is not stuck in the past or present but anticipates the future.31 Because market change, business agility positions you to be there, primed and ready, before the opportunity arrives. Therefore, you need to:
• Visualize to see—the goals and the pitch, • Iterate to move—your system of play, • Experiment to improve—your new surprise attack, and • Self-organize to scale— everyone joins in!
Visualize + Iterate + Experiment + Self-Organize = Business Agility = Innovation. This simplified formula is inaccurate, but shows at a high level the behaviors and practices that enable business agility. And the result of business agility is innovation.
7 Case Study
7.1 The “Plays” at a leading OEM
At a large German OEM a team of ten people had the task to develop new concepts on how the onboard electronics could be used for tasks during production. Since the goal was rather unclear, the team decided to go with agile methods. Before the kick-off, the team had already decided on eight different Workstreams to pursue.
The project started off with a 2-Day Kick-Off Workshop facili- tated by two experienced agile coaches. The workshop in- cluding agile basics like Values and Methods since the team did not have experience on working in an agile setup. After getting to know the agile mindset and general discussions on how this could look like for the team, the next step was to dis- cuss the goals of the project. For this, the Product Vision Board32 was used to analyze the Target Group, the Business
31 Reinventing the Organization: How Companies Can Deliver Radically Greater Value in Fast-Changing Markets, Yeung, Ulrich, Harvard Business Review Press (2019) 32 https://www.romanpichler.com/tools/product-vision-board/
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Value, the Needs of the customer and the product features it- self. After a long and productive discussion, the goal became much clearer and the team members got more aligned on what to achieve.
After understanding how an agile setup looks in theory and what the goal of the project was, the team got into how the actual setup could look like for them. Main parts of the discus- sion were a definition of the roles (Product Owner, Scrum Mas- ter, Workstream Leads), what meetings there would be needed (Planning, Work Session, Review, Retrospective) and when they want to meet. With advice from external Agile Coaches, it became clear that the team needed at least one day per week to work together. Another critical aspect was to have a meeting room where they could put their work and pro- gress on the walls and do not have to remove them after every work session.
Having defined all of these aspects, the team started to create the initial backlog items in several groups. These items were discussed in the whole group and the first Kanban board with the tasks was created. This was the final part of the workshop and the overall result was that the team was able to directly start the next week. With regards of meetings it was decided that the team will have a common team day, starting with a quick planning session (30 minutes), working in Mini-Sprints (1-3 hours) during the day and ending the day with a review (30 minutes) and a short retrospective (30 minutes). Since this is quite a tough agenda it requires good facilitation skills by the scrum master and a lot of discipline by the team.
The next week, the team started in this setup, again with the support of an agile coach for the first few meetings, and it went off to a quite good start. The spirit was high, the discussions provided new insights for everyone and the Mini-Sprints were used to develop the content of the work streams and thus the concept itself. Since the Product Owner was highly involved ambiguities could be clarified right away and the team felt they are on a good track. Since the project lasted for 8 months and we know how daily business is, this changed after some time.
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After a few months the team experienced some difficulties on several levels. Although the Product Owner was still commit- ted to the project, other urgent things came up and the time spent with the team was limited. Furthermore, the team real- ized that they had clearly identified most of the interdepend- ences and that it was partly more productive to work on their own instead of in the whole team. In addition, some of the team members spent some time during the week to work on these topics as well. Based on these issues, several changes happened during the project.
The first thing to change was to add a longer retrospective every month to spend more time and how the team wants to work together. This led to changes like the review, which be- came the start of the day since progress had been made dur- ing the last week. This was the only mandatory part for the Product Owner. Afterwards, they continued with the planning and decided what topics needed other team members and which work packages could be best handled individually. Then the working session started with some team members leaving the room to work on their things coming back later for the joint retrospective. Progress and new insights were shared with everybody on the walls of the room, so it was fully trans- parent and seeing the vision coming to life helped the team to stay motivated and focused.
This also supported one additional change that happened during this time. Although considered too much overhead in the beginning, most of the team members started to meet daily for 15 minutes in the room to share their progress and discuss interdependencies to other work streams right away. Overall, this way of working was considered quite helpful by the team and the results proved to be innovative and practical to implement in the future.
Application of the Four Drivers of Business Agility
• Visualize to see: A clear goal, a Kanban board for progress tracking and visual representations of the content on the walls helped to see the current state of the project and keeping the big picture in mind.
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• Iterate to move: Working in small iterations helped to keep the goal in mind, even if it needed changing, ensured that the interdependencies stayed clear and clean and kept everybody on the same page all the time.
• Experiment to improve: Experimenting with the team setup during the process helped to ensure that work was efficient and effective during all phases.
• Self-organize to scale: Clear roles and responsibilities en- sured that everybody knew what he/she was responsible for and supported cooperation and collaboration.
7.2 Activities of an Agile Coach
In the context of supporting agile teams in a project.
• Help with the start of an agile team (kick-off) and support of the first sprints: § Coaching of the Scrum Master and Product Owners as well as other stakeholders. § Supporting stakeholders and product owners in the preparation and development of requirements, in- cluding. § Help with the creation of the backlog. § Support in the creation of user stories, § Definition of Ready (DoR) and Definition of Done (DoD). § Moderating the setting up of a Scrum or Kanban board and supporting the application
• Assistance with the first sprints § Measuring the agile maturity of agile teams. § Supporting the teams in the preparation and imple- mentation of the meetings: daily standups, refine- ments, reviews, retrospectives. § Support the Scrum Master in creating transparency regarding the progress and speed of the team. § Supporting the teams in the creation and prioritiza- tion of user stories.
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§ Support the teams in the application of Scrum, Kan- ban, PULSE or other agile methods. § Support stakeholders and product owners in the preparation and development of requirements. Among other things, the maintenance of the back- log. § Promoting effective communication and creating an atmosphere of trust and transparency in daily work.
Benefits of an Agile Coach
At Team Level • Increase efficiency and effectiveness in agile teams by en- couraging, promoting and improving collaboration. • Increasing motivation and cooperation in the daily collab- oration of agile teams. • Creating openness and helpfulness instead of secrecy and heroism. • Establishing a team spirit and Reduce the dependence on individual "heads".
At Personal Level • Personal coach of individual team members, manage- ment, Scrum Master and product owner to improve their individual personal development • Support in reflecting on one's own working methods in or- der to find new solutions. • Encourages people to become actively involved in shap- ing the future collaboration. • Sense that a different way of working in the organization is possible.
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8 Final Whistle
As in a sports game, the performance of each individual de- cides who is still on the pitch at the end. And more im- portantly, whether the team leaves the field as the winner or not. The fourth Kanban principle expresses it as follows, "En- courage leadership at all levels of your organization". When it comes to football, we used to say "Everyone joins in!” In busi- ness agility it's the same. It’s best to start with yourself. If help is needed, our coaches will be happy to help. But now the ball is yours.
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The Author
Frank Schultheiss is senior expert for agile coaching at Altran In- novation Factory. He is an experienced Agile Coach with over 15 years’ experience in agile development in different roles from team level to large programs in different industries and coun- tries. Frank is the creator of the Agile Innovation Framework, Cer- tified SAFe® Program Consultant (SPC) and graduate of the Kan- ban Coaching Professional Masterclass at the Kanban University with David Anderson.
Consulting, Training and Agile Coaching Services
Innovation Factory | Automotive North
https://www.altran.com/de/en/insight/business-agility-webcast/
Guest Authors
Dr. Roland Wolfig, Dr. Holger Dierssen (Case Study), Thorsten Wefers (Guest Article 5.2.4)
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Those who master large-scale software delivery will define the economic landscape of the 21st century.
Mik Kersten, Project to Product
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