Sooner Safer Happier: Antipatterns and Patterns for Business Agility

Lean and agile, with a common root in post–World War II Japan, have a lot in common, such as a focus on building quality in, value, flow, respect for people, a pull-based system of work, and a kaizen process of continuous improvement and visualizing work. However, a key area where they differ is the focus on “standardized work” in lean. Mass produc

When employees hear that they’re undergoing an “Agile Transformation,” at least two of those top three motivators are taken away. There is a lack of autonomy (you have to do this thing, you have no choice) and mastery (you’re a beginner again, possibly after a long career). So increasing agility can feel like a big price to pay. What are people get

Optimizing for the fast flow of safe value is critical. The most important factors for investing in product development according to Douglas Hubbard, author of How to Measure Anything, is first whether a product or feature will be used at all and second how quickly it will be used.11 These are more important factors than all other data including co

Instead, it is necessary to optimize for early and often learning in a real environment with real customers or consumers. This lowers the risk of delivery, generates value earlier, enables pivoting to maximize value, and locks in progress as you go. The best part is that, unlike pouring concrete, which sets, with knowledge-based products and servic

It is advisable to have a central Ways of Working Center of Enablement (WoW CoE) and coaching. (Note that it’s called a “Center of Enablement,” not a “Center of Excellence.”) The WoW CoE is a central, small, servant leadership function for ways of working. The servant part is that it is there to support colleagues, to help mobilize the organization

The pattern here is to craft a why for change, that people will buy and that is unique to your organization. And then repeat that why. Communicate this why three more times than you think you need to and you’re a third of the way done. A tip here is that when training for any way of working, whether that training is run internally or externally, ha

When employees hear that they’re undergoing an “Agile Transformation,” at least two of those top three motivators are taken away. There is a lack of autonomy (you have to do this thing, you have no choice) and there is a lack of mastery (you’re a beginner again, possibly after a long career). So increasing agility can feel like a big price to pay.

In The Unicorn Project, Gene Kim defines five ideals of DevOps:24 1.Locality and Simplicity: alleviate dependencies between teams and components. 2.Focus, Flow, and Joy: the smooth flow of work that enables focus and joy. 3.Improvement of Daily Work: continuously improve and pay down technical debt. 4.Psychological Safety: a top predictor of team p

“People don’t buy what you do,” Sinek says, “they buy why you do it.”23 People buy Apple’s why.