AgileDC 2016 - Transform the Corporate Ecosystem for Enterprise Agility

Transform the Corporate Ecosystem for Enterprise

Agility

AgileDC 2016October 24, 2016

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Scott Richardson• Background• 2 years at Fannie Mae, Chief Data Officer &

Head of Corporate Technology• 13 years at Capital One, VP of Retail

Technology for Consumer & Small Business Banks

• Founder/owner of 2 technology consulting companies

• Agile Credentials• Hands-on practitioner for 12 years• The usual certifications (CSM, SAFe SPC,

etc.)• Agile sponsor/champion in multiple

corporate orgs

Scott Richardson s12rich@gmail.com

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• Examine the corporate ecosystem outside of teams

• Understand how senior leaders are uniquely positioned to drive agility throughout a company

Scott Richardson s12rich@gmail.com

Goals of this Session

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We will not talk about teams

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Lead DeveloperDeveloper

Developer

Developer

Tester

Tester

Analyst

Scrum Team

Scrum MasterProdu

ct Owner

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Rather, the ecosystem beyond…

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BusinessUnit

BusinessUnit

BusinessUnit

BusinessUnit

… the fascinating universe of Corporate Shared Services

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Corporate Shared Services

Finance HR Procurement Facilities Audit

Infrastructure …

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Some observations about Corp Services

• Necessary to run any company

• Goals not same as business units’

• Failure also to transform can inhibit corporate agility

Scott Richardson s12rich@gmail.com

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Governance/Oversight Groups

• There can be many – inventory them early as part of Culture assessment• Most do perform a valuable

role of keeping the company out of trouble• Most have a document-

heavy Inspect-and-Veto approach• Most inspect at end of

value stream

Audit

Legal

PMO/SDLC

*QA/Test

*Release Mgmt

*Architecture

Do:

• Change from reactive controls to preventative• Shift to Advise-and-Escalate, up front• Educate and reinforce local accountability at every step• Publish meaningful metrics that help run a good businessScott Richardson

s12rich@gmail.com

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Human Resources

Do:

•Reinforce target culture with HR actions

Labor Strategy

New Positions

Performance

Management

Recruiting

TrainingScott Richardson

s12rich@gmail.com

• Refocus Training • Hard Skills: T-shaped resources; cross-functional teams• Soft Skills: Assertiveness, independent thinking, leadership

• Define a Human Capital Plan / Labor Strategy

• Create formal positions for the new Agile organization• E.g., Scrum Master, Coach, Product Owner, DevOps, Release Train

Engineer• Energize Recruiting

• Team: Culture fit, team players, forward-leaning, continuous improvement

• Management: Enabling teams, inspirational• Tune-up Performance Management

• Individual vs. Team, 360° feedback, coaching on soft skills

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Procurement• Follow your Human Capital Plan• Fixed Price and MSP structures tend to inhibit Agile

• E.g., Functional silos, non-aligned goals, different locations• Change MSP contracts to allow full-team sourcing,

not functional sourcing• Ensure vendor SLAs are aligned with business/team

goals• Solve for cross-functional team capability, not unit

costsFacilities

Do:

•Reexamine MSAs• Enable team alignment

• Need new style of work space: Open, sight lines, casual, vertical work surfaces, huddle rooms

• Will be more collaborative, and noisier• Challenge: Keep up with demand for this new space

Do:•Create open space•Act now!

Scott Richardson s12rich@gmail.com

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Hosting/Infrastructure• As you scale, each team will need multiple non-Prod

environments• Use automated environment provisioning to keep up with

this demand• Invest in tech skills, standards, contractual arrangements,

etc.• Pre-Prod environment support ultimately moves to the

team; requires advanced DevOps capabilities

Production Support• Downtime in non-Prod environments causes

unproductive teams• Need Prod-like support of non-Prod regions to avoid

costly delays• Teams own their code; less separation between L2/L3

and dev team• Build support requirements/docs into "Definition of

Done"

Do:•Standards, automation, cloud, containers

Do:• Improve non-Prod SLAs•Shift some Prod support to teamScott Richardson

s12rich@gmail.com

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Finance/Investment Management• Top-down budgeting based on corporate priorities• Fund the Team not the Project (e.g., SAFe Portfolio view)• Use light bottoms-up business cases for local portfolio

decisions• Measure business results against strategic metrics• Changing investment management is very difficult

PMOs• Shift most PMO responsibilities to Product Owners and

related roles• Shift PMOs to coordinating Portfolio Roadmaps, tracking

KPIs• Eliminate the BCP (Big Complex Program): Value

streams, Epics• Eliminate the Project: Bring work to the teams• Shift teams to new corporate priorities as needed

(infrequently)

Do:•Unit of investment is the team

Do:• Lean out•Be more strategic

Scott Richardson s12rich@gmail.com

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Key Takeaways

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• Corporate Shared Services often become sources of friction

• Federate where possible, lean out

• This is hard work and requires influence!

• Only senior leaders have the authority to make these changes

Q & A

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Thank You!

Scott Richardson s12rich@gmail.com

Scott Richardsons12rich@gmail.com