Agile & Lean
Agile has now become a trendy & buzz word and de facto most of the companies are nowadays doing Agile… but are they Agile? Are they getting the expected value of being Agile ?
Too many companies spend too much time companies without even knowing why they are transitioning to Agile and focus on practices instead of the core values and principles that are the fundamental roots of Agile & Lean.
At SQLI we strongly believe in Agile & Lean, as a Mindset, a way to think, to collaborate and to operate. As such our team of experienced Agilists and Coaches are here to accompany you wherever you are on your Agile journey.
OUR CONVICTIONS
There is no One Fit All approach. All Agile / Lean implementations should rely on the same core values & principles, but the implementation is always specific. Getting inspired from Shu Ha Ri concept of Japanese mastering principles.
Agile for the sake of Agile does not bring anything. Agile/ Lean should bring value, so we need to determine which value we are expecting to drive a proper transition: the why.
Agile transitions are most successful when it’s a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, top management sponsor is as important as early adopters within the teams.
Agile transitions are first and foremost a mindset & a cultural change, focusing solely on the practices is a dead end, we need to give our teams a feel of purpose, why are we changing, why should we spend energy on this...
OUR SERVICES
We always start by understanding your context to co-create with you the Agile accompaniment that fits your needs, your constraints, SQLI is there to be your Agile Partner.
Operational Coaching
The best way to coach and help your team / organization on your Agile journey is to live this journey with you. Therefore, the operational coaching is likely the most important axis on our Agile & Lean services. Integrating the right profile, whether it’s a Scrum Master, a Product Owner, a Product Owner Proxy, a RTE or a dedicated Agile Coach, in your team is the most effective way to bring you value and ensure continuous improvement over time.
By being with you, living your reality and your constraints, we can diagnose and act accordingly and more importantly, we can coach your team on a continuous basis. Coaching is not a one-time thing. Coaching happens on the length, by small touches, with repetition, by being present, listening, observing.
Agile & Lean Consulting
SQLI offer consulting services at any state of your Agile journey.
Initiating an Agile transition
We are used to be involved at the beginning, usually starting by a maturity and readiness assessment to co-create with you a real & tangible vision of what is your Agility and why you are getting there. We recommend managing Agile transition in an Agile way, making it inclusive, iterative and incremental.
Leading the change
One key element is the Cultural Change. Again Agile & Lean are not methods nor frameworks, nor recipes, they are mindsets that are based on Values and Principles. So the change is the most central element of any Agile transformation. As such our team are well equipped with different framework such as ADKAR & Kotter as well as Lean Change Management for example.
Fighting the glass ceiling
One critical value of Agile is Continuous Improvement, when your transition is on its way, it’s very common, at some point to encounter a glass ceiling. This glass ceiling can come from various angles depending on your context.
One classical example being Agile transition initiated from IT department and the rest of the organization not onboarded and not mature enough to follow.
Another one, is from a bottom-up transition can be blocked due to management not fully understanding and living their new role as servant leader.
On a deployment at scale, teams not collaborating as intended, creating some silos and inefficiencies
In any cases, our Senior Consultants are here to help you diagnose the root cause of your glass ceiling and to propose you ad’hoc solutions to decipher the situation and create a path forward.
Continuous Improvement
Another aspect of continuous improvement is to improve on the company goals like creating more value, improving time to market & quality, better managing budget, delighting customers, etc.
Those high-level targets usually translate into concrete actions like:
- Reducing the Work in Progress
- Being able to think and deliver incrementally with MVP
- Improving the Product Portfolio Management by leveraging Lean Portfolio Management
- Having a user centric approach
- Implementing DevOps approach
- Having cross functional and autonomous teams
- Moving from projects to products, creating value streams
- Establishing Kanban board to enable visual management and reducing WIP
Our team has strong experience & expertise on those common and recurring themes and can help you analyze the situation and accompany you on both mindset change and new practices to be setup to reach your goals.
Agile @ scale
When the number of teams grow, very rapidly the need for a framework @ scale appears. Whether you decide to go with a standardized approached like SAFe, or a Spotify model, or a home grown / cheery pick approach, the core principles remain the same.
Our senior consultants, that have experience with at scale Agile deployments, can bring substantial expertise and experience to your case and help you reach the next steps.
Trainings
We focus on specialized training tailored to your environment, your context, your maturity level. After an initial assessment, we can design training workshops with a mix of theoretical and practical content and serious games to really bring value and being directly actionable. We tailor the content to your audience, whether it’s IT Team, Marketing, Business side of the organization, the content and the messages are adapted to fit the audience knowledge and expectations.
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