This book, written by Klaus Leopold and enriched with visuals, deals with the experiences of a real company on its agile transformation journey. The book provides information about agile approaches and the feedback rituals, metrics, WIP limits used in these approaches. The book offers solution ideas on why organizations cannot achieve business agility only by having agile teams, important points that are overlooked and their effects.
CHAPTER ONE: PROBLEM
A company that was once a leader in its field of business is no longer able to maintain its competitive edge as alternatives have emerged in the last few years. It is losing customers and even struggling to keep track of and complete daily tasks. The points for improvement by the company management are clear:
- The time to market should be optimized.
- Obtaining feedback from users more quickly to identify changes earlier.
- The company should prepare for the future.
But how? At this point, the company management decides to implement agility within the organization, which they have heard from organizations with similar problems and see it as a suitable method to solve their problems.
“We will make our organization agile!”
To transform an IT department of 600 people, management determines what teams need to do. Employees are trained in basic agility, cross-functional teams are formed, work is visualized, daily standups and retrospectives are conducted, and the metrics to be used to evaluate the process are determined. In the first chapter, the book outlines for the readers the paths the company has taken in the transformation process and at the end of the period set by the company, the metrics are analyzed to see if the improvement has not reached the desired point.
SECTION TWO: CAUSES
The second section discusses the mistakes that a company makes when trying to achieve business agility. One of the mistakes is that employees turn the implementation of agile approaches used in the process from a means to an end, and most of the focus is on whether agile approaches are implemented by the book. More important than identifying dependencies between teams and trying to eliminate them as much as possible, the company’s lack of managing dependencies is also cited as one of the mistakes. One of the most important points overlooked in the process of gaining business agility is to realize that the individual performances of the parts in the system do not constitute the performance of the whole. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing the interaction between the parts and that the performance of the whole is the product of this interaction. Another point mentioned in the second chapter is strategic portfolio management and the creation of a value chain. In order to improve the work in the system, visualizing the work is a good and effective way to reveal the existing dysfunctions. Improvement can be achieved by limiting the amount of work in the system (WIP limit). But without strategic portfolio management to determine which jobs to put into the system and when, can the desired benefits really be achieved by overlooking the impact on WIP limits of management making decisions isolated from the value chain? It is pointed out that the effects of senior management focusing on output rather than value should not be overlooked.
SECTION THREE: SOLUTION
Based on an examination of the shortcomings and their impact on the failure to achieve the desired results, this chapter introduces the three-tier flight level model. The author presents the idea of using the unique characteristics, advantages and limitations of each flight level in aviation in organizations. It is explained how this model can be seen as a communication tool and how, by identifying flight levels within the organization, communication and cooperation between the levels and the various departments within each level can be established.
The focal points and relationships between flight levels are listed as follows:
Flight Level 1: This level is where operational tasks are performed, visualized, and managed using WIP (Work in Progress) limits. It involves daily standups, retrospective rituals, and feedback loops at the team level.
Flight Level 2: This level focuses on optimizing interactions between teams and ensuring end-to-end coordination for ideas to materialize into value-creating activities. It emphasizes collaboration optimization, identifying bottlenecks, and reducing wait times by establishing communication between operational and coordination levels.
Flight Level 3: This level concentrates on Strategic Portfolio Management, where projects and initiatives are prioritized based on the company’s strategic goals and desired direction.
For the improvement steps, the author highlights the following points:
- The first step is to understand the importance of making the upper management agile, starting from the top management itself.
- Stay focused on the purpose without getting hypnotized by the method and implementation steps. Remember that agility should not only be about teams but also about making processes agile.
- Determine the flight levels to make dependencies visible and manageable. Identify the problems that each flight level will address and the solutions it will provide.
- Avoid falling into the misconception that adapting to changes and customer demands only involves making teams agile. Understand the significance of collaboration among strategy, operations, development, and implementation areas, integrating them into a single value stream aimed at the same goal.
- Understand the importance of shifting the focus from output quantity and size to the “why” question, and being mindful of the outcome and its effects. Remember that the goal is not to achieve more outputs in less time but to reach results that can create the right impact and deliver the intended value.
SUMMARY
The book sheds light on the processes with a very lean and simple expression at the point where organizations experiencing the agile transformation process say that we have done what is necessary regardless of which agile approach they are implementing, but we still have unrealized improvements and unachieved goals. The author shares his suggestions for improvements by giving examples from the process of a real company so that readers can evaluate agility with different depths and perspectives.
