Agile Leadership

Two weeks ago, I attended a course titled “An Integral Framework for Leading Agile/Lead Capabilities”, created by Bud Phillips and Michael Hamman, and hosted by Boston’s Agile Bazaar. They focused on Agile development methods beyond just product development.

As I wrote in my first blog post, “…being Agile is like playing in a large symphony orchestra, playing a very complex music piece. Focusing on just one or two aspects of the overall concept of Agility does not work.”

Just in Scrum development alone, while providing product management and development support to our portfolio companies, I found that unless you simultaneously focus on direction, speed, quality, and sustainability / predictability, you significantly risked going off the tracks at some point.

Bud and Michael have put together a holistic framework for approaching organizational Agile transformation. While their experiences come out of departments at big companies, initially information technology at Capital One, I think there are relevant learnings here for expansion stage software companies in our venture capital portfolio as well.

They’ve identified four overarching areas of concern for any organizational transformation:
 

• Leadership (what kind of leaders do you have?how do they lead and manage? what are their characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses, and how do they interplay?)
• Marketplace (what is going on in your market? where are you in the value chain? can you do anything about it?) 
• Culture (what are the cultural elements that can impede or propel transformation?)
• Structure (what are the structural aspects of your company and business? what’s the organization hierarchy? what are the government regulations? other processes?)

I find their framework insightful and helpful, and continue to search for more holistic approaches to Agile organizational development.