Process Agility

Process Agility

This is the form of agility that most people think of when they hear the term. Agile frameworks and methods to encompass multi-step, and potentially multi-team, value streams. From traditionally agile processes like software delivery or project management to business processes such as marketing campaigns, annual budgets or home loan processing. Frameworks and methods such as Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, LeSS, Disciplined Agile, or Lean Six Sigmaare all, in large part, operating at this level (although it’s true to say that many of the more complex methods operate in the Enterprise Agility domain as well).

One key element of Process Agility is the focus on outcomes and products over outputs and projects. The governance of all decisions, processes, and work, is directed towards ensuring the continuous delivery of value and business outcomes. This relationship could be described thus: work must be justified based on the value it could deliver to a customer in the context of a business outcome. This enables decisions relating to the work to be entirely owned by the team.

All but the smallest of companies need common processes to ensure consistent outcomes in-line with the expectations of the organisation, board and customers. These are used to ensure that all parts of the organisation make appropriate business and financial decisions, manage outputs, and control quality processes. Organisational problems occur when these processes conflict or lose sight of the customer (our purpose). There are many causes of this including; differing priorities, fear of failure, complex or overloaded governance controls, different management values and principles, or just the historical layers of processes built upon one another from the complexities of running a complex organisation.

Processes within the context of business agility are designed to adapt over time which allows them to overcome many of these problems. What makes this work is the focus placed on tighly coupled feedback loops within every agile process. Some of these include;

• Built-in, and automatic, alignment and re-alignment of work against the customer demand and business outcomes
• Regular engagement of customers and users in the continuous design processes (e.g. Design Thinking)
• A bias to audit-based governance rather than approval-based governance.
• Regular inspection and adapation of the process itself (e.g. the retrospective)

The final element of Process Agility is the focus on outcomes and products over outputs and projects. The governance of all decisions, processes and work, is directed towards ensuring the continuous delivery of value and business outcomes. This relationship could be described thus: work needs to be justified based on the value it could deliver to the organisation in the context of a business outcome. In many cases, this enables the accountability for all decisions relating to the work to be entirely owned by the team.

Process control loops

Process control loops, such as Deming’s Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA), the related Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), Six-Sigma’s Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control (DMAIC), Test Driven Development’s Red-Green-Refactor (RGR), and the military Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) methods are cyclical processes to improve major decision making, through the rigorous testing of outcomes. Taking PDSA as an example, there are four key steps in the control loop; Plan, Do, Study and Act.

• P: Plan and set the objective upfront
• D: Do, or implement, the plan
• S: Study the results, and compare against the expected results
• A: Act on the results to improve the process

Business agility iterates through a PDSA cycle for any piece of work, and applies rigour to the upfront planning and quality processes. In a business agility context, it is important for organisations and teams to repeat these cycles regularly and iteratively.

Another example is Test-Driven Development’s Red, Green, Refactor control loop, where Quality Control Tests are defined upfront, prior to your teams commencing any work. Once a a piece of work is done, the original tests run against the outcomes, to verify the overall completeness and accuracy. In this context;

• Red: Create the Quality Control Tests (which, if run, would obviously fail at this stage)
• Green: Do the minimum work to pass the Quality Control Tests (until the tests turn green)
• Refactor: Improve the quality of the work, to ease future enhancements and maintenance

You can also define the Red-Green-Refactor cycle as a PDCA control loop:

• P: Create the Quality Control Tests
• D: Do the work
• C: Validate the outcomes against the original tests
• A: Rework, or refactor, based on the results

Existing process control loops can also complement the continuous improvement processes (e.g. Kaizen).

Moving from Theory to Practice

Your goal is to create adaptable processes that align to customer value.

Map the Value Streams

Understanding your existing processes, and the impact they have on productivity, is the first step towards process agility. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a practice that is commonly overlooked when designing new processes. VSM is the practice of defining the functional steps in common business processes, which can be anything from IT to marketing while identifying bottlenecks and wasted effort.

Adopt Agile Methods

For technology organizations and software teams, it is likely that this step has already been achieved. Agile methods, such a Scrum, have been around for over thirty years. The challenge here is to adopt agile methods outside of software teams. Any work process that has a high level of ambiguity and low cost of change, such as a marketing campaign, is a great candidate for adopting Agile.

Move to Audit Governance

In most organizations, it is easy to create process but generally impossible to remove it. This leads to a highly complex and bureaucratic mess of processes which are disproportionate to the work risk. Appropriate, low-risk, work practices should move from approval-based process governance to audit-based process governance.

Approval based governance is a gate or a checkpoint. It says, “stop here, while we’ll check to make sure you can proceed”. This form of governance is appropriate in high-risk or high-cost environments, especially in situations where you cannot afford to fail. Situations where there is a risk of death, injury, or significant financial cost.

Regular, and automatic, audit-based governance validates that you are doing both the right work and the work is being done right. It says, “keep going, and we’ll check in with you every couple of weeks”. This form of governance is appropriate in lower-risk or time-critical situations.

Measuring your Business Agility Maturity

Crawl	Walk	Run	Fly
Value Streams
While we have modeled the most effective way to create value for our customer, most of our processes remain governed by functional requirements.	We have started to change our business processes to align with the customer view of value.	We have designed most of our work processes based on the customer view of value creation. Crossing divisional and team silos wherever necessary.	The majority of our work processes align with the customer view of value. Teams can customize (or create) these to address specific customer demands (exceptions may include regulatory or legislative processes).
Agile Methods
Teams break work into small components to regularly deliver value. For example, teams may have adopted standard agile methods such as Scrum, Kanban, or their equivalent Lean methods.	Teams in the organization have flexibility in the choice of their work processes. The majority of teams in the technology function are adopting advanced, hybrid, or scaled agile methods (e.g. Cynefin, SAFe, LeSS or DA).	Non-software teams are using adaptable and/or agile frameworks throughout their entire work lifecycle. For example, Marketing or HR are using Agile to create campaigns or organization policy.	Agility, rather than Agile, is the driving factor behind the selection and creation of work processes.

Insights

Case Studies

Hear from people who have gone through this journey already.

• Pair Trading - Collaboration in Finance
• Do you dare to ask your HR manager to practise Kanban?
• New Zealand Post Group - An Agile Executive
• Suncorp – Agile and Internal Audit
• Forming Self-Selected Teams - How to Create Happy, Empowered, and Effective Teams
• Evolving from Waterfall to Agile Strategic Planning in a Social Services Agency
• Evolving Budget Management
• The Yin and Yang of Speed and Control
• Want true agility? Give employees a voice
• Agile Marketing - ABN AMRO Retail
• CKW Group - Sourcing of a group intranet solution via Lean-Agile Procurement
• Using the NoProjects Paradigm
• Owning the Sky with Agile - Building a Jet Fighter Faster, Cheaper, Better with Scrum
• Project Management to Save the Planet

Further Reading

Want to go deeper? Read (and watch) more details about specific areas of Business Agility.

• Business Agility Manifesto
• Beyond Budgeting – Business Agility the C-level Understand (and Are Starting to Like)
• Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, and Sociocracy
• Certain Uncertainty by Evan Leybourn
• Innovation culture is not a fancy hub by Jaroslav Procházka

Books & Book Reviews

Not sure what to read, check our some of our Business Agility book recommendations and reviews

• Kanban - Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business
• The Machine That Changed the World
• Toyota Production System - Beyond Large-Scale Production
• An essay upon projects
• The Checklist Manifesto
• Directing the Agile Organisation
• Nehemiah Effect
• The Goal - A Process of Ongoing Improvement
• Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy
• Certain to Win by Chet Richards
• The Lean Playbook

Interviews

Watch (or listen to) interviews from global Business Agility leaders.

• Modernizing Business Analysis with AI & Experiments with Angela Wick
• Jutta Eckstein and John Buck talk Company-Wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy
• Amber King Champions Self-Selection for Happy Teams
• Phil Abernathy on KPI Madness and Maze Runners

Supporting Frameworks

How do you "do" Business Agility? Here are all the frameworks, methods and tools for you.

• Scrum
• Kanban
• Lean Manufacturing
• Beyond Budgeting
• Retrospectives
• Scaled Agile Framework
• Large Scale Scrum
• Disciplined Agile
• Lean Six Sigma
• Theory of Constraints
• Disciplined Agile Business Agility - One Size Does Not Fit All

Join the Business Agility Community

If you'd like to continue the conversation with like minded individuals around Business Agility Ways of Working, join the Business Agility slack community. Specifically the #future-of-work channel.

Business Agility Slack Community

Library Steward

This section is currently un-stewarded. If you have a passion for this space and would like to take ownership for the guidance and insights within, please contact Evan Leybourn. The stewards of the Business Agility Library are leaders in their field and we quite literally couldn't create such amazing content without their support. These people & organisations are leaders in the community and, through their actions and insights, continue to expand the horizon of business agility for us all.

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