How to Kick-Start a Lean Agile Transformation?

10/16/17 • 38 min

"If governments can do this, then private organizations certainly can" - Mike Burrows Think going Lean is hard? Meet the person who helped the British government to undergo an Agile transformation in its digital services teams. In the fifth episode of Lean Agile Management Podcast, we asked a change management expert and a governmental Lean-Agile professional Mike Burrows, who leads AgendashiftTM, to answer the itching questions about transforming teams, organizations, and even governments into Lean thinkers and agile practitioners. Welcome to LAMP – Lean Agile Management Podcast, a show by Kanbanize where some of the brightest minds in Lean Agile management talk about how leaders can boost work efficiency, create a culture of high performance, and build teams that thrive. LAMP is available on YouTube and Apple Podcasts. Everyone wants results, nobody wants methods As different Agile methodologies such as Kanban, Lean and Agile become mainstream buzzwords, managers and executives get method-fatigue and simply want to get down to hard results. For the passionate change agents, the job of evangelizing a genuine transformation becomes a much bigger challenge. It doesn't have to, though. Why are we so passionate about pushing one method, tool or philosophy over another, when all we truly want are the final value and outcomes of a true transformation? Today, we talk about kick-starting a Lean-Agile transformation without concentrating on the names but rather the results. Here is what we've talked about in this episode: How methods and names only make it harder for people to embrace real change Governments are going Agile. Here is how. How to concentrate on the outcomes instead of on the vanity metrics How to convince executives in the value of Lean or Agile without using any labels? What is the secret of the successful Lean implementation? Insight from teams. How do you convince your boss to even consider Lean-Agile transformation? Is it possible to push large organizational changes from bottom up or do we have to get top executives on board each time? Answers in this episode!

Previous Episode

3 Ways How Money Fails Your Projects

Turns out, all this time that you've been fighting unproductive team culture, inefficiency and lack of motivation in the team, money was undermining your every effort. How is money related to the success of your projects? In this episode of Lamp (Lean Agile Management Podcast), we are talking with Steve Tendon, who is a top management consultant, advisor and Managing Director of TameFlow. Steve insists that money-centered mentality and unhealthy emphasis on cost accounting is the number one reason why teams fall, projects die and whole companies fail to deliver. As opposed to viewing the world through the lens of finance management and cost accounting, he suggests we work on the three main pillars of successful project management: unity of purpose community of trust inspired leadership Learn what each of these means and how to prevent money-centered mentality from causing your next big project failure in this episode of Lamp. Managing and understanding Flow is not that easy sometimes. Making sense of the Flow in terms of business value can be even trickier. To get an in-depth explanation of the value that establishing a Flow will have for your business, read this article by Steve: Lean Business and the Value of Flow → Learn more about Kanban in our Zero to Hero Kanban encyclopedia: https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/ → Learn more about Lean Management principles and practices here: https://kanbanize.com/lean-management/

Next Episode

How to gain customer's trust with Service Delivery Review?

"Without having the understanding of what customer values, teams are going to turn to vanity metrics " - Matt Philip Who is your customer? Do you truly understand their pains and needs? Did you prove that with the way you build and deliver your products or design your services? The chances are, if you can give strong positive answers to these questions, your customers trust you. If that's so, you can go on to the next article. However, if you don't have clear answers to these questions, you are likely wondering how to build a trust relationship with your clients. This week, we've asked Matt Philip, who is a Director of Learning and Development at ThoughtWorks, to explain the concept of Service Delivery Review. Welcome to LAMP – Lean Agile Management Podcast, a show by Kanbanize where some of the brightest minds in Lean Agile management talk about how leaders can boost work efficiency, create a culture of high performance, and build teams that thrive. LAMP is available on YouTube and Apple Podcasts. "We're not a service company, we're building a product" Even if you are only developing a product, you are still in the service business. If you think building a product has nothing to do with a service or gaining customer's trust, here is what Matt has to tell you: "Most businesses are in the business of both product and service delivery: it's not only what they're delivering but how they're delivering it." Okay, you know your external customers. How about the internal ones? Are you aware of the customers internal to your organization? What are their expectations, needs, and pains? If you've never asked yourself this question, it might be just about time to do this. The things you find out might not be pretty but would you rather let your teams drown in distrust and unproductive metrics or enable them to grow together? Why have you chosen us? Service Delivery Review is one of the proven ways to collect quantitative data on whether what you do, your project goals and values are meaningful to your customer. Is your work aligned with what your customer truly needs? Forget the vanity metrics, it's time to perform a Service Delivery Review. Learn how to collect the quantitative data about qualitative issues and gain the trust of your customers both inside and outside of your organization.