Just because you can see each other doesn’t mean the silo is still not there

Widgets Corp. did all the right things to become more effective and efficient in delivering what the clients need. CEO John Smith sponsored and worked with his teams to have a great learning program, have a roadmap set up on when things would get moving and have the finish line in place. Everyone in the organization was excited to get there.

As time passes and the training was all done, they begin to work in agile teams to work on their new product. Things seem to be going well, the honeymoon period has everyone’s mind in a euphoric state. Soon though, things start not to look right. John is not sure what is going on, yet he sees some small infighting happening and disagreements. It seems par for the course with the change, meetings scheduled to help keep the motivation up and improve teamwork completed. There was a short-lived improvement.

Over time it just became the norm. Things got shrugged off and people became complacent to the obstacles. Continuous improvement turned into a buzzword that fell on deaf ears.

After some time, John has become tired of the complacency; product delivery was faster than before; it is just that the competition was either catching up or getting ahead of them on features for the market. It was time to look at the whole agile implementation again.

What he found was they focused so much on the actual delivery of the products that they did not consider how the rest of the organization should change to follow suit. There were obstacles in the way from how the work efforts between business and technology teams due to a clash in behaviours and actions done to get the job done.

“We are working like a two-car race team that needs to be at the finish line at the same time. One car is a Corvette while the other is a Chevette. We are tied to the speed of the slower car while not seeing the value of the horsepower from the Corvette,” Said John at a town-hall meeting.

Soon after, there was a broader work effort to have all the teams, business and technology, to match horsepower and improve effectiveness. After a short time, the expected value was beginning started to show. Previously the silos were there, even though the teams could see each other. Now they have been torn down, and the groups one big functional team.

Your IT department is stuck in a time-warp. Agile and DevOps might be able to save it

https://www.zdnet.com/article/your-it-department-is-stuck-in-a-time-warp-agile-and-devops-might-be-able-to-save-it/?ftag=COS-05-10aaa0g&taid=5e68a1b738da270001001404

By Mark Samuels | March 10, 2020 — 11:15 GMT (04:15 PDT) | Topic: CXO

The Benefits of Hiring an Agile Coach

https://nancy-rubin.com/2020/03/09/the-benefits-of-hiring-an-agile-coach/

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