ORGANIZATION WIDE AGILE

ADOPTION AND CHALLENGES

Agile Assignment

APRIL 24, 2022

VIVEK RIKHARI
2021MT93595@wilp.bits-pilani.ac.in
Q1. Explain how agile planning may be applied far beyond software development to other elements of business
operations, particularly the finance function

With the advancement in technology and focus on efficiencies, agile processes have started to benefits not just in spaces
related to software development but also how organizations plan, develop their strategies, refine their budgets, and make
decisions. This is primarily as agility provides speed, flexibility, continuous learning, and improvement; it provides
resilience in how organizations make decisions. One of the major breakthroughs over the years for agile transformation
has been the focus on ‘Do agile’, which is characterized by shipping features, increasing velocity and be predictable
(Organizational Predictability). This is an enhancement from the ‘Be agile’ thinking, which includes learning faster, get
customer feedback and deliver value sooner (Organizational Agility). This organizational agility and predictability can be
implemented in any business function based on the following model.

The Right
People

Agile
The Right
The Right
Authority Product Funding
Model

Team
The Right
incentives

This framework primarily targets to have the right team/people. This is characterized by people having entrepreneurial
thought process, who continuously seek new solution to a problem. They should be independent and have generalist skill
set that would allow them to build solution without waiting for others to provide guidance. From a soft skill perspective,
they should be collaborative, humble and transparent to discuss solutions with others. Hiring such unique skillsets would
require focused HR efforts in terms of candidate evaluation techniques, which would include incentive structure, retention
risks, and out of box thinking.

As a next step, we would need the right funding model defined budgets, which are outcome driven rather than output
driven. This means instead of deciding how much is it costing, he organization decides how much worth is it to incest and
achieve the outcome. This paves path for the right incentives which is the third critical pillar for an agile team. An incentive
is offered in advance and is meant to motivate behavior in predictable ways. Interestingly, beyond its logical meaning it
also means, incentivizing your team with time (offer a team an incentive of a week off if they meet some delivery
milestone) or knowledge (send your folks to conference if they achieve some goal). The last pillar for agile team is giving
them the right set of authority. Each team should be empowered to make their own decision. This will allow the team to
self-organize and take responsibility.

The below segment talks about how these principles can be applied in a financial function.

Finance function agile transformation is to regularly conduct financial analysis and provide insights that help influence
business decisions, and its impact to the business as whole. With this all budgeting and fund allocation should be evidence
based. Agile finance function focuses on creating value through the following characteristics.

1. Building efficient and scalable operations: Leveraging automation and standardization in a company helps in sustainable
financial health which includes time and cost savings.
2. Building a right team with empowered and capable folks: Right set of teams with right amount of autonomy position
finance functions for innovative value delivery. They should be able to work with finance, which would include presenting
the progress of the change, communicating what is realistic and what is not and seeking funds.

3. Quick adaptation to change: Streamlined processes and culture help in making timely adjustments to new
developments, while ensure a good risk profile of the company.

4. Transparent Access to the data: This helps in taking informed decisions and a more financial confidence in implementing
a new change. This includes teams gathering data for showcasing the estimated business impact from a change and
committing to finance what can be achieved with what level of funding. This includes discussion on MVP, Headcounts and
other resource funding.

5. Frequent audits: We should continuously audit and communicate with stakeholders the actual impact of a change.
Finance should take a stock of the estimated impact v/s the actual and accordingly take decision for next steps.

The above characteristics summarizes the usage of agile in finance function.

Q2. Case Studies

COMPANY A

Background and approach taken by company

➢ Midsized IT company in a highly regulated environment within the financial industry.

➢ Embarked agile implementation and trained its development staff (80-100 ppl) in agile practices.
➢ Agile coach was brought in to provide coaching to team
➢ Company made some progress in implementing the agile process
➢ However, the agile coach was let go. Consequently, there was little support to take the agile process to the next
level.
➢ Post this, at least at a mechanical level, a number of agile practices such as daily standups were being implemented
➢ The scope was limited to development team.
➢ The approach was fairly mechanical without an understanding of the principles behind it.
➢ No attempt to fit the approach into the company’s business environment.

Issues with this approach

➢ Senior executives limited the agile methods to IT development process only and didn’t see the value in investing
more.
➢ The development effort appeared to go faster on the surface, but the truth was that workers were overworked in
order to make it move faster and the quality of the products suffered as a result.
➢ While process (eg daily stand ups) were implemented there was no significant way workers were assigned to the
teams.
➢ People were not loyal to teams and were across separate groups leading to decentralization of the core solution
group.
➢ Developers were not directly involved in decision making.
➢ A separate PMO was built which served as middleman between the development teams and the business users
to clarify requirements.

Which core Agile principles were being breached

➢ Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
➢ The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
➢ Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and trust them
to get the job done.
Proposed Solution
➢ Senior management should be coached thoroughly around the agile methodology. They should be made to
understand the criticality of deploying an organization wide agile thinking. They should understand the benefits
of the agile principles such as improved customer satisfaction, quality improvements, employee satisfaction etc.
➢ Encourage self-organized teams. Try to hire skilled and motivated team members who have decision making
power, take ownership, communicate regularly with other team members and share ideas that deliver quality
products.
➢ Direct communication between business stakeholders and developers. This would involve having the developers
and the customers joining the daily scrum. In addition to this the company should also encourage customer facing
interactions.
➢ Leadership should support, trust and motivate its people. Incentivize the teams with every delivery. This can
include time offs or sending folks to conferences for upskilling.
➢ Bring back the agile coach and deploy a team for him. I would also strongly suggest to bring a scrum master who
help drive scrum meetings.
➢ Think about the usage of agile principles also on how organizations plan, develop their strategies, refine their
budgets, and make decision. Clearly communicate the benefits to the teams and be transparent to them. They
should not feel that its an additional policy workload for them
➢ Clearly differentiate the role of product owner, scrum master and PMO team. Everyone should be aligned as the
company build new features.
➢ Incremental delivery of product features should be encouraged.

COMPANY C

Background and approach taken by company

➢ Tiny business with a small IT department focused primarily on servicing legacy systems.
➢ For a long period, big new applications were not being built. Legacy aps had matured and were created
incrementally.
➢ Company embarked on a project to replace and restructure a huge, existing legacy program, opting for an agile
development strategy.
➢ No prior experience with agile. No agile coaches were hired to give training or mentorship.
➢ The process was limited to a development process exclusively, with business input limited solely to JAD sessions
to identify requirements, and the product owner's role was not completely implemented.

Issues with this approach

➢ Right people at the right levels were not engaged in making the right decision.
➢ No clear definition of the business objectives.
➢ Project was way behind the schedule with no end in sight. Senior executives had lost confidence in the project
being successful.
➢ Agile development process was not properly integrated, leading to confusion in project level and release level
planning. No clear plan in place for how that code would be published or what the minimal functional
requirements for a production release would be.
➢ No official QA testing resources, and whatever testing that was done was done on an ad hoc basis by developers
and business analysts with no professional QA test training.
➢ Architectural design for transition was not given enough attention and fixes were postponed to a later date.
➢ An agile project management tool was used on the project, but no one on the project team was fully trained in its
use leading to underutilization of the tool.
➢ Lot of top-down direction to the project without a sufficient level of delegation of responsibility and
empowerment of the team
Which core Agile principles were being breached

➢ Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

➢ The best architectures, requirements and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
➢ Deliver working software frequently from a couple of weeks to a couple of months with a preference to the shorter
timescale.
➢ The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face to
face conversation.
➢ Working software is a measure of progress

Proposed Solution

➢ Urgent agile trainings to all the employees across board. Have agile coaches to overview the process. Everyone
should be trained on the usage of the agile project management tool and people should be encourage to use it
for all product development processes.
➢ Clear identification of right candidates for product owners, scrum masters, agile coaches etc. Everyone should
have clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities.
➢ Transparent planning with complete involvement of all sections of the team such as business stakeholders,
development, customers etc.
➢ Deployment of scrum planning with each story being validated to follow the agile handbook (having the clear
requirement along-with impact). Scrum master/Product owner to manage the story prioritization, product
backlog and incremental deployment and releases/milestones.
➢ Encourage incremental deployments. The team should realize that the customers are happier when they receive
working software at regular intervals, rather than waiting extended periods of time between releases.
➢ Servant leadership should be encouraged. There should be direct conversations between all levels of
management. This will increase the trust and motivate the people involved.
➢ Test-driven deployment should be encouraged. The company should urgently hire QA testers who constantly
perform test and check the actual performance of the code v/s the expected one.
➢ Encourage self-organized teams. Try to hire skilled and motivated team members who have decision making
power, take ownership, communicate regularly with other team members and share ideas that deliver quality
products.
➢ Focus on the architectural design as it forms the base of any product. Fix all the known bugs.