Golden Key Webinar #12

Navigating the Future

Unleashing the Power of Business Agility with Patrice Miller

Patrice Miller
 Business mindset, experienced
 From Switzerland, education in Computer Science, B. Sc. Business Administration, Product
Manager
 Came to AUS to do Masters degree in Int. Business & Int. Relations at Griffith

What is Business Agility?

 Business Agility Institute states: “Business Agility is a set of organisational capabilities,
behaviours, and ways of working that affords your business the freedom, flexibility, and
resilience to achieve its purpose.”
 It’s a people-centred way of working to deliver value
 How efficiently and professionally can you work to make profit and make customers happy

Why do we need Business Agility?

 Companies these days find it harder to keep afloat and stay successful
 We live in a VUCA world…
 Volatility – unexpected challenges
 Uncertainty - unknowns
 Complexity
 Ambiguity

Is Business Agility really a thing?

 Yes – companies like Spotify, Netflix, and LEGO, are examples of this

How did Agility become so important?

 1940s, Toyota
 Scrum – Rugby term – stick in tight group to work things out together
 2001 Agile Manifesto – one of turning points in defining what agile means in business
 2000s onwards – all about the scale of the business
 Software – the origin of agile
 After ‘agile’ came ‘business agility’
Golden Key Webinar #12

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

 Ability to think on your own, and value human connection and collaboration
 MVP = Minimum viable product
 Feedback from customers is key

Being Agile rather than doing Agile

 The 12 principles of Agile

 Positive, optimistic ways of working/thinking in a business setting
 This is how the business mindset works…
 Benefits > Practices > Principles > Values
 All about starting with the values, then building to principles, and so on
Golden Key Webinar #12

Agile practices are almost unlimited

 There’s different concepts and frameworks in place

Business Agility is a mindset (which is supported by framework and practices)

Collaboration as key factor of Agility

 Least effective communication method – writing on paper, audio recording…

 Most effective communication method – face to face conversations and whiteboard
brainstorming
 Yes, it is annoying to go to the office 5x a week, but it’s worth it

Empowerment of teams creates value

 Plan what the team should look like, and how they should work together
 Diversity can allow more efficiency
 Prioritise budget and time and profit and effort
 As a leader, you need to give guidance and alignment – prompt an action in the team
 Servant leadership drives Agility

Empowering faster decision making

 Incremental vs Iterative
 Incremental: You know what the end goal is, but it’s harder to change your plan midway
 Iterative: Start with rough idea and then polish towards the end
 Iterative – better because you can have customer feedback through every stage
 But in reality, we blend both, which is even better
Golden Key Webinar #12

Customer focus is the standard, right?

 E.g Apple watches performance was not great for people with darker skin or people with lots
of tattoos
 There are tools for customer centricity

Deliver value early & learn throughout

 Design, Build, Test, Deploy

 Do a batch of these in increments
 The Agile method was 42% successful, whereas the Waterfall method was 13% successful

Visualised workload management

Challenge 1

 Monday
 A
 Tuesday
 B
 Wednesday
 C
 Thursday
 D
 Friday
 E
 Saturday
 F
 Sunday
 G
Golden Key Webinar #12

Challenge 2

 List 7 days of week and THEN 7 letters of alphabet

 …much faster

 This example is an example of the Kanban method – can be used for studying, work, etc…
 Ideally, the middle section has the least amount of things in there at a time
 To Do, Doing, Done table

Summary

 Business agility is a MINDSET, there is no one way to do it

 In every part of the company (Sales, HR, Finance, etc…) Business Agility is in each part, but
they may all have a different agile method in terms of their necessities

 Spotify is a great example of how Business Agility really does work

 Same goes for:
1. Netflix
2. Google
3. LEGO
4. Coca Cola

 People & individuals at the core

 Customer centricity & value delivery
 Iterate, learn, reflect & adapt