Spread Best Practices With an Agile Center of Excellence

Achieve ongoing alignment between Agile teams and the business with a set of targeted service offerings.

ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

"Inconsistent processes and practices used across Agile teams is frequently cited as a challenge to adopting and scaling Agile within organizations. (VersionOne’s 13th Annual State of Agile Report [N=1,319]) Creating an Agile Center of Excellence (ACE) is a popular way to try to impose structure and improve performance. However, simply establishing an ACE does not guarantee you will be successful with Agile. When setting up an ACE you must: Define ACE services based on identified stakeholder needs. Staff the ACE with respected, “hands on” people, who deliver identifiable value to your Agile teams. Continuously evolve ACE service offerings to maximize stakeholder satisfaction and value delivered."

Alex Ciraco, Research Director, Applications Practice Info-Tech Research Group

Our understanding of the problem

This Research Is Designed For:

• A CIO who is looking for a way to optimize their Agile capabilities and ensure ongoing alignment with business objectives.
• An applications director who is looking for mechanisms to inject continuous improvement into organization-wide Agile practices.

This Research Will Help You:

• Align your Agile support structure with business objectives and the functional expectations of its users.
• Standardize the ways in which Agile teams develop and learn to create consistency in purpose and execution.
• Track and communicate successes to ensure the long-term viability of an Agile Center of Excellence (ACE).

This Research Will Also Assist

• Project managers who are tasked with managing Agile projects.
• Application development managers who are struggling with establishing consistency, transparency, and collaboration across their teams.

This Research Will Help Them:

• Provide service offerings to their team members that will help them personally and collectively to develop desired skills.
• Provide oversight and transparency into Agile projects and outcomes through ongoing monitoring.

Executive summary

Situation

• Your organization has had some success with Agile, but needs to drive consistency across Agile teams for better business results and alignment.
• You are seeking to organically grow Agile capabilities within the organization through a set of support services and facilitated through shared learning and capabilities.

Complication

• Organizational constraints, culture clash, and lack of continuous top-down support are hampering your Agile growth and maturity.
• Attempts to create consistency across Agile teams and processes fail to account for the expectations of users and stakeholders, leaving them detached from projects and creating resistance.

Resolution

• Align the service offerings of your ACE with both corporate objectives and the functional expectations of its stakeholders to ensure broad support and utilization of the invested resources.
• Understand some of the culture and process challenges you will face when forming an ACE, and address them using Info-Tech’s Agile adoption journey model.
• Track the progress of the ACE and your Agile teams. Use this data to find root causes for issues, and ideate to implement solutions for challenges as they arise over time.
• Effectively define and propagate improvements to your Agile teams in order to drive business-valued results.
• Communicate progress to interested stakeholders to ensure long-term viability of the Center of Excellence (CoE).

Info-Tech Insight

1. Define ACE services based on stakeholder needs.Don’t assume you know what your stakeholders need without talking to them.
2. Staff the ACE strategically. Choose those who are thought leaders and proven change agents.
3. Continuously improve based on metrics and feedback.Constantly monitor how your ACE is performing and adjust to feedback.

Info-Tech’s Agile Journey related Blueprints

1. Stabilize

Implement Agile Practices That Work

Begin your Agile transformation with a comprehensive readiness assessment and a pilot project to adopt Agile development practices and behaviors that fit.

2. Sustain

YOU ARE HERE

Spread Best Practices with an Agile Center of Excellence

Form an ACE to support Agile development at all levels of the organization with thought leadership, strategic development support & process innovation.

3. Scale

Enable Organization-Wide Collaboration by Scaling Agile

Extend the benefits of your Agile pilot project into your organization by strategically scaling Agile initiatives that will meet stakeholders’ needs.

4. Satisfy

Transition to Product Delivery Introduce product-centric delivery practices to drive greater benefits and better delivery outcomes.

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

2.1 Define an adoption plan for Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives

Supporting Capabilities and Practices

Modernize Your SDLC

Remodel the stages of your lifecycle to standardize your definition of a successful product.

Build a Strong Foundation for Quality

Instill quality assurance practices and principles in each stage of your software development lifecycle.

Implement DevOps Practices That Work

Fix, deploy, and support applications quicker though development and operations collaboration.

What is an Agile Center of Excellence?

NOTE: Organizational change is hard and prone to failure. Determine your organization’s level of readiness for Agile transformation (and recommended actions) by completing Info-Tech’s Agile Transformation Readiness Tool.

An ACE amplifies good practices that have been successfully employed within your organization, effectively allowing you to extend the benefits obtained from your Agile pilot(s) to a wider audience.

From the viewpoint of the business, members of the ACE provide expertise and insights to the entire organization in order to facilitate Agile transformation and ensure standard application of Agile good practices.

From the viewpoint of your Agile teams, it provides a community of individuals that share experiences and lessons learned, propagate new ideas, and raise questions or concerns so that delivering business value is always top of mind.

An ACE provides the following:

1. A mechanism to gather thought leadership to maximize the accessibility and reach of your Agile investment.
2. A mechanism to share innovations and ideas to facilitate knowledge transfer and ensure broadly applicable innovations do not go to waste.
3. Strategic alignment to ensure that Agile practices are driving value towards business objectives.
4. Purposeful good practices to ensure that the service offerings provided align with expectations of both your Agile practitioners and stakeholders.

SIDEBAR: What is a Community of Practice? (And how does it differ from a CoE?)

Some organizations prefer Communities of Practice (CoP) to Centers of Excellence (CoE). CoPs are different from CoEs:

“A CoP is an affiliation of people who share a common practice and who have a desire to further the practice itself … and of course to share knowledge, refine best practices, and introduce standards. CoPs are defined by their domain of interest, but the membership is a social structure comprised of volunteer practitioners”

– Wenger, E., R. A. McDermott, et al. (2002) Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge, Harvard Business Press.

“CoPs differ from a CoE mainly in that they tend to have no geographical boundaries, they hold no hierarchical power within a firm, and they definitely can never have structure determined by the company. However, one of the most obvious and telling differences lies in the stated motive of members – CoPs exist because they have active practitioner members who are passionate about a specific practice, and the goals of a CoP are to refine and improve their chosen domain of practice – and the members provide discretionary effort that is not paid for by the employer”

– Matthew Loxton (June 1, 2011) CoP vs CoE – What’s the difference, and Why Should You Care?, Wordpress.com

What to know about CoPs:

1. Less formal than a CoE
   • Loosely organized by volunteer practitioners who are interested in advancing the practice.
2. Not the Authoritative Voice
   • Stakeholders engage the CoP voluntarily, and are not bound by them.
3. Not funded by Organization
   • CoP members are typically volunteers who provide support in addition to their daily responsibilities.
4. Not covered in this Blueprint
   • In depth analysis on CoPs is outside the scope of this Blueprint.

What does an ACE do? Six main functions derived from Info-Tech’s CLAIM+G Framework

1. Learning

• Provide training and development and enable engagement based on identified interaction points to foster organizational growth.

• Promote the use of standardized tooling to improve efficiency and consistency throughout the organization.

• Enable your Agile teams to access subject-matter expertise by facilitating knowledge transfer and documenting good practices.

• Create operational boundaries for Agile teams, and monitor their progress and ability to meet business objectives within these boundaries.

• Demonstrate the value the CoE is providing through effective metric setting and ongoing monitoring of Agile’s effectiveness.

Many organizations encounter challenges to scaling Agile

Tackle the following barriers to Agile adoption with a business-aligned ACE.

List based on reported impediments from VersionOne’s 13th Annual State of Agile Report (N=1,319)

1. Organizational culture at odds with Agile values

• The ACE identifies and measures the value of Agile to build support from senior business leaders for shifting the organizational culture and achieving tangible business benefits.

• Resistance comes from a lack of trust. Optimized value delivery from Info-Tech’s Agile adoption model will build the necessary social capital to drive cultural change.

• Establishing an ACE will require senior management support and sponsorship. Its formation sends a strong signal to the organizational leadership that Agile is here to stay.

• The ACE provides a vehicle to absorb external training into an internal development program so that Agile capabilities can be grown organically within the organization.

• The ACE provides support to individual Agile teams and will guide them to adopt consistent processes and practices which have a proven track record in the organization.

Overcome your Agile scaling challenges with a business aligned ACE

An ACE drives consistency and transparency without sacrificing the ability to innovate. It can build on the success of your Agile pilot(s) by encouraging practices known to work in your organization.

Support Agile Teams

Provide services designed to inject evolving good practices into workflows and remove impediments or roadblocks from your Agile team’s ability to deliver value.

Maintain Business Alignment

Maintain alignment with corporate objectives without impeding business agility in the long term. The ACE functions as an interface layer so that changing expectations can be adapted without negatively impacting Agile teams.

Facilitate Learning Events

Avoid the risk of innovation and subject-matter expertise being lost or siloed by facilitating knowledge transfer and fostering a continuous learning environment.

Govern Improvements

Set baselines, monitor metrics, and run retrospectives to help govern process improvements and ensure that Agile teams are delivering expected benefits.

Shift Culture

Instill Agile thinking and behavior into the organization. The ACE must encourage innovation and be an effective agent for change.

Use your ACE to go from “doing” Agile to “being” Agile

Organizations that do Agile without embracing the changes in behavior will not reap the benefits.

Doing what was done before

• Processes and Tools
• Comprehensive Documentation
• Contract Negotiation
• Following a Plan

Being Prescriptive

Going through the motions

• Uses SCRUM and tools such as Jira
• Plans multiple sprints in detail
• Talks to stakeholders once in a release
• Works off a fixed scope BRD

Doing Agile

Living the principles

• Individuals and Interactions
• Working Software
• Customer Collaboration
• Responding to Change

Being Agile

“(‘Doing Agile’ is) just some rituals but without significant change to support the real Agile approach as end-to-end, business integration, value focus, and team empowerment.” - Arie van Bennekum

Establishing a CoE does not guarantee success

Simply establishing a Center of Excellence for any discipline does not guarantee its success:

The 2019 State of DevOps Report found that organizations which had established DevOps CoEs underperformed compared to organizations which adopted other approaches for driving DevOps transformation. (Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2019 [N=~1,000])

Still, Agile Centers of Excellence can and do successfully drive Agile adoption in organizations. So what sets the successful examples apart from the others? Here’s what some have to say:

“The ACE must be staffed with qualified people with delivery experience! … [It is] effectively a consulting practice, that can evolve and continuously improve its services … These services are collectively about ‘enablement’ as an output, more than pure training … and above all, the ability to empirically measure the progress” – Paul Blaney, TD Bank

“When leaders haven’t themselves understood and adopted Agile approaches, they may try to scale up Agile the way they have attacked other change initiatives: through top-down plans and directives. The track record is better when they behave like an Agile team. That means viewing various parts of the organization as their customers.” – HBR, “Agile at Scale”

“the Agile CoE… is truly meant to be measured by the success of all the other groups, not their own…[it] is meant to be serving the teams and helping them improve, not by telling them what to do, but rather by listening, understanding and helping them adapt.” - Bart Gerardi, PMI

“The CoE must also avoid becoming static, as it’s crucial the team can adjust as quickly as business and customer needs change, and evolve the technology as necessary to remain competitive.” – Forbes, “RPA CoE (what you need to know)”

"The best CoEs are formed from thought leaders and change agents within the CoE domain. They are the process and team innovators who will influence your CoE roadmap and success. Select individuals who feel passionate about Agile." – Hans Eckman, InfoTech

To be successful with your ACE, do the following…

Info-Tech Insight

Simply establishing an Agile Center of Excellence does not guarantee its success. When setting up your ACE, optimize its impact on the organization by doing the following 3 things:

1. Define ACE services based on stakeholder needs. Be sure to broadly survey your stakeholders and identify the ACE functions and services which will best meet their needs. ACE services must clearly deliver business value to the organization and the Agile teams it supports.
2. Staff the ACE strategically. Select ACE team members who have real world, hands-on delivery experience, and are well respected by the Agile teams they will serve. Where possible, select internal thought leaders in your organization who have the credibility needed to effect positive change.
3. Continuously improve ACE services based on metrics and feedback. The value your ACE brings to the organization must be clear and measurable, and do not assume that your functions and services will remain static. You must regularly monitor both your metrics and feedback from your Agile teams, and adjust ACE behavior to improve/maximize these over time.

Spread Best Practices With an Agile Center of Excellence

This blueprint will walk you through the steps needed to build the foundations for operational excellence within an Agile Center of Excellence.

Phase 1 - Strategically Align the CoE

Create strategic alignment between the CoE and the organization’s goals, objectives, and vision. This alignment translates into the CoE mandate intended to enhance the way Agile will enable teams to meet business objectives.

Phase 2 - Standardize the CoEs Service Offerings

Build an engagement plan based on a standardized adoption model to ensure your CoE service offerings are accessible and consistent across the organization. Create and consolidate key performance indicators to measure the CoEs utility and whether or not the expected value is being translated to tangible results.

Phase 3 - Operate the CoE

Operate the CoE to provide service offerings to Agile teams, identify improvements to optimize the function of your Agile teams, and effectively manage and communicate change so that teams can grow within the Agile adoption model and optimize value delivery both within your Agile environment and across functions.

Info-Tech’s Practice Adoption Journey

Use Info-Tech’s Practice Adoption Journey model to establish your ACE. Building social capital (stakeholders’ trust in your ability to deliver positive outcomes) incrementally is vital to ensure that everyone is aligned to new mindsets and culture as your Agile practices scale.

Trust & Competency ↓

DEFINE

Begin to document your development workflow or value chain, implement a tracking system for KPIs, and start gathering metrics and reporting them transparently to the appropriate stakeholders.

ITERATE

Use collected metrics and retrospectives to stabilize team performance by reducing areas of variability in your workflow and increasing the consistency at which targets are met.

COLLABORATE

Use information to support changes and adopt appropriate practices to make incremental improvements to the existing environment.

EMPOWER

Drive behavioral and cultural changes that will empower teams to be accountable for their own success and learning.

INNOVATE

Use your built-up trust and support practice innovation, driving the definition and adoption of new practices.

Align your ACE with your organization’s strategy

This research set will assist you with aligning your ACEs services to the objectives of the business in order to justify the resources and funding required by your Agile program.

Business Objectives → Alignment ←ACE Functions

Business justification to continue to fund a Center of Excellence can be a challenge, especially with traditional thinking and rigid stakeholders. Hit the ground running and show value to your key influencers through business alignment and metrics that will ensure that the ACE is worth continuous investment.

Alignment leads to competitive advantage

The pace of change in customer expectations, competitive landscapes, and business strategy is continuously increasing. It is critical to develop a method to facilitate ongoing alignment to shifting business and development expectations seamlessly and ensure that your Agile teams are able to deliver expected business value.

Use Info-Tech’s CoE Operating Model to define the service offerings of your ACE

Understand where your inputs and outputs lie to create an accessible set of service offerings for your Agile teams.

Continuously improve the ACE to ensure long-term viability

Improvement involves the continuous evaluation of the performance of your teams, using well-defined metrics and reasonable benchmarks that are supplemented by analogies and root-cause analysis in retrospectives.

Monitor

Monitor your metrics to ensure desired benefits are being realized. The ACE is responsible for ensuring that expected Agile benefits are achievable and on track. Monitor against your defined baselines to create transparency and accountability for desired outcomes.

Iterate

Run retrospectives to drive improvements and fixes into Agile projects and processes. Metrics falling short of expectations must be diagnosed and their root causes found, and fixes need to be communicated and injected back into the larger organization.

Define

Define metrics and set targets that align with the goals of the ACE. These metrics represent the ACEs expected value to the organization and must be measured against on a regular basis to demonstrate value to your key stakeholders.

Beware the common risks of implementing your ACE

Culture clash between Agile teams and larger organization

Agile leverages empowered teams, meritocracy, and broad collaboration for success, but typical organizations are siloed and hierarchical with top down decision making. There needs to be a plan to enable a smooth transition from the current state towards the Agile target state.

Persistence of tribal knowledge

Agile relies on easy and open knowledge sharing, but organizational knowledge can sit in siloes. Employees may also try to protect their expertise for job security. It is important to foster knowledge sharing to ensure that critical know-how is accessible and doesn’t leave the organization with the individual.

Rigid management structures

Rigidity in how managers operate (performance reviews, human resource management, etc.) can result in cultural rejection of Agile. People need to be assessed on how they enable their teams rather than as individual contributors. This can help ensure that they are given sufficient opportunities to succeed. More support and less strict governance is key.

Breakdown due to distributed teams

When face-to-face interactions are challenging, ensure that you invest in the right communication technologies and remove cultural and process impediments to facilitate organization-wide collaboration. Alternative approaches like using documentation or email will not provide the same experience and value as a face-to-face conversation.

The State of Maine used an ACE to foster positive cultural change

CASE STUDY

Industry - Government

Source - Cathy Novak, Agile Government Leadership

The State of Maine’s Agile Center of Excellence

“The Agile CoE in the State of Maine is completely focused on the discipline of the methodology. Every person who works with Agile, or wants to work with Agile, belongs to the CoE. Every member of the CoE tells the same story, approaches the methodology the same way, and uses the same tools. The CoE also functions as an Agile research lab, experimenting with different standards and tools.

The usual tools of project management – mission, goals, roles, and a high-level definition of done – can be found in Maine’s Agile CoE. For story mapping, teams use sticky notes on a large wall or whiteboard. Demonstrating progress this way provides for positive team dynamics and a psychological bang. The State of Maine uses a project management framework that serves as its single source of truth. Everyone knows what’s going on at all times and understands the purpose of what they are doing. The Agile team is continually looking for components that can be reused across other agencies and programs.”

Results:

• Realized positive culture change, leading to more collaborative and supportive teams.
• Increased visibility of Agile benefits across functional groups.
• Standardized methodology across Agile teams and increased innovation and experimentation with new standards and tools.
• Improved traceability of projects.
• Increased visibility and ability to determine root causes of problems and right the course when outcomes are not meeting expectations.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Spread Best Practices With an Agile Center of Excellence – project overview

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Phase 1

Strategically Align the Center of Excellence

Spread Best Practices With an Agile Center of Excellence

Begin by strategically aligning your Center of Excellence

The first step to creating a high-functioning ACE is to create alignment and consensus amongst your key stakeholders regarding its purpose. Engage in a set of activities to drill down into the organization’s goals and objectives in order to create a set of high-level use cases that will evolve into the service offerings of the ACE.

Phase 1 - Strategically Align the CoE

Create strategic alignment between the CoE and the organization’s goals, objectives, and vision. This alignment translates into the CoE mandate intended to enhance the way Agile will enable teams to meet business objectives.

Phase 2 - Standardize the CoEs Service Offerings

Build an engagement plan based on a standardized adoption model to ensure your CoE service offerings are accessible and consistent across the organization. Create and consolidate key performance indicators to measure the CoEs utility and whether or not the expected value is being translated to tangible results.

Phase 3 - Operate the CoE

Operate the CoE to provide service offerings to Agile teams, identify improvements to optimize the function of your Agile teams, and effectively manage and communicate change so that teams can grow within the Agile adoption model and optimize value delivery both within your Agile environment and across functions.

Phase 1 outline

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 1: Strategically align the ACE

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 1

Step 1.1: Determine the vision of your ACE

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Align your ACE with the business.

Then complete these activities…

1.1.1 Optional: Baseline your ACE maturity.

1.1.2 Identify and prioritize organizational business objectives.

1.1.3 Form use cases for the points of alignment between your ACE and business objectives.

1.1.4 Prioritize your ACE stakeholders.

1.1.5 Select a centralized or decentralized model for your ACE.

1.1.6 Staff your ACE strategically.

Step 1.2: Define the service offerings of your ACE

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Align your ACE with its users.

Then complete these activities…

1.2.1 Form the Center of Excellence.

1.2.2 Gather and document your existing Agile practices for the CoE.

1.2.3 Interview stakeholders to align ACE requirements with functional expectations.

1.2.4 Form a solution matrix to organize your pain points and opportunities.

1.2.5 Refine your use cases to identify your ACE functions and services.

1.2.6 Visualize your ACE functions and service offerings with a capability map.

Phase 1 Results & Insights:

• Aligning your ACE with the functional expectations of its users is just as critical as aligning with the business. Invest the time to understand how the ACE fits at all levels of the organization to ensure its highest effectiveness.

Phase 1, Step 1: Determine the vision of your ACE

Phase 1

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

Phase 3

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Activities:

1.1.1 Optional: Baseline your ACE maturity.

1.1.2 Identify and prioritize organizational business objectives.

1.1.3 Form use cases for the points of alignment between your ACE and business objectives.

1.1.4 Prioritize your ACE stakeholders.

1.1.5 Select a centralized or decentralized model for your ACE.

1.1.6 Staff your ACE strategically.

Outcomes:

• Gather your leadership to position the ACE and align it with business priorities.
• Form a set of high-level use cases for services that will support the enablement of business priorities.
• Map the stakeholders of the ACE to visualize expected influence and current support levels for your initiative.

What does an ACE do? Six main functions derived from Info-Tech’s CLAIM+G Framework

1. Learning

• Provide training and development and enable engagement based on identified interaction points to foster organizational growth.

• Promote the use of standardized tooling to improve efficiency and consistency throughout the organization.

• Enable your Agile teams to access subject-matter expertise by facilitating knowledge transfer and documenting good practices.

• Create operational boundaries for Agile teams, and monitor their progress and ability to meet business objectives within these boundaries.

• Demonstrate the value the CoE is providing through effective metric setting and ongoing monitoring of Agile’s effectiveness.

OPTIONAL: If you have an existing ACE, use Info-Tech’s CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to baseline current practices

1.1.1 Existing CoE Maturity Assessment

Purpose

If you already have established an ACE, use Info-Tech’s CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to baseline its current maturity level (this will act as a baseline for comparison after you complete this Blueprint). Assessing your ACEs maturity lets you know where you currently are, and where to look for improvements.

Steps

1. Download the CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to assess the maturity of your ACE.
2. Complete the assessment tool with all members of your ACE team to determine your current Maturity score.
3. Document the results in the ACE Communications Deck.

Document results in the ACE Communications Deck.

INFO-TECH DELIVERABLE

Download the CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool.

Get your Agile leadership together and position the ACE

Align your ACE with your organization’s strategy

This research set will assist you with aligning your ACEs services to the objectives of the business in order to justify the resources and funding required by your Agile program.

Business Objectives → Alignment ←ACE Functions

Business justification to continue to fund a Center of Excellence can be a challenge, especially with traditional thinking and rigid stakeholders. Hit the ground running and show value to your key influencers through business alignment and metrics that will ensure that the ACE is worth continuous investment.

Alignment leads to competitive advantage

The pace of change in customer expectations, competitive landscapes, and business strategy is continuously increasing. It is critical to develop a method to facilitate ongoing alignment to shifting business and development expectations seamlessly and ensure that your Agile teams are able to deliver expected business value.

Activity: Identify and prioritize organizational business objectives

1.1.2 2 Hours

Input

• Organizational business objectives

Output

• Prioritized business objectives

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• Agile leadership group

1. List the primary high-level business objectives that your organization aims to achieve over the course of the following year (focusing on those that ACE can impact/support).
2. Prioritize these business objectives while considering the following:

• Criticality of completion: How critical is the initiative in enabling the business to achieve its goals?
• Transformational impact: To what degree is the foundational structure of the business affected by the initiative (rationale: Agile can support impact on transformational issues)?

Sample Business Objectives:

• Increase customer satisfaction.
• Reduce time-to-market of product releases.
• Foster a strong organizational culture.
• Innovate new feature sets to differentiate product. Increase utilization rates of services.
• Reduce product delivery costs.
• Effectively integrate teams from a merger.
• Offer more training programs for personal development.
• Undergo a digital transformation.

Understand potential hurdles when attempting to align with business objectives

While there is tremendous pressure to align IT functions and the business due to the accelerating pace of change and technology innovation, you need to be aware that there are limitations in achieving this goal. Keep these challenges at the top of mind as you bring together your stakeholders to position the service offerings of your ACE. It is beneficial to make your stakeholders self-aware of these biases as well, so they come to the table with an open mind and are willing to find common ground.

The search for total alignment

There are a plethora of moving pieces within an organization and total alignment is not a plausible outcome.

The aim of a group should not be to achieve total alignment, but rather reframe and consider ways to ensure that stakeholders are content with the ways they interact and that misalignment does not occur due to transparency or communication issues.

“The business” implies unity

While it may seem like the business is one unified body, the reality is that the business can include individuals or groups (CEO, CFO, IT, etc.) with conflicting priorities. While there are shared business goals, these entities may all have competing visions of how to achieve them. Alignment means compromise and agreement more than it means accommodating all competing views.

Cost vs. reputation

There is a political component to alignment, and sometimes individual aspirations can impede collective gain.

While the business side may be concerned with cost, those on the IT side of things can be concerned with taking on career-defining projects to bolster their own credentials. This conflict can lead to serious breakdowns in alignment.

Panera Bread used Agile to adapt to changing business needs

CASE STUDY

Industry Food Services

Source Scott Ambler and Associates, Case Study

Challenge

Being in an industry with high competition, Panera Bread needed to improve its ability to quickly deliver desired features to end customers and adapt to changing business demands from high internal growth.

Solution

Panera Bread engaged in an Agile transformation through a mixture of Agile coaching and workshops, absorbing best practices from these engagements to drive Agile delivery frameworks across the enterprise.

Results

Adopting Agile delivery practices resulted in increased frequency of solution delivery, improving the relationship between IT and the business. Business satisfaction increased both with the development process and the outcomes from delivery.

The transparency that was needed to achieve alignment to rapidly changing business needs resulted in improved communication and broad-scale reduced risk for the organization.

"Agile delivery changed perception entirely by building a level of transparency and accountability into not just our software development projects, but also in our everyday working relationships with our business stakeholders. The credibility gains this has provided our IT team has been immeasurable and immediate."

– Mike Nettles, VP IT Process and Architecture, Panera Bread

Use Info-Tech’s CoE Operating Model to define the service offerings of your ACE

Understand where your inputs and outputs lie to create an accessible set of service offerings for your Agile teams.

Functional Input

• Application Development
• Project Management
• CIO
• Enterprise Architecture
• Data Management
• Security
• Infrastructure & Operations
• Who else?

Input arrows represent functional group needs, feedback from Agile teams, and collaboration with other CoEs and CoPs

Output arrows represent the services the CoE delivers and the benefits realized across the organization.

ACE Operating Model: Governance & Metrics

Governance & Metrics involves enabling success through the management of the ACEs resources and services, and ensuring that organizational structures evolve in concert with Agile growth and maturity. Your focus should be on governing, measuring, implementing, and empowering improvements.

Effective governance will function to ensure the long-term effectiveness and viability of your ACE. Changes and improvements will happen continuously and you need a way to decide which to adopt as best practices.

"Organizations have lengthy policies and procedures (e.g. code deployment, systems design, how requirements are gathered in a traditional setting) that need to be addressed when starting to implement an Agile Center of Excellence. Legacy ideas that end up having legacy policy are the ones that are going to create bottlenecks, waste resources, and disrupt your progress." – Doug Birgfeld, Senior Partner, Agile Wave

Governance & Metrics

• Manage organizational Agile standards, policies, and procedures.
• Define organizational boundaries based on regulatory, compliance, and cultural requirements.
• Ensure ongoing alignment of service offerings with business objectives.
• Adapt organizational change management policies to reflect Agile practices.
• CoE governance functions include:
  • Policy Management
  • Change Management
  • Risk Management
  • Stakeholder Management
  • Metrics/Feedback Monitoring

ACE Operating Model: Services

Services refers to the ability to deliver resourcing, guidance, and assistance across all Agile teams. By creating a set of shared services, you enable broad access to specialized resources, knowledge, and insights that will effectively scale to more teams and departments as Agile matures in your organization.

A Services model:

• Supports the organization by standardizing and centralizing service offerings, ensuring consistency of service delivery and accessibility across functional groups.
• Provides a mechanism for efficient knowledge transfer and on-demand support.
• Helps to drive productivity and project efficiencies through the organization by disseminating best practices.

Services

• Provide reference, support, and re-assurance to implement and adapt organizational best practices.
• Interface relevant parties and facilitate knowledge transfer through shared learning and communities of practice.
• Enable agreed-upon service levels through standardized support structures.
• Shared services functions include:
  • Engagement Planning
  • Knowledge Management
  • Subject-Matter Expertise
  • Agile Team Evaluation

ACE Operating Model: Technology

Technology refers to a broad range of supporting tools to enable employees to complete their day-to-day tasks and effectively report on their outcomes. The key to technological support is to strike the right balance between flexibility and control based on your organization's internal and external constraints (policy, equipment, people, regulatory, etc.).

"We sometimes forget the obvious truth that technology provides no value of its own; it is the application of technology to business opportunities that produces return on investment." – Robert McDowell, Author, In Search of Business Value

Technology

• Provide common software tools to enable alignment to organizational best practices.
• Enable access to locally desired tools while considering organizational, technical, and scaling constraints.
• Enable communication with a technical subject matter expert (SME).
• Enable reporting consistency through training and maintenance of reporting mechanisms.
• Technology functions can include:
  • Vendor Management
  • Application Support
  • Tooling Standards
  • Tooling Use Cases

ACE Operating Model: Staff

Staff is all about empowerment. The ACE should support and facilitate the sharing of ideas and knowledge sharing. Create processes and spaces where people are encouraged to come together, learn from, and share with each other. This setting will bring up new ideas to enhance productivity and efficiency in day-to-day activities while maintaining alignment with business objectives.

"An Agile CoE is legitimized by its ability to create a space where people can come together, share, and learn from one another. By empowering teams to grow by themselves and then re-connect with each other you allow the creativity of your employees to flow back into the CoE." – Anonymous, Founder, Agile consultancy group

Staff

• Develop and provide training and day-to-day coaching that are aligned with organizational engagement and growth plans.
• Include workflow change management to assist traditional roles with accommodating Agile practices.
• Support the facilitation of knowledge transfer from localized Agile teams into other areas of the organization.
• Achieve team buy-in and engagement with ACE services and capabilities. Provide a forum for collaboration and innovation.
• People functions can include:
  • Onboarding
  • Coaching
  • Learning Facilitation

Form use cases to align your ACE with business objectives

What is a use case?

A use case tells a story about how a system will be used to achieve a goal from the perspective of a user of that system. The people or other systems that interact with the use case are called “actors.” Use cases describe what a system must be able to do, not how it will do it.

How does a use case play a role in building your ACE?

Use cases are used to guide design by allowing you to highlight the intended function of a service provided by the Center of Excellence while maintaining a business focus. Jumping too quickly to a solution without fully understanding user and business needs leads to the loss of stakeholder buy-in and the Centers of Excellence rejection by teams.

Hypothesized ACE user needs →Use Case←Business objective

Activity: Form use cases for the points of alignment between your ACE and business objectives

1.1.3 2 Hours

Input

• Prioritized business objectives
• ACE functions

Output

• ACE use cases

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• Agile leadership group

1. Using your prioritized business objectives and the six functions of a CoE, create high-level use cases for each point of alignment that describe how the Center of Excellence will better facilitate the realization of that business objective.
2. For each use case, define the following:
   • Name: Generalized title for the use case.
   • Description: A high-level description of the expected CoE action.

Activity: Form use cases for the points of alignment between your ACE and business objectives (continued)

1.1.3 2 Hours

Your goal should be to keep these as high level and generally applicable as possible as they provide an initial framework to further develop your service offerings. Begin to talk about the ways in which the ACE can support the realization of your business objectives and what those interactions may look like to customers of the ACE.

Involve all relevant stakeholders to discuss the organizational goals and objectives of your ACE

Avoid the rifts in stakeholder representation by ensuring you involve the relevant parties. Without representation and buy-in from all interested parties, your ACE may omit and fail to meet long-term organizational goals.

By ensuring every group receives representation, your service offerings will speak for the broad organization and in turn meet the needs of the organization as a whole.

• Business Units: Any functional groups that will be expected to engage with the ACE in order to achieve their business objectives.
• Team Leads: Representation from the internal Agile community who is aware of the backgrounds, capabilities, and environments of their respective Agile teams.
• Executive Sponsors: Those expected to evangelize and set the tone and direction for the ACE within the executive ranks of the organization. These roles are critical in gaining buy-in and maintaining momentum for ACE initiatives.

Organization

• ACE
  • Executive Sponsors
  • Team Leads
  • Business Units

Activity: Prioritize your ACE stakeholders

1.1.4 1 Hour

Input

• Prioritized business objectives

Output

• Prioritized list of stakeholders

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• Agile leadership group

1. Using your prioritized business objectives, brainstorm, as a group, the potential list of stakeholders (representatives from business units, team leads, and executive sponsors) that would need to be involved in setting the tone and direction of your ACE.
2. Evaluate each stakeholder in terms of power, involvement, impact, and support.

• Power: How much influence does the stakeholder have? Enough to drive the CoE forward or into the ground?
• Involvement: How interested is the stakeholder? How involved is the stakeholder in the project already?
• Impact: To what degree will the stakeholder be impacted? Will this significantly change how they do their job?
• Support: Is the stakeholder a supporter of the project? Neutral? A resister?

Prioritize your ACE stakeholders (continued)

1.1.4 1 Hour

Should your ACE be Centralized or Decentralized?

An ACE can be organized differently depending on your organization’s specific needs and culture.

The SAFe Model:©

“For smaller enterprises, a single centralized [ACE] can balance speed with economies of scale. However, in larger enterprises—typically those with more than 500 – 1,000 practitioners—it’s useful to consider employing either a decentralized model or a hub-and-spoke model.”

© Scaled Agile, Inc.

The Spotify Model:

Spotify avoids using an ACE and instead spreads agile practices using Squads, Tribes, Chapters, Guilds, etc.

It can be a challenging model to adopt because it is constantly changing, and must be fundamentally supported by your organization’s culture. (Linders, Ben. “Don't Copy the Spotify Model.” InfoQ.com. 6 Oct. 2016.)

Detailed analysis of The Spotify Model is out of scope for this Blueprint.

Activity: Select a Centralized or Decentralized ACE Model

1.1.5 30 minutes

Input

• Prioritized business objectives
• Use Cases
• Organization qualities

Output

• Centralized or decentralized ACE model

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• Agile leadership group

1. Using your prioritized business objectives, your ACE use cases, your organization size, structure, and culture, brainstorm the relative pros and cons of a centralized vs decentralized ACE model.
2. Consider this: to improve understanding and acceptance, ask participants who prefer a centralized model to brainstorm the pros and cons of a decentralized model, and vice-versa.
3. Collectively decide whether your ACE should be centralized, decentralized or hub-and-spoke and document it.

SELECTED MODEL: Centralized ACE

Activity: Staff your ACE strategically

1.1.6 1 Hour

Input

• List of potential ACE staff

Output

• Rated list of ACE staff

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• Agile leadership group

1. Identify your list of potential ACE staff (this may be a combination of full time and contract staff).
2. Add/modify/delete the rating criteria to meet your specific needs.
3. Discuss and adjust the relative weightings of the rating criteria to best suit your organization’s needs.
4. Rate each potential staff member and compare results to determine the best suited staff for your ACE.

Phase 1, Step 2: Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 1

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

Phase 3

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Activities:

1.2.1 Form the Center of Excellence.

1.2.2 Gather and document your existing Agile practices for the CoE.

1.2.3 Interview stakeholders to align ACE requirements with functional expectations.

1.2.4 Form a solution matrix to organize your pain points and opportunities.

1.2.5 Refine your use cases to identify your ACE functions and services.

1.2.6 Visualize your ACE functions and service offerings with a capability map.

Outcomes:

• Collect data regarding the functional expectations of the Agile teams.
• Refine your business-aligned use cases with your collected data to achieve both business and functional alignment.
• Create a capability map that visualizes and prioritizes your key service offerings.

Structure your ACE with representation from all of your key stakeholders

Now that you have a prioritized list of stakeholders, use their influence to position the ACE to ensure maximum representation with minimal bottlenecks.

By operating within a group of your key players, you can legitimize your Center of Excellence by propagating the needs and interests of those who interface and evangelize the CoE within the larger organization.

The group of key stakeholders will extend the business alignment you achieved earlier by refining your service offerings to meet the needs of the ACEs customers. Multiple representations at the table will generate a wide arrangement of valuable insights and perspectives.

Info-Tech Insight

While holistic representation is necessary, ensure that the list is not too comprehensive and will not lead to progress roadblocks. The goal is to ensure that all factors relevant to the organization are represented; too many conflicting opinions may create an obstruction moving forward.

ACE

• Executive Sponsors
• Team Leads
• Business Units

Determine how you will fund your ACE

Choose the ACE funding model which is most aligned to your current system based on the scenarios provided below. Both models will offer the necessary support to ensure the success of your Agile program going forward.

Info-Tech Insight

Your funding model may add additional key influencers into the mix. After you choose your funding model, ensure that you review your stakeholder map and add anyone who will have a direct impact in the viability and stability of your ACE.

Determine how you will govern your ACE

An Agile Center of Excellence is unique in the way you must govern the actions of its customers. Enable “flexible governance” to ensure that Agile teams have the ability to locally optimize and innovate while still operating within expected boundaries.

ACE Governing Body

↑ Agile Team → ACE ← Agile Team ↑

Who should take on the governance role?

The governing body can be the existing executive or standing committees, or a newly formed committee involving your key ACE influencers and stakeholders.

Flexible governance means that your ACE set boundaries based on your cultural, regulatory, and compliance requirements, and your governance group monitors your Agile teams’ adherence to these boundaries.

Governing Body Responsibilities

• Review and approve ACE strategy annually and ensure that it is aligned with current business strategy.
• Provide detailed quality information for board members.
• Ensure that the ACE is adequately resourced and that the organization has the capacity to deliver the service offerings.
• Assure that the ACE is delivering benefits and achieving targets.
• Assure that the record keeping and reporting systems are capable of providing the information needed to properly assess the quality of service.

Modify your resourcing strategy based on organizational need

Your Agile Center of Excellence can be organized either in a dedicated or a virtual configuration, depending on your company’s organizational structure and complexity.

There is no right answer to how your Center of Excellence should be resourced. Consider your existing organizational structure and culture, the quality of relationships between functional groups, and the typical budgetary factors that would weigh on choosing between a virtual and dedicated CoE structure.

Staffing the ACE: Understand virtual versus dedicated ACE organizational models

Virtual CoE

• Responsibilities for CoE are split and distributed throughout departments on a part-time basis.
• CoE members from the PMO report to apps director who also functions as the CoE lead on a part-time basis.

• Requires re-organization and dedicated full-time staff to run the CoE with clear lines of responsibility and accountability.
• Hiring or developing highly skilled employees who have a sole function to facilitate and monitor quality best practices within the IT department may be necessary.

Activity: Form the Center of Excellence

1.2.1 1 Hour

Input

• N/A

Output

• ACE governance and resourcing plan

Materials

• Whiteboard

Participants

• Agile leadership group

1. As a group, discuss if there is an existing body that would be able to govern the Center of Excellence. This body will monitor progress on an ongoing basis and assess any change requests that would impact the CoEs operation or goals.

• List current governing bodies that are closely aligned with your current Agile environment and determine if the group could take on additional responsibilities.
• Alternatively, identify individuals who could form a new ACE governing body.

Document results in the ACE Communications Deck.

Leverage your existing Agile practices and SMEs when establishing the ACE

The synergy between Agile and CoE relies on its ability to build on existing best practices. Agile cannot grow without a solid foundation. ACE gives you the way to disseminate these practices and facilitate knowledge transfer from a centralized sharing environment. As part of defining your service offerings, engage with stakeholders across the organization to evaluate what is already documented so that it can be accommodated in the ACE.

Documentation

• Are there any existing templates that can be leveraged (e.g. resource planning, sprint planning)?
• Are there any existing process documents that can be leveraged (e.g. SIPOC, program frameworks)?
• Are there any existing standards documents the CoE can incorporate (e.g. policies, procedures, guidelines)?

SMEs

• Interview existing subject-matter experts that can give you an idea of your current pains and opportunities.
• You already have feedback from those in your workshop group, so think about the rest of the organization:
  • Agile practitioners
  • Business stakeholders
  • Operations
  • Any other parties not represented in the workshop group

Metrics

• What are the current metrics being used to measure the success of Agile teams?
• What metrics are currently being used to measure the completion of business objectives?
• What tools or mediums are currently used for recording and communicating metrics?

Info-Tech Insight

When considering existing practices, it is important to evaluate the level of adherence to these practices. If they have been efficiently utilized, injecting them into ACE becomes an obvious decision. If they have been underutilized, however, it is important to understand why this occurred and discuss how you can drive higher adherence.

Examples of existing documents to leverage

People

• Agile onboarding planning documents
• Agile training documents
• Organizational Agile manifesto
• Team performance metrics dashboard
• Stakeholder engagement and communication plan
• Development team engagement plan
• Organizational design and structure
• Roles and responsibilities chart (i.e. RACI)
• Compensation plan Resourcing plan

Process

• Tailored Scrum process
• Requirements gathering process
• Quality stage-gate checklist (including definitions of ready and done)
• Business requirements document
• Use case document
• Business process diagrams
• Entity relationship diagrams
• Data flow diagrams
• Solution or system architecture
• Application documentation for deployment
• Organizational and user change management plan
• Disaster recovery and rollback process
• Test case templates

Technology

• Code review policies and procedures
• Systems design policies
• Build, test, deploy, and rollback scripts
• Coding guidelines
• Data governance and management policies
• Data definition and glossary
• Request for proposals (RFPs)
• Development tool standards and licensing agreements
• Permission to development, testing, staging, and production environments
• Application, system, and data integration policies

Build upon the lessons learned from your Agile pilots

The success of your Center of Excellence relies on the ability to build sound best practices within your organization’s context. Use your previous lessons learned and growing pains as shared knowledge of past Agile implementations within the ACE.

Implement Agile Practices That Work

Draw on the experiences of your initial pilot where you learned how to adapt the Agile manifesto and practices to your specific context. These lessons will help onboard new teams to Agile since they will likely experience some of the same challenges.

Download

Documents for review include:

• Tailored Scrum Process
• Agile Pilot Metrics
• Info-Tech’s Agile Pilot Playbook

Enable Organization-Wide Collaboration by Scaling Agile

Draw on previous scaling Agile experiences to help understand how to interface, facilitate, and orchestrate cross-functional teams and stakeholders for large and complex projects. These lessons will help your ACE teams develop collaboration and problem-solving techniques involving roles with different priorities and lines of thinking.

Download

Documents for review include:

• Agile Program Framework
• Agile Pilot Program Metrics
• Scaled Agile Development Process
• Info-Tech’s Scaling Agile Playbook

Activity: Gather and document your existing Agile practices for the CoE

1.2.2 Variable time commitment based on current documentation state

Input

• Existing practices

Output

• Practices categorized within operating model

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• ACE team

1. Compile a list of existing practices that will be shared by the Center of Excellence. Consider any documents, templates, or tools that are used regularly by Agile teams.
2. Evaluate the level of adherence to use of the practices (whether the practice is complied with regularly or not) with a high, medium, or low. Low compliance will need a root-cause analysis to understand why and how to remedy the situation.
3. Determine the best fit for each practice under the ACE operational model.

Activity: Interview stakeholders to understand the ACE functional expectations

1.2.3 30-60 Minutes per interview

Interview Stakeholders (from both Agile teams and functional areas) on their needs from the ACE. Ensure you capture both pain points and opportunities. Capture these as either Common Agile needs or Functional needs. Document using the tables below:

PMO Needs

• Better understanding of Agile process
• Understanding role of PM in Agile
• Project status reports that determine current level of project risk
• How does project governance apply on Agile projects
• What deliverables/artifacts are produced by Agile projects and when are they completed

Operations Needs

• Alignment on approaches for doing releases
• Impact of Agile on change management and support desk processes
• How and when will installation and operation instructions be available in Agile

Activity: Form a solution matrix to organize your pain points and opportunities

1.2.4 Half day

Input

• Identified requirements

Output

• Classified pains and opportunities

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• ACE team

1. Review the listed pain points from the data gathering process. Sort the pain points on sticky notes into technology, governance, people, and shared services.
2. Consider opportunities under each defining element based on the identified business requirements.
3. Document your findings.
4. Discuss the results with the project team and prioritize the opportunities.
   • Where do the most pains occur?
   • What opportunities exist to alleviate pains?

Document results in the ACE Communications Deck.

Activity: Refine your use cases to identify your ACE functions and services

1.2.5 1 Hour

Input

• Use cases from activity 1.1.2

Output

• Refined use cases based on data collection

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• ACE team

1. Refine your initial use cases for the points of alignment between your ACE and business objectives using your classified pain points and opportunities.
2. Add use cases to address newly realized pain points.
3. Determine the functions and services the CoE can offer to address the identified requirements.
4. Evaluate the outputs in the form of realized benefits and extracted inefficiencies.

Possible ACE use cases:

• Policy Management
• Change Management
• Risk Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Engagement Planning
• Knowledge Management
• Subject-Matter Expertise
• Agile Team Evaluation
• Operations Support
• Onboarding
• Coaching
• Learning Facilitation
• Communications Training
• Vendor Management
• Application Support
• Tooling Standards

Document results in the ACE Communications Deck.

Activity: Visualize your ACE functions and service offerings with a capability map

1.2.6 1 Hour

Input

• Use cases from activity 1.2.4

Output

• ACE capability map

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• ACE team

1. Review the refined and categorized list of service offerings.
2. Determine how these new capabilities will add, remove, or enhance your existing service and capabilities.
3. Categorize the capabilities into the following groups:

• Governance and Metrics
• Services
• Staff
• Technology

Document results in the ACE Communications Deck.

Activity: Visualize your ACE functions and service offerings with a capability map (continued)

Governance

Policy Management (Medium Potential)

Change Management (High Potential)

Risk Management (High Potential)

Stakeholder Management (High Potential)

Metrics/Feedback Monitoring (High Potential)

Shared Services

Engagement Planning (High Potential)

Knowledge Management (High Potential)

Subject-Matter Expertise (High Potential)

Agile Team Evaluation (High Potential)

Operations Support (High Potential)

People

Onboarding (Medium Potential)

Coaching (High Potential)

Learning Facilitation (High Potential)

Internal Certification Program (Low Potential)

Communications Training (Medium Potential)

Technology

Vendor Management (Medium Potential)

Application Support (Low Potential)

Tooling Standards (High Potential)

Checkpoint: Are you ready to standardize your CoEs service offerings?

Phase 1

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

Self-Auditing Guidelines

• Have you identified and prioritized the key business objectives for the upcoming year that the ACE will align with?
• Do you have a high-level set of use cases for points of alignment between your ACE and business objectives?
• Have you mapped your stakeholders and identified the key players that will have an influence over the future success of your ACE?
• Have you identified how your organization will fund, resource, and govern the ACE?
• Have you collected data to understand the functional expectations of the users the ACE is intended to serve?
• Have you refined your use cases to align with both business objectives and functional expectations?

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

1.1.2 Identify and prioritize organizational business objectives

Our analyst team will help you organize and prioritize your business objectives for the year in order to ensure that the service offerings the ACE offers are delivering consistent business value.

1.1.3 Form use cases for the points of alignment between your ACE and business objectives

Our analyst team will help you turn your prioritized business objectives into a set of high-level use cases that will provide the foundation for defining user-aligned services.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

1.1.4 Prioritize your ACE stakeholders

Our analysts will walk you through an exercise of mapping and prioritizing your Centers of Excellence stakeholders based on impact and power within so you can ensure appropriate presentation of interests within the organization.

1.2.4 Form a solution matrix to organize your pain points and opportunities

Our analyst team will help you solidify the direction of your Center of Excellence by overlaying your identified needs, pain points, and potential opportunities in a matrix guided by Info-Tech’s CoE operating model.

1.2.5 Refine your use cases to identify your ACE functions and services

Our analyst team will help you further refine your business-aligned use cases with the functional expectations from your Agile teams and stakeholders, ensuring the ACEs long-term utility.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

1.2.6 Visualize your ACE functions and service offerings with a capability map

Our analysts will walk you through creating your Agile Centers of Excellence capability map and help you to prioritize which service offerings are critical to the success of your Agile teams in meeting their objectives.

Phase 2

Standardize the Centers of Excellence Service Offerings

Spread Best Practices With an Agile Center of Excellence

The ACE needs to ensure consistency in service delivery

Now that you have aligned the CoE to the business and functional expectations, you need to ensure its service offerings are consistently accessible. To effectively ensure accessibility and delegation of shared services in an efficient way, the CoE needs to have a consistent framework to deliver its services.

Phase 1 - Strategically Align the CoE

Create strategic alignment between the CoE and the organization’s goals, objectives, and vision. This alignment translates into the CoE mandate intended to enhance the way Agile will enable teams to meet business objectives.

Phase 2 - Standardize the CoEs Service Offerings

Build an engagement plan based on a standardized adoption model to ensure your CoE service offerings are accessible and consistent across the organization. Create and consolidate key performance indicators to measure the CoEs utility and whether or not the expected value is being translated to tangible results.

Phase 3 - Operate the CoE

Operate the CoE to provide service offerings to Agile teams, identify improvements to optimize the function of your Agile teams, and effectively manage and communicate change so that teams can grow within the Agile adoption model and optimize value delivery both within your Agile environment and across functions.

Phase 2 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 2: Standardize the CoEs Service Offerings

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 2

Step 2.1: Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Dissect the key attributes of Agile adoption.

Then complete these activities…

2.1.1 Further categorize your use cases within the Agile adoption model.

Step 2.2: Create an ACE engagement plan

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Form engagement plans for your Agile teams.

Then complete these activities…

2.2.1 Create an engagement plan for each level of adoption.

Step 2.3: Define metrics to measure success

Finalize phase deliverable:

• Discuss effective ACE metrics.

Then complete these activities…

2.3.1 Collect existing team-level metrics.

2.3.2 Define metrics that align with your Agile business objectives.

2.3.3 Define target ACE performance metrics.

2.3.4 Define Agile adoption metrics.

2.3.5 Consolidate metrics for stakeholder impact.

2.3.6 Use Info-Tech’s ACE Benefits Tracking Tool to monitor, evaluate, refine, and ensure continued business value.

Phase 2 Results & Insights:

• Standardizing your service offerings allows you to have direct influence on the dissemination of best practices.

Phase 2, Step 1: Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

Phase 1

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

Phase 3

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Activities:

2.1.1 Further categorize your use cases within the Agile adoption model.

Outcomes:

• Refine your previously determined use cases within the Agile adoption model to ensure that teams can be assisted at any level of Agile adoption.
• Understand the key attributes of Agile adoption and how they impact success.

Understand the implementation challenges that the ACE may face

Culture clash between ACE and larger organization

It is important to carefully consider the compatibility between the current organizational culture and Agile moving forward. Agile compels empowered teams, meritocracy, and broad collaboration for success; while typical organizational structures are siloed and hierarchical and decisions are delegated from the top down.

This is not to say that the culture of the ACE has to match the larger organizational culture; part of the overarching aim of the ACE is to evolve the current organizational culture for the better. The point is to ensure you enable a smooth transition with sufficient management support and a team of Agile champions.

The changing role of middle management

Very similar to the culture clash challenge, cultural rigidity in how middle managers operate (performance review, human resource management, etc.) can cause cultural rejection. They need to become enablers for high performance and give their teams the sufficient tools, skills, and opportunities to succeed and excel.

What impedes Agile adoption?

Based on a global survey of Agile practitioners (N=1,319)*:

52% Organizational culture at odds with agile values

44% Inadequate management support and sponsorship

48% General organization resistance to change

*Respondents were able to make multiple selections

(13th Annual State of Agile Report, VersionOne, 2019)

Build competency and trust through a structured Agile adoption plan

The reality of cultural incompatibility between Agile and traditional organization structures necessitates a structured adoption plan. Systematically build competency so teams can consistently achieve project success and solidify trust in your teams’ ability to meet business needs with Agile.

By incrementally gaining the trust of management as you build up your Agile capabilities, you enable a smooth cultural transition to an environment where teams are empowered, adapt quickly to changing needs, and are trusted to innovate and make successes out of their failures.

Optimized value delivery occurs when there is a direct relationship between competency and trust. There will be unrealized value when competency or trust outweigh the other. That value loss increases as either dimension of adoption continues to grow faster than the other.

Use Info-Tech’s Practice Adoption Optimization Model to systematically increase your teams’ ability to deliver

Using Info-Tech’s Practice adoption optimization model will ensure you incrementally build competency and trust to optimize your value delivery.

Agile adoption at its core, is about building social capital. Your level of trust with key influencers increases as you continuously enhance your capabilities, enabling the necessary cultural changes away from traditional organizational structures.

Trust & Competency ↓

DEFINE

Begin to document your development workflow or value chain, implement a tracking system for KPIs, and start gathering metrics and reporting them transparently to the appropriate stakeholders.

ITERATE

Use collected metrics and retrospectives to stabilize team performance by reducing areas of variability in your workflow and increasing the consistency at which targets are met.

COLLABORATE

Use information to support changes and adopt appropriate practices to make incremental improvements to the existing environment.

EMPOWER

Drive behavioral and cultural changes that will empower teams to be accountable for their own success and learning.

INNOVATE

Use your built-up trust and support practice innovation, driving the definition and adoption of new practices.

Review these key attributes of Agile adoption

Agile adoption is unique to every organization. Consider these key attributes within your own organizational context when thinking about levels of Agile adoption.

Adoption Attributes

Team Organization

Considers the degree to which teams are able to self-organize based on internal organizational structures (hierarchy vs. meritocracy) and inter-team capabilities.

Team Coordination

Considers the degree to which teams can coordinate, both within and across functions.

Business Alignment

Considers the degree to which teams can understand and/or map to business objectives.

Coaching

Considers what kind of coaching/training is offered and how accessible the training is.

Empowerment

Considers the degree to which teams are able and capable to address project, process, and technical challenges without significant burden from process controls and bureaucracy.

Failure Tolerance

Considers the degree to which stakeholders are risk tolerant and if teams are capable of turning failures into learning outcomes.

Why are these important?

These key attributes function as qualities or characteristics that, when improved, will successively increase the degree to which the business trusts your Agile teams’ ability to meet their objectives.

Systematically improving these attributes as you graduate levels of the adoption model allows the business to acclimatize to the increased capability the Agile team is offering, and the risk of culture clash with the larger organization decreases.

Start to consider at what level of adoption each of your service offerings become useful. This will allow you to standardize the way your Agile teams interact with the CoE.

Activity: Further categorize your use cases within the Agile adoption model

2.1.1 1.5 Hours

Input

• List of service offerings

Output

• Service offerings categorized within adoption model

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Team

1. Gather the list of your categorized use cases.
2. Based on Info-Tech’s Agile adoption model, categorize which use cases would be useful to help the Agile team graduate to the next level of adoption.
   • Conceptualize: Begin to document your workflow or value chain, implement a tracking system for KPIs, and gather metrics and report them transparently to the appropriate stakeholders.
   • Iterate: Use collected metrics to stabilize team performance by reducing areas of variability in your workflow and increasing the consistency at which targets are met.
   • Collaborate: Use information to drive changes and adopt appropriate Agile practices to make incremental improvements to the existing environment.
   • Empower: Drive behavioral and cultural changes that will empower teams to be accountable for their own successes given the appropriate resources.
   • Innovate: Use your built-up trust to begin to make calculated risks and innovate more, driving new best practices into the CoE.

The same service offering could be offered at different levels of adoption. In these cases, you will need to re-visit the use case and differentiate how the service (if at all) will be delivered at different levels of adoption.

3. Use this opportunity to brainstorm alternative or new use cases for any gaps identified. It is the CoEs goal to assist teams at every level of adoption to meet their business objectives. Use a different colored sticky note for these so you can re-visit and map out their inputs, outputs, metrics, etc.

Activity: Further categorize your use cases within the Agile adoption model (continued)

2.1.1 1.5 Hours

Input

• List of service offerings

Output

• Service offerings categorized within adoption model

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Team

Example:

Learning Facilitation

Draw on the service offerings identified in activity 1.2.4

Phase 2, Step 2: Create an ACE engagement plan

Phase 1

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

Phase 3

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Activities:

2.2.1 Create an engagement plan for each level of adoption.

Outcomes:

• Understand the importance of aligning with the functional expectations of your ACE customers.
• Understand the relationship between engagement and continuous improvement.
• Create an engagement plan for each level of adoption to standardize the way customers interact with the ACE.

Enable Agile teams to interface with ACE service offerings to meet their business objectives

A Center of Excellence aligned with your service offerings is only valuable if your CoEs customers can effectively access those services. At this stage, you have invested in ensuring that your CoE aligns to your business objectives and that your service offerings align to its customers. Now you need to ensure that these services are accessible in the day-to-day operation of your Agile teams.

Engagement Process → Service Offering

Use backwards induction from your delivery method to the service offering. This is an effective method to determine the optimal engagement action for the CoE, as it considers the end customer as the driver for best action for every possible situation.

Info-Tech Insight

Your engagement process should be largely informed by your ACE users. Teams have constraints as well as in-the-trenches concerns and issues. If your service offerings don’t account for these, it can lead to rejection of the culture you are trying to inspire.

Show the way, do not dictate

Do not fix problems for your Agile teams, give them the tools and knowledge to fix the problems themselves.

Facilitate learning to drive success

A primary function of your ACE is to transfer knowledge to Agile teams to increase their capability to achieve desired outcomes.

While this can take the form of coaching, training sessions, libraries, and wikis, a critical component of ACE is creating interactions where individuals from Agile teams can come together and share their knowledge.

Ideas come from different experiences. By creating communities of practice (CoP) around topics that the ACE is tasked with supporting (e.g. Agile business analysts), you foster social learning and decrease the likelihood that change will result in some sort of cultural rejection.

Consider whether creating CoPs would be beneficial in your organization’s context.

"Communities of practice are a practical way to frame the task of managing knowledge. They provide a concrete organizational infrastructure for realizing the dream of a learning organization." – Etienne Wenger, Digital Habitats: Stewarding technology for communities

A lack of top-down support will result in your ACE being underutilized

Top-down support is critical to validate the CoE to its customers and ensure they feel compelled to engage with its services. Relevancy is a real concern for the long-term viability of a CoE and championing its use from a position of authority will legitimize its function and deter its fading from relevancy of day-to-day use for Agile teams.

Although you are aligning your engagement processes to the customers of your Agile Center of Excellence, you still need your key influencers to champion its lasting organizational relevancy. Don’t let your employees think the ACE is just a coordinating body or a committee that is convenient but non-essential – make sure they know that it drives their own personal growth and makes everyone better as a collective.

"Even if a CoE is positioned to meet a real organizational need, without some measure of top-down support, it faces an uphill battle to remain relevant and avoid becoming simply one more committee in the eyes of the wider organization. Support from the highest levels of the organization help fight the tendency of the larger organization to view the CoE as a committee with no teeth and tip the scales toward relevancy for the CoE." – Joe Shepley, VP and Practice Lead, Doculabs

Info-Tech Insight

Stimulate top-down support with internal certifications. This allows your employees to gain accreditation while at the same time encouraging top-down support and creating a compliance check for the continual delivery and acknowledgement of your evolving best practices.

Ensure that best practices and lessons learned are injected back into the ACE

For your employees to continuously improve, so must the Center of Excellence. Ensure the ACE has the appropriate mechanisms to absorb and disseminate best practices that emerge from knowledge transfer facilitation events.

Facilitated Learning Session →Was the localized adaption well received by others in similar roles? →Document Localized Adaptation →Is there broad applicability and benefit to the proposed innovation? →CoE Absorbs as Best Practice

Continuous improvement starts with the CoE

While facilitating knowledge transfer is key, it is even more important that the Center of Excellence can take localized adaptations from Agile teams and standardize them as best practices when well received. If an individual were to leave without sharing their knowledge, the CoE and the larger organization will lose that knowledge and potential innovation opportunities.

Experience matters

To organically grow your ACE and be cost effective, you want your teams to continuously improve and to share that knowledge. As individual team members develop and climb the adoption model, they should participate as coaches and champions for less experienced groups so that their knowledge is reaching the widest audience possible.

Case study: Agile learning at Spotify

CASE STUDY

Industry Digital Media

Source Henrik Kniberg & Anders Ivarsson, 2012

Methods of Agile learning at Spotify

Spotify has continuously introduced innovative techniques to facilitate learning and ensure that that knowledge gets injected back into the organization. Some examples are the following:

• Hack days: Self-organizing teams, referred to as squads, come together, try new ideas, and share them with their co-workers. This facilitates a way to stay up to date with new tools and techniques and land new product innovations.
• Coaching: Every squad has access to an Agile coach to help inject best practices into their workflow – coaches run retrospectives, sprint planning meetings, facilitate one-on-one coaching, etc.
• Tribes: Collections of squads that hold regular gatherings to show the rest of the tribe what they’ve been working on so others can learn from what they are doing.
• Chapters: People with similar skills within a tribe come together to discuss their area of expertise and their specific challenges.
• Guilds: A wide-reaching community of interest where members from different tribes can come together to share knowledge, tools, and codes, and practice (e.g. a tester guild, an Agile coaching guild).

"As an example of guild work, we recently had a ‘Web Guild Unconference,’ an open space event where all web developers at Spotify gathered up in Stockholm to discuss challenges and solutions within their field."

Activity: Create an engagement plan for each level of adoption

2.2.1 30 Minutes per role

Input

• Categorized use cases

Output

• Role-based engagement plans

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Team

1. On the top bar, define the role you are developing the engagement plan for. This will give you the ability to standardize service delivery across all individuals in similar roles.
2. Import your categorized service offerings for each level of adoption that you think are applicable to the given role.
3. Using backwards induction, determine the engagement processes that will ensure that those service offerings are accessible and fit the day-to-day operations of the role.
4. Fill in the template available on the next slide with each role’s engagement plan.

Document results in the ACE Communications Deck.

Example engagement plan: Developer

2.2.1 30 Minutes per role

Example engagement plan: Tester

2.2.1 30 Minutes per role

Example engagement plan: Product Owner

2.2.1 30 Minutes per role

Phase 2, Step 3: Define metrics to measure success

Phase 1

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

Phase 3

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Activities:

2.3.1 Define existing team-level metrics.

2.3.2 Define metrics that align with your Agile business objectives.

2.3.3 Define target ACE performance metrics.

2.3.4 Define Agile adoption metrics.

2.3.5 Consolidate your metrics for stakeholder impact.

2.3.6 Use Info-Tech’s ACE Benefits Tracking Tool to monitor, evaluate, refine, and ensure continued business value.

Outcomes:

• Understand the importance of aligning with the functional expectations of your ACE customers.
• Understand the relationship between engagement and continuous improvement.
• Create an engagement plan for each level of adoption to standardize the way customers interact with the ACE.

Craft metrics that will measure the success of your Agile teams

Quantify measures that demonstrate the effectiveness of your ACE by establishing distinct metrics for each of your service offerings. This will ensure that you have full transparency over the outputs of your CoE and that your service offerings maintain relevance and are utilized.

Questions to Ask

1. What are leading indicators of improvements that directly affect the mandate of the CoE?
2. How do you measure process efficiency and effectiveness?

Creating meaningful metrics

Specific

Measureable

Achievable

Realistic

Time-bound

Follow the SMART framework when developing metrics for each service offering.

Adhering to this methodology is a key component of the lean management methodology. This framework will help you avoid establishing general metrics that aren’t relevant.

"It’s not about telling people what they are doing wrong. It’s about constantly steering everyone on the team in the direction of success, and never letting any individual compromise the progress of the team toward success." – Mary Poppendieck, qtd. in “Questioning Servant Leadership”

For important advice on how to avoid the many risks associated with metrics, refer to Info-Tech’s Select and Use SDLC Metrics Effectively.

Ensure your metrics are addressing criteria from different levels of stakeholders and enterprise context

There will be a degree of overlap between the metrics from your business objectives, service offerings, and existing Agile teams. This is a positive thing. If a metric can speak to multiple benefits it is that much more powerful in commuting successes to your key stakeholders.

Existing metrics

Business objective metrics

Service offering metrics

Agile adoption metrics

Finding points of overlap means that you have multiple stakeholders with a vested interest in the positive trend of a specific metric. These consolidated metrics will be fundamental for your CoE as they will help build consensus through communicating the success of the ACE in a common language for a diverse audience.

Activity: Define existing team-level metrics

2.3.1 1 Hour

Input

• Current metrics

Output

• Service offerings categorized within adoption model

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Team

1. Gather any metrics related documentation that you collected during your requirements gathering in Phase 1.
2. Collect team-level metrics for your existing Agile teams:
   • Examine outputs from any feedback mechanisms you have (satisfaction surveys, emails, existing SLAs, burndown charts, resourcing costs, licensing costs per sprint, etc.).
   • Look at historical trends and figures when available. Be careful of frequent anomalies as these may indicate a root cause that needs to be addressed.
   • Explore the definition of specific metrics across different functional teams to ensure consistency of measurement and reporting.

Activity: Define metrics that align with your Agile business objectives

2.3.2 1 Hour

Input

• Organizational business objectives from Phase 1

Output

• Metrics aligned to organizational business objectives

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• ACE

1. List the business objectives that you determined in 1.1.2.
2. Create a shortlist of expected benefits from those business objectives. These will help to drive metrics that align with the intended purpose of completing those business objectives, and affirm they are aligned to realizable benefits.
3. Define metrics that speak to the benefits of your business objectives. While engaging in this process, ensure to document the collection method for each metrics.

Activity: Define target ACE performance metrics

2.3.3 1 Hour

Input

• Service offerings
• Satisfaction surveys
• Usage rates

Output

• CoE performance metrics

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• ACE

1. Define metrics to measure the success of each of your service offerings.
2. Create a shortlist of expected benefits from those business objectives. These will help to drive metrics that align with the intended purpose of those service offerings, and affirm they are aligned to realizable benefits.
3. Define metrics that speak to the benefits of your service offerings.
4. Compare these to your team performance metrics.

Activity: Define Agile adoption metrics

2.3.4 1 Hour

Input

• Agile adoption model

Output

• Agile adoption metrics

1. Define metrics to measure the success of each of your service offerings.
2. Create a shortlist of expected benefits from those business objectives. These will help to drive metrics that align with the intended purpose of those service offerings, and affirm they are aligned to realizable benefits.
3. Define metrics that speak to the benefits of your service offerings.
4. It is possible that you will need to adjust these metrics after baselines are established when you begin to operate the ACE. Keep this in mind moving forward.

Activity: Consolidate your metrics for stakeholder impact

2.3.5 30 Minutes

Input

• New and existing Agile metrics

Output

• Consolidated Agile metrics

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• ACE

1. Take all the metrics defined from the previous activities and compare them as a group.
2. If there are overlapping metrics that are measuring similar outcomes or providing similar benefits, see if there is a way to merge them together so that a single metric can report outcomes to multiple stakeholders. This reduces the amount of resources invested in metrics gathering and helps to show consensus or alignment between multiple stakeholder interests.
3. Compare these to your existing Agile metrics, and explore ways to consolidate existing metrics that are established with some of your new metrics. Established metrics are trusted and if they can be continued it can be viewed as beneficial from a consensus and consistency perspective to your stakeholders.

Activity: Use Info-Tech’s ACE Benefits Tracking Tool to monitor, evaluate, refine, and ensure continued business value

2.3.6 1 Hour

Purpose

The CoE governance team can use this tool to take ownership of the project’s benefits, track progress, and act on any necessary changes to address gaps. In the long term, it can be used to identify whether the team is ahead, on track, or lagging in terms of benefits realization.

Steps

1. Enter your identified metrics from the following activities into the ACE Benefits Tracking Tool.
2. Input your baselines from your data collection (Phase 3) and a goal value for each metric.
3. Document the results at key intervals as defined by the tool.
4. Use the summary report to identify metrics that are not tracking well for root cause analysis and communicate with key stakeholders the outcomes of your Agile Center of Excellence based on your communication schedule from Phase 3, Step 3.

INFO-TECH DELIVERABLE

Download the ACE Benefits Tracking Tool.

Checkpoint: Are you ready to operate your ACE?

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

↓

Phase 3

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Self Auditing Guidelines

• Have you categorized your ACE service offerings within Info-Tech’s Agile adoption model?
• Have you formalized engagement plans to standardize the access to your service offerings?
• Do you understand the function of learning events and their criticality to the function of the ACE?
• Do you understand the key attributes of Agile adoption and how social capital leads to optimized value delivery?
• Have you defined metrics for different goals (adoption, effective service offerings, business objectives) of the ACE?
• Do your defined metrics align to the SMART framework?

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

2.1.1 Further categorize your use cases within the Agile adoption model

Our analyst team will help you categorize the Centers of Excellence service offerings within Info-Tech’s Agile adoption model to help standardize the way your organization engages with the Center of Excellence.

2.2.1 Create an engagement plan for each level of adoption

Our analyst team will help you structure engagement plans for each role within your Agile environment to provide a standardized pathway to personal development and consistency in practice.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

2.3.2 Define metrics that align with your Agile business objectives

Our analysts will walk you through defining a set of metrics that align with your Agile business objectives identified in Phase 1 of the blueprint so the CoEs monitoring function can ensure ongoing alignment during operation.

2.3.3 Define target ACE performance metrics

Our analysts will walk you through defining a set of metrics that monitors how successful the ACE has been at providing its services so that business and IT stakeholders can ensure the effectiveness of the ACE.

2.3.4 Define Agile adoption metrics

Our analyst team will help you through defining a set of metrics that aligns with your organization’s fit of the Agile adoption model in order to provide a mechanism to track the progress of Agile teams maturing in capability and organizational trust.

Phase 3

Operationalize Your Agile Center of Excellence

Spread Best Practices With an Agile Center of Excellence

Operate your ACE to drive optimized value from your Agile teams

The final step is to engage in monitoring of your metrics program to identify areas for improvement. Using metrics as a driver for operating your ACE will allow you to identify and effectively manage needed change, as well as provide you with the data necessary to promote outcomes to your stakeholders to ensure the long-term viability of the ACE within your organization.

Phase 1 - Strategically Align the CoE

Create strategic alignment between the CoE and the organization’s goals, objectives, and vision. This alignment translates into the CoE mandate intended to enhance the way Agile will enable teams to meet business objectives.

Phase 2 - Standardize the CoEs Service Offerings

Build an engagement plan based on a standardized adoption model to ensure your CoE service offerings are accessible and consistent across the organization. Create and consolidate key performance indicators to measure the CoEs utility and whether or not the expected value is being translated to tangible results.

Phase 3 - Operate the CoE

Operate the CoE to provide service offerings to Agile teams, identify improvements to optimize the function of your Agile teams, and effectively manage and communicate change so that teams can grow within the Agile adoption model and optimize value delivery both within your Agile environment and across functions.

Phase 3 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 3: Operate the CoE

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): Variable depending on communication plan

Step 3.1: Optimize the success of your ACE

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Conduct a baseline assessment of your Agile environment.

Then complete these activities…

3.1.1 Use Info-Tech’s ACE Satisfaction Survey to help establish your baseline.

3.1.2 Use Info-Tech’s CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to measure the maturity level of your ACE.

3.1.3 Prioritize ACE actions by monitoring your metrics.

Step 3.2: Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Interface with the ACE with your change management function.

Then complete these activities…

3.2.1 Assess the interaction and communication points of your Agile teams.

3.2.2 Determine the root cause of each metric falling short of expectations.

3.2.3 Brainstorm solutions to identified issues.

3.2.4 Review your metrics program.

3.2.5 Create a communication plan for change.

Step 3.3: Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Finalize phase deliverable:

• Build a communications deck for key stakeholders.

Then complete these activities…

3.3.1 Use the outputs from your metrics tracking tool to communicate progress.

3.3.2 Summarize adjustments in areas where the ACE fell short.

3.3.3 Review the effectiveness of your service offerings.

3.3.4 Evaluate your ACE Maturity.

3.3.5 Use Info-Tech’s ACE Communications Deck to deliver your outcomes to the key stakeholders.

Phase 3 Results & Insights:

Inject improvements into your Agile environment with operational excellence. Plan changes and communicate them effectively, monitor outcomes on a regular basis, and keep stakeholders in the loop to ensure that their interests are being looked after to ensure long-term viability of the CoE.

Phase 3, Step 1: Optimize the success of your ACE

Phase 1

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

Phase 3

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Tools:

3.1.1 Use Info-Tech’s ACE Satisfaction Survey to help establish your baseline.

3.1.2 Use Info-Tech’s CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to measure the maturity level of your ACE.

3.1.3 Prioritize ACE actions by monitoring your metrics.

Outcomes:

• Conduct a baseline assessment of your ACE to measure against using a variety of data sources, including interviews, satisfaction surveys, and historical data.
• Use the Benefits Tracking Tool to start monitoring the outcomes of the ACE and to keep track of trends.

Ensure the CoE is able to collect the necessary data to measure success

Establish your collection process to ensure that the CoE has the necessary resources to collect metrics and monitor progress, that there is alignment on what data sources are to be used when collecting data, and that you know which stakeholder is interested in the outcomes of that metric.

Responsibility

• Does the CoE have enough manpower to collect the metrics and monitor them?
• If automated through technology, is it clear who is responsible for its function?

Source of metric

• Is the method of data collection standardized so that multiple people could collect the data in the same way?

Impacted stakeholder

• Do you know which stakeholder is interested in this metric?
• How often should the interested stakeholder be informed of progress?

Intended function

• What is the expected benefit of increasing this metric?
• What does the metric intend to communicate to the stakeholder?

Conduct a baseline assessment of your ACE to measure success

Establishing the baseline performance of the ACE allows you to have a reasonable understanding of the impact it is having on meeting business objectives. Use user satisfaction surveys, stakeholder interviews, and any current metrics to establish a concept of how you are performing now. Setting new metrics can be a difficult task so it is important to collect as much current data as possible. After the metrics have been established and monitored for a period of time, you can revisit the targets you have set to ensure they are realistic and usable.

Without a baseline, you cannot effectively:

• Establish reasonable target metrics that reflect the performance of your Center of Excellence.
• Identify, diagnose, and resolve any data that deviates from expected outcomes.
• Measure ongoing business satisfaction given the level of service.

Info-Tech Insight

Invest the needed time to baseline your activities. These data points are critical to diagnose successes and failures of the CoE moving forward, and you will need them to be able to refine your service offerings as business conditions or user expectations change. While it may seem like something you can breeze past, the investment is critical.

Use a variety of sources to get the best picture of your current state; a combination of methods provides the richest insight

Interviews

What to do:

• Conduct interviews (or focus groups) with key influencers and Agile team members.

Benefits:

• Data comes from key business decision makers.
• Identify what is top of mind for your top-level stakeholders.
• Ask follow-up questions for detail.

Challenges:

• This will only provide a very high-level view.
• Interviewer biases may skew the results.

Surveys

What to do:

• Distribute an Agile-specific stakeholder satisfaction survey. The survey should be specific to identify factors of your current environment.

Benefits:

• Every end user/business stakeholder will be able to provide feedback.
• The survey will be simple to develop and distribute.

Challenges:

• Response rates can be low if stakeholders do not understand the value in their opinions.

Historical Data

What to do:

• Collect and analyze existing Agile data such as past retrospectives, Agile team metrics, etc.

Benefits:

• Get a full overview of current service offerings, past issues, and current service delivery.
• Allows you to get an objective view of what is really going on within your Agile teams.

Challenges:

• Requires a significant time investment and analytical skills to analyze the data and generate insights on business satisfaction and needs.

Use Info-Tech’s ACE Satisfaction Survey to help establish your baseline

3.1.1 Baseline satisfaction survey

Purpose

Conduct a user satisfaction survey prior to setting your baseline for your ACE. This will include high-level questions addressing your overall Agile environment and questions addressing teams’ current satisfaction with their processes and technology.

Steps

1. Modify the satisfaction survey template to suit your organization and the service offerings you have defined for the Agile Center of Excellence.
2. Distribute the satisfaction survey to any users who are expected to interface with the ACE.
3. Document the results and communicate them with the relevant key stakeholders.
4. Combine these results with historical data points (if available) and stakeholder interviews to get a holistic picture of your current state.

INFO-TECH DELIVERABLE

Download the ACE Satisfaction Survey.

Use Info-Tech’s CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to measure the maturity level of your ACE

3.1.2 CoE maturity assessment

Purpose

Assessing your ACEs maturity lets you know where they currently are and what to track to get them to the next step. This will help ensure your ACE is following good practices and has the appropriate mechanisms in place to serve your stakeholders.

Steps

1. Download the CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to assess the maturity of your ACE.
2. Complete the assessment tool with all members of your ACE team to determine your maturity score.
3. Document the results and communicate them with the relevant key stakeholders.
4. Combine these results with historical data points (if available) and stakeholder interviews to get a holistic picture of your ACE maturity level.

Document results in the ACE Communications Deck.

INFO-TECH DELIVERABLE

Download the CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool.

Activity: Prioritize ACE actions by monitoring your metrics

3.1.3 Variable time commitment

Input

• Metrics from ACE Benefits Tracking Tool

Output

• Prioritized actions for the ACE

Materials

• ACE Benefits Tracking Tool

Participants

• ACE team

1. Review your ACE Benefits Tracking Tool periodically (at the end of sprint cycles, quarterly, etc.) and document metrics that are trending or actively falling short of goals or expectations.
2. Take the documented list and have the ACE staff consider what actions or decisions can be prioritized to help mend the identified gaps. Look for any trends that could potentially speak to a larger problem or a specific aspect of the ACE or the organizational Agile environment that is not functioning as expected.
3. Take the opportunity to review metrics that are also tracking above expected value to see if there are any lessons learned that can be extended to other ACE service offerings (e.g. effective engagement or communication strategies) so that the organization can start to learn what is effective and what is not based on their internal struggles and challenges. Spreading successes is just as important as identifying challenges in a CoE model.

Phase 3, Step 2: Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

Phase 1

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

Phase 3

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Activities:

3.2.1 Assess the interaction and communication points of your Agile teams.

3.2.2 Determine the root cause of each metric falling short of expectations.

3.2.3 Brainstorm solutions to identified issues

3.2.4 Review your metrics program.

3.2.5 Create a communication plan for change.

Outcomes:

• Understand how your existing change management process interfaces with the Center of Excellence.
• Identify issues and ideate solutions to metrics falling short of expectations.
• Create a communication plan to prepare groups for any necessary change.

Manage the adaptation of teams as they adopt Agile capabilities

As Agile spreads, be cognizant of your cultural tolerance to change and its ability to deliver on such change. Change will happen more frequently and continuously, and there may be conceptual (change tolerance) or capability (delivery tolerance) roadblocks along the way that will need to be addressed.

The Agile adoption model will help to graduate both the tolerance to change and tolerance to deliver over time. As your level of competency to deliver change increases, organizational tolerance to change, especially amongst management, will increase as well. Remember that optimized value delivery comes from this careful balance of aptitude and trust.

Tolerance to change

Tolerance to change refers to the conceptual capacity of your people to consume and adopt change. Change tolerance may become a barrier to success because teams might be too engrained with current structures and processes and find any changes too disruptive and uncomfortable.

Tolerance to deliver

Tolerance to deliver refers to the capability to deliver on expected change. While teams may be tolerant, they may not have the necessary capacity, skills, or resources to deliver the necessary changes successfully. The ACE can help solve this problem with training and coaching, or possibly by obtaining outside help where necessary.

Understand how the ACE interfaces with your current change management process

As the ACE absorbs best practices and identifies areas for improvement, a change management process should be established to address the implementation and sustainability of change without introducing significant disruptions and costs.

To manage a continuously changing environment, your ACE will need to align and coordinate with organizational change management processes. This process should be capable of evaluating and incorporating multiple change initiatives continuously.

Desired changes will need to be validated, and localized adaptations will need to be disseminated to the larger organization, and current state policy and procedures will need to be amended as the adoption of Agile spreads and capabilities increase.

The goal here is to have the ACE governance group identify and interface with parties relevant to successfully implementing any specific change.

INFO-TECH RELATED RESEARCH:

Strategy and Leadership: Optimize Change Management

Optimize your stakeholder management process to identify, prioritize, and effectively manage key stakeholders.

Where should your Agile change requests come from?

Changes to the services, structure, or engagement model of your ACE can be triggered from various sources in your organization. You will see that proposed changes may be requested with the best intentions; however, the potential impacts they may have to other areas of the organization can be significant. Consult all sources of ACE change requests to obtain a consensus that your change requests will not deteriorate the ACEs performance and use.

ACE Governance

• Sources of ACE Change Requests
  • ACE Policies/Stakeholders
    • Triggers for Change:
      • Changes in business and functional group objectives.
      • Dependencies and legacy policies and procedures.
  • ACE Customers
    • Triggers for Change:
      • Retrospectives and post-mortems.
      • Poor fit of best practices to projects.
  • Metrics
    • Triggers for Change:
      • Performance falling short of expectations.
      • Lack of alignment with changing objectives.
  • Tools and Technologies
    • Triggers for Change:
      • New or enhanced tools and technologies.
      • Changes in development and technology standards.

Note: Each source of ACE change requests may require a different change management process to evaluate and implement the change.

Activity: Assess the interaction and communication points of your Agile teams

3.2.1 1.5 Hours

Input

• Understanding of team and organization structure

Output

• Current assessment of organizational design

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Development team

1. Identify everyone who is directly or indirectly involved in projects completed by Agile teams. This can include those that are:

• Informed of a project’s progress.
• Expected to interface with the Agile team for solution delivery (e.g. DevOps).
• Impacted by the success of the delivered solutions.
• Responsible for the removal of impediments faced by the Agile team.

Activity: Determine the root cause of each metric falling short of expectations

3.2.2 30 Minutes per metric

Input

• Metrics from Benefits Tracking Tool

Output

• Root causes to issues

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• ACE team

1. Take each metric from the ACE Benefits Tracking Tool that is lagging behind or has missed expectations and conduct an analysis of why it is performing that way.
2. Conduct individual webbing sessions to clarify the issues. The goal is to drive out the reasons why these issues are present or why scaling Agile may introduce additional challenges.
3. Share and discuss these findings with the entire team.

Example:

• Lack of best-practice documentation
  • Why?
    • Knowledge siloed within teams
    • No centralized repository for best practices
      • Why?
        • No mechanisms to share between teams
          • Why? Root causes
            • Teams are not sharing localized adaptations
            • CoE is not effectively monitoring team communications
        • Access issues at team level to wiki
          • Why? Root causes
            • Administration issues with best-practice wiki
            • Lack of ACE visibility into wiki access

Activity: Brainstorm solutions to identified issues

3.2.3 30 Minutes per metric

Input

• Root causes of issues

Output

• Fixes and solutions to scaling Agile issues

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Development team

1. Using the results from your root-cause analysis, brainstorm potential solutions to the identified problems. Frame your brainstorming within the following perspectives: people, process, and technology. Map these solutions using the matrix below.
2. Synthesize your ideas to create a consolidated list of initiatives.
   1. Highlight the solutions that can address multiple issues.
   2. Collaborate on how solutions can be consolidated into a single initiative.
3. Write your synthesized solutions on sticky notes.

Engage those teams affected by change early to ensure they are prepared

Strategically managing change is an essential component to ensure that the ACE achieves its desired function. If the change that comes with adopting Agile best practices is going to impact other functions and change their expected workflows, ensure they are well prepared and the benefits for said changes are clearly communicated to them.

Necessary change may be identified proactively (dependency assessments, system integrity, SME indicates need, etc.) or reactively (through retrospectives, discussions, completing root-cause analyses, etc.), but both types need to be handled the same way – through proper planning and communication with the affected parties.

Plan any necessary change

Understand the points where other groups will be affected by the adoption of Agile practices and recognize the potential challenges they may face. Plan changes to accommodate interactions between these groups without roadblocks or impediments.

Communicate the change

Structure a communication plan based on your identified challenges and proposed changes so that groups are well prepared to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate Agile workflows.

Review and modify your metrics and baselines to ensure they are achievable in changing environments

Consider the possible limitations that will exist from environmental complexities when measuring your Agile teams. Dependencies and legacy policies and procedures that pose a bottleneck to desired outcomes will need to be changed before teams can be measured justifiably. Take the time to ensure the metrics you crafted earlier are plausible in your current environment and there is not a need for transitional metrics.

Are your metrics achievable?

Specific

Measureable

Achievable

• Adopting Agile is a journey, not just a destination. Ensure that the metrics a team is measured against reflect expectations for the team’s current level of Agile adoption and consider external dependencies that may limit their ability to achieve intended results.

Realistic

Time-bound

Info-Tech Insight

Use metrics as diagnostics, not as motivation. Teams will find ways to meet metrics they are measured by making sacrifices and taking unneeded risk to do so. To avoid dysfunction in your monitoring, use metrics as analytical tools to inform decision making, not as a yardstick for judgement.

Activity: Review your metrics program

3.2.4 Variable time commitment

Input

• Identified gaps
• Agile team interaction points

Output

• ACE baselines
• Past measurements

Materials

• ACE Benefits Tracking Tool

Participants

• ACE

1. Now that you have identified gaps in your current state, see if those will have any impact on the achievability of your current metrics program.
2. Review your root-cause analyses and brainstormed solutions, and hypothesize whether or not they will have any downstream impact to goal attainment. It is possible that there is no impact, but as cross-functional collaboration increases, the likelihood that groups will act as bottlenecks or impediments to expected performance will increase.
3. Consider how any changes will impact the interaction points between teams based on the results from activity 3.2.1: Assess the interaction and communication points of your Agile teams. If there are too many negative impacts it may be a sign to re-consider the hypothesized solution to the problem and consider alternatives.
4. In any cases where a metric has been altered, adjust its goal measurement to reflect its changes in the ACE Benefits Tracking Tool.

Case study: Agile change at the GSA

CASE STUDY

Industry Government

Source Navin Vembar, Agile Government Leadership

Challenge

The GSA is tasked with completed management of the Integrated Award Environment (IAE).

• The IAE manages ten federal information technology systems that enable registering, searching, and applying for federal awards, as well as tracking them.
• The IAE also manages the Federal Service Desk.

The IAE staff had to find a way to break down the problem of modernization into manageable chunks that would demonstrate progress, but also had to be sure to capture a wide variety of user needs with the ability to respond to those needs throughout development.

Had to work out the logistics of executing Agile change within the GSA, an agency that relies heavily on telework. In the case of modernization, they had a product owner in Florida while the development team was spread across the metro Washington, DC area.

Solution

Agile provided the ability to build incremental successes that allowed teams successful releases and built enthusiasm around the potential of adopting Agile practices offered.

• GSA put in place an organization framework that allowed for planning of change at the portfolio level to enable the change necessary to allow for teams to execute tasks at the project level.
• A four-year plan with incremental integration points allowed for larger changes on a quarterly basis while maintaining a bi-weekly sprint cycle.
• They adopted IBM’s RTC tool for a Scrum board and on Adobe Connect for daily Scrum sessions to ensure transparency and effectiveness of outcomes across their collocated teams.

Create a clear, concise communication plan

Communication is key to avoid surprises and lost productivity created by the implementation of changes.

User groups and the business need to be given sufficient notice of an impending change. Be concise, be comprehensive, and ensure that the message is reaching the right audience so that no one is blindsided and unable to deliver what is needed. This will allow them to make appropriate plans to accept the change, minimizing the impact of the change on productivity.

Key Aspects of a Communication Plan

• The method of communication (email, meetings, workshops, etc.).
• The delivery strategy (who will deliver the message?).
• The communication responsibility structure.
• The communication frequency.
• A feedback mechanism that allows you to review the effectiveness of your plan.
• The message that you need to present.

Communicating change

• What is the change?
• Why are we doing it?
• How are we going to go about it?
• What are we trying to achieve?
• How often will we be updated?

(Cornelius & Associates, The Qualities of Leadership: Leading Change)

Apply the following principles to enhance the clarity of your message

1. Be Consistent

• "This is important because..."
  • The core message must be consistent regardless of audience, channel, or medium.
  • Test your communication and obtain feedback before delivering your message.
  • A lack of consistency can be perceived as deception.

• "This means..."
  • Say what you mean and mean what you say.
  • Choice of language is important.
  • Don’t use jargon.

• "This affects you because..."
  • Talk about what matters to the audience.
  • Talk about what matters to the change initiative.
  • Tailor the details of the message to each audience’s specific concerns.
  • Communicate truthfully; do not make false promises or hide bad news.

Activity: Create a communication plan for change

3.2.5 1.5 Hours

Input

• Desired messages
• Stakeholder list

Output

• Communication plan

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• CoE

1. Define the audience(s) for your communications. Consider who needs to be the audience of your different communication events and how it will impact them.
2. Identify who the messenger will be to deliver the message.
3. Identify your communication methods. Decide on the methods you will use to deliver each communication event. Your delivery method may vary depending on the audience it is targeting.
4. Establish a timeline for communication releases. Set dates for your communication events. This can be recurring (weekly, monthly, etc.) or one-time events.
5. Determine what the content of the message must include. Use the guidelines on the following slide to ensure the message is concise and impactful.

Note: It is important to establish a feedback mechanism to ensure that the communication has been effective in communicating the change to the intended audiences. This can be incorporated into your ACE satisfaction surveys.

Phase 3, Step 3: Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Phase 1

1.1 Determine the vision of your ACE

1.2 Define the service offerings of your ACE

Phase 2

2.1 Define an adoption plan for your Agile teams

2.2 Create an ACE engagement plan

2.3 Define metrics to measure success

Phase 3

3.1 Optimize the success of your ACE

3.2 Plan change to enhance your Agile initiatives

3.3 Conduct ongoing retrospectives of your ACE

Activities/Tools:

3.3.1 Use the outputs from your metrics tracking tool to communicate progress.

3.3.2 Summarize adjustments in areas where the ACE fell short.

3.3.3 Re-conduct satisfaction surveys and compare against your baseline.

3.3.4 Use Info-Tech’s CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to baseline current practices

3.3.5 Use Info-Tech’s ACE Communications Deck to deliver your outcomes to the key stakeholders.

Outcomes:

• Conduct a retrospective of your ACE to enable the continuous improvement of your Agile program.
• Structure a communications deck to communicate with stakeholders the outcomes from introducing the ACE to the organization.

Reflect on your ACEs performance to lead the way to enterprise agility

After functioning for a period of time, it is imperative to review the function of your ACE to ensure its continual alignment and see in what ways it can improve.

At the end of the year, take the time to deliberately review and discuss:

1. The effectiveness and use of your ACEs service offerings.
2. What went well or wrong during the ACEs operation.
3. What can be done differently to improve reach, usability, and effectiveness.
4. Bring together Agile teams and discuss the processes they follow and inquire about suggestions for improvement.

What is involved?

• Use your metrics program to diagnose areas of issue and success. The diagnostic value of your metrics can help lead conversations with your Agile teams when attempting to inquire about suggestions for improvement.
• Leverage your satisfaction surveys from the creation of your ACE and compare them against satisfaction surveys run after a year of operation. What are the lessons learned between then and now?
• While it is primarily conducted by the ACE team, keep in mind it is a collaborative function and should involve all members, including Agile teams, product owners, Scrum masters, etc.

Communicating with your key influencers is vital to ensure long-term operation of the ACE

To ensure the long-term viability of your ACE and that your key influencers will continue funding, you need to demonstrate the ROI the Center of Excellence has provided.

The overlying purpose of your ACE is to effectively align your Agile teams with corporate objectives. This means that there have to be communicable benefits that point to the effort and resources invested being valuable to the organization. Re-visit your prioritized stakeholder list and get ready to show them the impact the ACE has had on business outcomes.

Communication with stakeholders is the primary method of building and developing a lasting relationship. Correct messaging can build bridges and tear down barriers, as well as soften opposition and bolster support.

This section will help you to prepare an effective communication piece that summarizes the metrics stakeholders are interested in, as well as some success stories or benefits that are not communicable through metrics to provide extra context to ongoing successes of the ACE.

INFO-TECH RELATED RESEARCH:

Strategy and Leadership: Manage Stakeholder Relations

Optimize your stakeholder management process to identify, prioritize, and effectively manage key stakeholders.

Involve key stakeholders in your retrospectives to justify the funding for your ACE

Those who fund the ACE have a large influence on the long-term success of your ACE. If you have not yet involved your stakeholders, you need to re-visit your organizational funding model for the ACE and ensure that your key stakeholders include the key decision makers for your funding. While they may have varying levels of interest and desires for granularity of data reporting, they need to at least be informed on a high level and kept as champions of the ACE so that there are no roadblocks to the long-term viability of this program.

Keep this in mind as the ACE begins to demonstrate success, as it is not uncommon to have additional members added to your funding model as your service scales, especially in the chargeback models.

As new key influencers are included, the ACEs governing group must ensure that collective interests may align and that more priorities don’t lead to derailment.

Use the outputs from your metrics tracking tool to communicate progress

3.3.1 1 Hour

Use the ACE Benefits Tracking Tool to track the progress of your Agile environment to monitor whether or not the ACE is having a positive impact on the business’ ability to meet its objectives. The outputs will allow you to communicate incremental benefits that have been realized and point towards positive trends that will ensure the long-term buy-in of your key influencers.

For communication purposes, use this tool to:

• Re-visit who the impacted or interested stakeholders are so you can tailor your communications to be as impactful as possible for each key influencer of the ACE.

• Collate the benefits of the current projects undertaken by the Center of Excellence to give an overall recap of the ACEs impact.

Communicate where the ACE fell short

Part of communicating the effectiveness of your ACE is to demonstrate that it is able to remedy projects and processes when they fall short of expectations and brainstorm solutions that effectively address these challenges. Take the opportunity to summarize where results were not as expected, and the ways in which the ACE used its influence or services to drive a positive outcome from a problem diagnosis. Stakeholders do not want a sugar-coated story – they want to see tangible results based on real scenarios.

Summarizing failures will demonstrate to key influencers that:

• You are not cherry-picking positive metrics to report and that the ACE faced challenges that it was able to overcome to drive positive business outcomes.
• You are being transparent with the successes and challenges faced by the ACE, fostering increased trust within your stakeholders regarding the capabilities of Agile.
• Resolution mechanisms are working as intended, successfully building failure tolerance and trust in change management policies and procedures.

Activity: Summarize adjustments in areas where the ACE fell short

3.3.2 15 Minutes per metric

Input

• Diagnosed problems from tracking tool
• Root-cause analyses

Output

• Summary of change management successes

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• ACE

1. Create a list of items from the ACE Benefits Tracking Tool that fell short of expectations or set goals.
2. For each point, create a brief synopsis of the root-cause analysis completed and summarize the brainstormed solution and its success in remedying the issue. If this process is not complete, create a to-date summary of any progress.
3. Choose two to three pointed success stories from this list that will communicate broad success to your set of stakeholders.

Re-conduct surveys with the ACE Satisfaction Survey to review the effectiveness of your service offerings

3.3.3 Re-conduct satisfaction surveys and compare against your baseline

Purpose

This satisfaction survey will give you a template to follow to monitor the effectiveness of your ACEs defined service offerings. The goal is to understand what worked, and what did not, so you can add, retract, or modify service offerings where necessary.

Steps

1. Re-use the satisfaction survey to measure the effectiveness of the service offerings. Add questions regarding specific service offerings where necessary.
2. Cross-analyze your satisfaction survey with metrics tied to your service offerings to help understand the root cause of the issues.
3. Use the root-cause analysis exercises from step 3.2 to find the root causes of issues.
4. Create a set of recommendations to add, amend, or improve any existing service offerings.

INFO-TECH DELIVERABLE

Download the ACE Satisfaction Survey.

Use Info-Tech’s CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to baseline current practices

3.3.4 ACE Maturity Assessment

Purpose

Assess your ACEs maturity by using Info-Tech’s CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool. Assessing your ACEs maturity lets you know where you currently are, and where to look for improvements. Note that your optimal Maturity Level will depend on organizational specifics (e.g. a small organization with a handful of Agile Teams can be less mature than a large organization with hundreds of Agile Teams).

Steps

1. Download the CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool to assess the maturity of your ACE.
2. Complete the assessment tool with all members of your ACE team to determine your current Maturity score.
3. Document the results in the ACE Communications Deck.

Document results in the ACE Communications Deck.

INFO-TECH DELIVERABLE

Download the CoE Maturity Diagnostic Tool.

Use Info-Tech’s ACE Communications Deck to deliver your outcomes to the key stakeholders

3.3.5 Structure communications to each of your key stakeholders

Purpose

The ACE Communications Deck will give you a template to follow to effectively communicate with your stakeholders and ensure the long-term viability of your Agile Center of Excellence. Fill in the slides as instructed and provide each stakeholder with a targeted view of the successes of the ACE.

Steps

1. Determine who your target audience is for the Communications Deck – you may desire to create one for each of your key stakeholders as they may have different sets of interests.
2. Fill out the ACE Communications Deck with the suggested inputs from the exercises you have completed during this research set.
3. Review communications with members of the ACE to ensure that there are no communicable benefits that have been missed or omitted in the deck.

INFO-TECH DELIVERABLE

Download the ACE Communications Deck.

Summary of accomplishment

Knowledge Gained

• An understanding of social capital as the key driver for organizational Agile success, and how it optimizes the value delivery of your Agile teams.
• Importance of flexible governance to balance the benefits of localized adaptation and centralized control.
• Alignment of service offerings with both business objectives and functional expectations as critical to ensuring long-term engagement with service offerings.

Processes Optimized

• Knowledge management and transfer of Agile best practices to new or existing Agile teams.
• Optimization of service offerings for Agile teams based on organizational culture and objectives.
• Change request optimization via interfacing ACE functions with existing change management processes.
• Communication planning to ensure transparency during cross-functional collaboration.

Deliverables Completed

• A set of service offerings offered by the Center of Excellence that are aligned with the business, Agile teams, and related stakeholders.
• Engagement plans for Agile team members based on a standardized adoption model to access the ACEs service offerings.
• A suite of Agile metrics to measure effectiveness of Agile teams, the ACE itself, and its ability to deliver positive outcomes.
• A communications plan to help create cross-functional transparency over pending changes as Agile spreads.
• A communications deck to communicate Agile goals, actions, and outcomes to key stakeholders to ensure long-term viability of the CoE.

Research contributors and experts

Paul Blaney, Technology Delivery Executive, Thought Leader and passionate Agile Advocate

Paul has been an Agile practitioner since the manifesto emerged some 20 years ago, applying and refining his views through real life experience at several organizations from startups to large enterprises. He has recently completed the successful build out of the inaugural Agile Delivery Centre of Excellence at TD bank in Toronto.

John Munro, President Scrum Masters Inc.

John Munro is the President of Scrum Masters Inc., a software optimization professional services firm using Agile, Scrum, and Lean to help North American firms “up skill” their software delivery people and processes. Scrum Masters’ unique, highly collaborative “Master Mind” consulting model leverages Agile/Lean experts on a biweekly basis to solve clients’ technical and process challenges.

Doug Birgfeld, Senior Partner Agile Wave

Doug has been a leader in building great teams, Agile project management, and business process innovation for over 20 years. As Senior Partner and Chief Evangelist at Agile Wave, his mission is to educate and to learn from all those who care about effective government delivery, nationally.

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Map Your Business Architecture to Define Your Strategy

Plan your organization’s capabilities for best impact and value.

Info-Tech Research Group

Info-Tech is a provider of best-practice IT research advisory services that make every IT leader’s job easier.

Analyst perspective

Know your organization’s capabilities to build a digital and customer-driven culture.

Business architecture provides a holistic and unified view of:

• All the organization’s activities that provide value to their clients (value streams).
• The resources that make them possible and effective (capabilities, i.e. its employees, software, processes, information).
• How they inter-relate, i.e. depend on and impact each other to help deliver value.

Without a business architecture it is difficult to see the connections between the business’s activities for the customer and the IT resources supporting them – to demonstrate that what we do in IT is customer-driven.

As a map of your business, the business architecture is an essential input to the digital strategy:

• Develop a plan to transform the business by investing in the most important capabilities.
• Ensure project initiatives are aligned with business goals as they evolve.
• Respond more quickly to customer requirements and to disruptions in the industry by streamlining operations and information sharing across the enterprise.

Crystal Singh
Research Director, Data and Analytics
Info-Tech Research Group

Andrea Malick
Research Director, Data and Analytics
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive summary

Info-Tech Insight
Business architecture is the set of strategic planning techniques that connects organization strategy to execution in a manner that is accurate and traceable and promotes the efficient use of organizational resources.

Blueprint activities summary

Info-Tech’s workshop methodology

Key concepts for this blueprint

Info-Tech’s approach

Business architecture is a planning function that connects strategy to execution

Business architecture provides a framework that connects business strategy and IT strategy to project execution through a set of models that provide clarity and actionable insights. How well do you know your business?

Business architecture is:

• Inter-disciplinary: Business architecture is a core planning activity that supports all important decisions in the organization, for example, organizational resources planning. It’s not just about IT.
• Foundational: The best way to answer the question, “Where do we start?” or “Where is our investment best directed?”, comes from knowing your organization, what its core functions and capabilities are (i.e. what’s important to us as an organization), and where there is work to do.
• Connecting: Digital transformation and modernization cannot work with siloes. Connecting siloes means first knowing the organization and its functions and recognizing where the siloes are not communicating.

Business architecture must be branded as a front-end planning function to be appropriately embedded in the organization’s planning process.

Brand business architecture as an early planning pre-requisite on the basis of maintaining clarity of communication and spreading an accurate awareness of how strategic decisions are being made.

As an organization moves from strategy toward execution, it is often unclear as to exactly how decisions pertaining to execution are being made, why priority is given to certain areas, and how the planning function operates.

The business architect’s primary role is to model this process and document it.

In doing so, the business architect creates a unified view as to how strategy connects to execution so it is clearly understood by all levels of the organization.

Business architecture is part of the enterprise architecture framework

Business architecture is a set of shared and practical views of the enterprise

The key characteristic of the business architecture is that it represents real-world aspects of a business, along with how they interact.

Many different views of an organization are typically developed. Each view is a diagram that illustrates a way of understanding the enterprise by highlighting specific information about it:

• Business strategy view captures the tactical and strategic goals that drive an organization forward.
• Business capabilities view describes the primary business functions of an enterprise and the pieces of the organization that perform those functions.
• Value stream view defines the end-to-end set of activities that deliver value to external and internal stakeholders.
• Business knowledge view establishes the shared semantics (e.g. customer, order, and supplier) within an organization and relationships between those semantics (e.g. customer name, order date, supplier name) – an information map.
• Organizational view captures the relationships among roles, capabilities, and business units, the decomposition of those business units into subunits, and the internal or external management of those units.

Business architect connects all the pieces

The business owns the strategy and operating model; the business architect connects all the pieces together.

Choose a key business challenge to address with business architecture

Picking the right project is critical to setting the tone for business architecture work in the organization.

Best practices for business architecture success

Consider these best practices to maintain a high level of engagement from key stakeholders throughout the process of establishing or applying business architecture.

Balance short-term cost savings with long-term benefits

Participate in project governance to facilitate compliance

Create a center of excellence to foster dialogue

Value streams: Understand how you deliver value today

It is important to understand the different value-generating activities that deliver an outcome for and from your customers.

We do this by looking at value streams, which refer to the specific set of activities an industry player undertakes to create and capture value for and from the end consumer (and so the question to ask is, how do you make money as an organization?).

Our approach helps you to strengthen and transform those value streams that generate the most value for your organization.

An organization can have more than one set of streams.
For example, an enterprise can provide both retail shopping and financial services, such as credit cards.

Define the organization’s value streams

• Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities. They enable an organization to create and capture value in the market place by engaging in a set of interconnected activities. Those activities are dependent on the specific industry segment an organization operates within. Value streams can extend beyond the organization into the supporting ecosystem, whereas business processes are contained within and the organization has complete control over them.
• There are two types of value streams: core value streams and support value streams. Core value streams are mostly externally facing: they deliver value to either an external or internal customer and they tie to the customer perspective of the strategy map. Support value streams are internally facing and provide the foundational support for an organization to operate.
• An effective method for ensuring all value streams have been considered is to understand that there can be different end-value receivers. Info-Tech recommends identifying and organizing the value streams with customers and partners as end-value receivers.

Example: Value stream descriptions for the retail industry

Value streams describe your core business

Value streams – the activities we do to provide value to customers – require business capabilities.

Value streams are broken down further into value stages, for example, the Sell Product value stream has value stages Evaluate Options, Place Order, and Make Payment.

Think of value streams as the core operations: the reason for your organization’s being. A professional consulting organization may have a legal team but it does not brand itself as a law firm. A core value stream is providing research products and services; a business capability that supports it is legal counsel.

Decompose the value stream into stages

The stages of a value stream are usually action-oriented statements or verbs that make up the individual steps involved throughout the scope of the value stream, e.g. Place Order or Make Payment.

Each value stream should have a trigger or starting point and an end result for a client or receiver.

There should be measurable value or benefits at each stage. These are key performance indicators (KPIs). Spot problem areas in the stream.

Value streams usually fall into one of these categories:

1. Fulfillment of products and services
2. Manufacturing
3. Software products
4. Supporting value streams (procurement of supplies, product planning)

Value streams need capabilities

• Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities. They enable an organization to create and capture value in the market place by engaging in a set of interconnected activities.
• There are two types of value streams: core value streams and support value streams. Core value streams are mostly externally facing: they deliver value to either an external or internal customer and they tie to the customer perspective of the strategy map. Support value streams are internally facing and provide the foundational support for an organization to operate.
• There can be different end-value receivers. Info-Tech recommends identifying and organizing the value streams with customers and partners as end-value receivers.

Value streams need business capabilities

Business capabilities are built up to allow the business to perform the activities that bring value to customers. Map capabilities to the value-add activities in the value stream. Business capabilities lie at the top layer of the business architecture:

• They are the most stable reference for planning organizations.
• They make strategy more tangible.
• If properly defined, they can help overcome organizational silos.

Example business capability map – Higher Education

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and represents a view of what your data program must support.

Validate your business capability map with the right stakeholders, including your executive team, business unit leaders, and/or other key stakeholders.

Example business capability map for: Higher Education

Example business capability map – Local Government

Validate your business capability map with the right stakeholders, including your executive team, business unit leaders, and/or other key stakeholders.

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and represents a view of what your data program must support.

Example business capability map for: Local Government

Value streams need business capabilities

Value streams – the activities we do to provide value to customers – require business capabilities. Value streams are broken down further into value stages.

Business capabilities are built up to allow the business to perform the activities that bring value to customers. Map capabilities to the activities in the value stage to spot opportunities and problems in delivering services and value.

Business processes fulfill capabilities. They are a step-by-step description of who is performing what to achieve a goal. Capabilities consist of networks of processes and the resources – people, technology, materials – to execute them.

Capability = Processes + Software, Infrastructure + People

Prioritize a value stream and identify its supporting capabilities

Prioritize your improvement objectives and business goals and identify a value stream to transform.

Align the business objectives of your organization to your value streams (the critical actions that take place within your organization to add value to a customer).

Prioritize a value stream to transform based on the number of priorities aligned to a value stream, and/or the business value (e.g. revenue, EBITDA earnings, competitive differentiation, or cost efficiency).

Decompose the selected value stream into value stages.

Align capabilities level 1 and 2 to value stages. One capability may support several value stages in the stream.

Build a business architecture for the prioritized value stream with a map of business capabilities up to level 2.

NOTE: We can’t map all capabilities all at once: business architecture is an ongoing practice; select key mapping initiatives each year based on business goals.

Map business capabilities to Level 2

Map capabilities to value stage

Business value realization

Business value defines the success criteria of an organization as manifested through organizational goals and outcomes, and it is interpreted from four perspectives:

• Profit generation: The revenue generated from a business capability with a product that is enabled with modern technologies.
• Cost reduction: The cost reduction when performing business capabilities with a product that is enabled with modern technologies.
• Service enablement: The productivity and efficiency gains of internal business operations from products and capabilities enhanced with modern technologies.
• Customer and market reach: The improved reach and insights of the business in existing or new markets.

Value, goals, and outcomes cannot be achieved without business capabilities

Break down your business goals into strategic and achievable initiatives focused on specific value streams and business capabilities.

Accelerate the process with an industry business architecture

It’s never a good idea to start with a blank page.

The business capability map available from Info-Tech and with industry standard models can be used as an accelerator. Assemble the relevant stakeholders – business unit leads and product/service owners – and modify the business capability map to suit your organization’s context.

Acceleration path: Customize generic capability maps with the assistance of our industry analysts.

Identify goals and drivers

Consider organizational goals and industry forces when planning.

Use inputs from business goals and strategies to understand priorities.

It is not necessary to have a comprehensive business strategy document to start – with key stakeholders, the business architect should be able to gather a one-page business value canvas or customer journey.

Determine how the organization creates value

Begin the process by identifying and locating the business mission and vision statements.

What is business context?

“The business context encompasses an understanding of the factors impacting the business from various perspectives, including how decisions are made and what the business is ultimately trying to achieve. The business context is used by IT to identify key implications for the execution of its strategic initiatives.”

Source: Businesswire, 2018

Identify the key stakeholders who can help you promote the value of business architecture

First, as the CIO, you must engage executive stakeholders and secure their support.
Focus on key players who have high power and high interest in business architecture.

Engage the stakeholders who are impacted the most and have the power to impede the success of business architecture.

For example, if the CFO – who has the power to block funding – is disengaged, business architecture will be put at risk.

Use Info-Tech’s Stakeholder Power Map Template to help prioritize time spent with stakeholders.

Identify the key stakeholders concerned with the business architecture project

A business architecture project may involve the following stakeholders:

You must identify who the stakeholders are for your business architecture work.

Think about:

• Who are the decision makers and key influencers?
• Who will impact the business architecture work? Who will the work impact?
• Who has vested interest in the success or failure of the practice?
• Who has the skills and competencies necessary to help us be successful?

Avoid these common mistakes:

• Don’t focus on the organizational structure and hierarchy. Often stakeholder groups don’t fit the traditional structure.
• Don’t ignore subject-matter experts on either the business or IT side. You will need to consider both.

1.1 Identify and assemble key stakeholders

1-3 hours

Build an accurate depiction of the business.

1. It is important to make sure the right stakeholders participate in this exercise. The exercise of identifying capabilities for an organization is very introspective and requires deep analysis.
2. Consider:
1. Who are the decision makers and key influencers?
2. Who will impact the business capability work? Who has a vested interest in the success or failure of the outcome?
3. Who has the skills and competencies necessary to help you be successful?
3. Avoid:
1. Don’t focus on the organizational structure and hierarchy. Often stakeholder groups don’t fit the traditional structure.
2. Don’t ignore subject matter experts on either the business or IT side. You will need to consider both.

Conduct interviews with the business to gather intelligence for strategy

Talking to key stakeholders will allow you to get a holistic view of the business strategy.

Build a strategy on a page through executive interviews and document reviews

Understanding the business mandate and priorities ensures alignment across the enterprise.

A business strategy must articulate the long-term destination the business is moving into. This illustration shapes all the strategies and activities in every other part of the business, including what IT capabilities and resources are required to support business goals. Ultimately, the benefits of a well-defined business strategy increase as the organization scales and as business units or functions are better equipped to align the strategic planning process in a manner that reflects the complexity of the organization.

Using the Business Strategy on a Page canvas, consider the questions in each bucket to elicit the overall strategic context of the organization and uncover the right information to build your digital strategy. Interview key executives including your CEO, CIO, CMO, COO, CFO, and CRO, and review documents from your board or overall organizational strategy to uncover insights.

Info-Tech Insight
A well-articulated and clear business strategy helps different functional and business units work together and ensures that individual decisions support the overall direction of the business.

Focus on business value and establish a common goal

Business architecture is a strategic planning function and the focus must be on delivering business value.

Examples business objectives:

• Digitally transform the business, redefining its customer interactions.
• Identify the root cause for escalating customer complaints and eroding satisfaction.
• Identify reuse opportunities to increase operational efficiency.
• Identify capabilities to efficiently leverage suppliers to handle demand fluctuations.

Info-Tech Insight
CIOs are ideally positioned to be the sponsors of business architecture given that their current top priorities are digital transformation, innovation catalyzation, and business alignment.

1.2 Collect and understand business objectives

1-3 hours

Having a clear understanding of the business is crucial to executing on the strategic IT initiatives.

1. Discover the strategic CIO initiatives your organization will pursue:

• Schedule interviews.
• Use the CIO Business Vision diagnostic or Business Context Discovery Tool.

CIO Business Vision Diagnostic

CEO

Interview the following executives for each business goal area.

Craft a strategy to increase stakeholder support and participation

The BA practice’s supporters are potential champions who will help you market the value of BA; engage with them first to create positive momentum. Map out the concerns of each group of stakeholders so you can develop marketing tactics and communications vehicles to address them.

Example Communication Strategy

1.3 Craft a strategy to increase stakeholder support and participation

1-2 hours

Now that you have organized and categorized your stakeholders based on their power, influence, interest, and knowledge of business architecture, it is time to brainstorm how you are going to gain their support and participation.

Think about the following:

• What are your stakeholders’ concerns?
• How can you address them?
• How will you deliver the message?
• How often will you deliver the message?

Avoid these common mistakes:

• Your communication strategy development should be an iterative process. Do not assume to know the absolute best way to get through to every resistor right away. Instead, engage with your supporters for their input on how to communicate to resistors and repeat the process for indifferent stakeholders as well.

Download the Stakeholder Engagement Strategy Template for this project.

Engaging the right stakeholders

CASE STUDY

Source
Anonymous

1.4 Develop a plan to engage key stakeholders

1 hour

Using your stakeholder power map as a starting point, focus on the three most important quadrants: those that contain stakeholders you must keep informed, those to keep satisfied, and the key players.

Plot the stakeholders from those quadrants on a stakeholder engagement map.

Think about the following:

• Who are your resistors? These individuals will actively detract from project’s success if you don’t address their concerns.
• Who is indifferent? These individuals need to be educated more on the benefits of business architecture to have an opinion either way.
• Who are your supporters? These individuals will support you and spread your message if you equip them to do so.

Avoid these common mistakes:

• Do not jump to addressing resistor concerns first. Instead, equip your supporters with the info they need to help your cause and gain positive momentum before approaching resistors.

Download the Stakeholder Engagement Strategy Template for this project.

1.5 Craft a strategy to increase stakeholder support and participation

1-2 hours

Now that you have organized and categorized your stakeholders based on their power, influence, interest, and knowledge of business architecture, it is time to brainstorm how you are going to gain their support and participation.

Think about the following:

• What are your stakeholders’ concerns?
• How can you address them?
• How will you deliver the message?
• How often will you deliver the message?

Avoid these common mistakes:

• Your communication strategy development should be an iterative process. Do not assume to know the absolute best way to get through to every resistor right away. Instead, engage with your supporters for their input on how to communicate to resistors and repeat the process for indifferent stakeholders as well.

Download the Stakeholder Engagement Strategy Template for this project.

Define value streams

Identify the core activities your organization does to provide value to your customers.

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Note: It is recommended that you gather and leverage relevant industry standard business architecture models you may have available to you. Example: Info-Tech Industry Business Architecture, BIZBOK, APQC.
• Defining or updating the organization’s value streams.
• Selecting priority value streams for deeper analysis.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Business Architect, Enterprise Architect
• Relevant Business Stakeholder(s): Business Unit Leads, Departmental Executives, Senior Mangers, Business Analysts

Define the organization’s value streams

• Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities. They enable an organization to create and capture value in the marketplace by engaging in a set of interconnected activities. Those activities are dependent on the specific industry segment an organization operates within. Value streams can extend beyond the organization into the supporting ecosystem, whereas business processes are contained within and the organization has complete control over them.
• There are two types of value streams: core value streams and support value streams. Core value streams are mostly externally facing: they deliver value to either an external or internal customer and they tie to the customer perspective of the strategy map. Support value streams are internally facing and provide the foundational support for an organization to operate.
• An effective method for ensuring all value streams have been considered is to understand that there can be different end-value receivers. Info-Tech recommends identifying and organizing the value streams with customers and partners as end-value receivers.

Connect business goals to value streams

Identifying value streams

Value streams connect business goals to organization’s value realization activities. They enable an organization to create and capture value in the market place by engaging in a set of interconnected activities.

There are several key questions to ask when endeavoring to identify value streams.

Example: Value stream descriptions for the retail industry

Value streams describe your core business

Value streams – the activities we do to provide value to customers – require business capabilities.

Value streams are broken down further into value stages, for example, Sell Product value stream has value stages Evaluate Options, Place Order, and Make Payment.

Think of value streams as the core operations, the reason for our organization’s being. A professional consulting organization may have a legal team but it does not brand itself as a law firm. A core value stream is providing research products and services – a business capability that supports it is legal counsel.

2.1 Define value streams

1-3 hours

Unify the organization’s perspective on how it creates value.

1. Write a short description of the value stream that includes a statement about the value provided and a clear start and end for the value stream. Validate the accuracy of the descriptions with your key stakeholders.
2. Consider:
1. How does the organization deliver those benefits?
2. How does the customer receive the benefits?
3. What is the scope of your value stream? What will trigger the stream to start and what will the final value be?
3. Avoid: Don’t start with a blank page. Use Info-Tech’s business architecture models for sample value streams.

See your Info-Tech Account Representative for access to the Reference Architecture Template

Decompose the value stream into stages

The stages of a value stream are usually action-oriented statements or verbs that make up the individual steps involved throughout the scope of the value stream, e.g. Place Order or Make Payment.

Each value stream should have a trigger or starting point and an end result for a client or receiver.

There should be measurable value or benefits at each stage.
These are key performance indicators (KPIs).
Spot problem areas in the stream.

Value streams usually fall into one of these categories:

1. Fulfillment of products and services
2. Manufacturing
3. Software products
4. Supporting value streams (procurement of supplies, product planning)

Value stream and value stages examples

Customer Acquisitions
Identify Prospects > Contact Prospects > Verify Interests

Sell Product
Identify Options > Evaluate Options > Negotiate Price and Delivery Date > Place Order > Get Invoice > Make Payment

Product Delivery
Confirm Order > Plan Load > Receive Warehouse > Fill Order > Ship Order > Deliver Order > Invoice Customer

Product Financing
Initiate Loan Application > Decide on Application > Submit Documents > Review & Satisfy T&C > Finalize Documents > Conduct Funding > Conduct Funding Audits

Product Release
Ideate > Design > Build > Release

Sell Product is a value stream, made up of value stages Identify options, Evaluate options, and so on.

2.2 Decompose selected value streams

1-3 hours

Once we have a good understanding of our value streams, we need to decide which ones to focus on for deeper analysis and modeling, e.g. extend the business architecture to more detailed level 2 capabilities.

Organization has goals and delivers products or services.

1. Identify which value propositions are most important, e.g. be more productive or manage money more simply.
2. Identify the value stream(s) that create the value proposition.
3. Break the selected value stream into value stages.
4. Analyze value stages for opportunities.

Build your value stream one layer at a time to ensure clarity and comprehensiveness

The first step of creating a value stream is defining it.

• In this step, you create the parameters around the value stream and document them in a list format.
• This allows you to know where each value stream starts and ends and the unique value it provides.

The second step is the value stream mapping.

• The majority of the mapping is done here where you break down your value stream into each of its component stages.
• Analysis of these stages allows for a deeper understanding of the value stream.
• The mapping layer connects the value stream to organizational capabilities.

Define the value streams that are tied to your strategic goals and document them in a list

Title

• Create a title for your value stream that indicates the value it achieves.
• Ensure your title is clear and will be understood the same way across the organization.
• The common naming convention for value streams is to use nouns, e.g. product purchase.

Scope

• Determine the scope of your value stream by defining the trigger to start the value stream and final value delivered to end the value stream.
• Be precise with your trigger to ensure you do not mistakenly include actions that would not trigger your value stream.
• A useful tip is creating a decision tree and outlining the path that results in your trigger.

Objectives

• Determine the objectives of the value stream by highlighting the outcome it delivers.
• Identify the desired outcomes of the value stream from the perspective of your organization.

Example Value Streams List

Create a value stream map

Decompose the value stream into its value stages

The first step in creating a value stream map is breaking it up into its component stages.

The stages of a value stream are usually action-oriented statements or verbs that make up the individual steps involved throughout the scope of the value stream.

The Benefit
Segmenting your value stream into individual stages will give you a better understanding of the steps involved in creating value.

Connect the stages of the value stream to a specific customer perspective

The Benefit
Adding the customer’s perspective will inform you of their priorities at each stage of the value stream.

Connect the stages of the value stream to a desired outcome

The Benefit
Understanding the organization’s desired outcome at each stage of the value stream will help set objectives and establish metrics.

Define the entry and exit criteria of each stage

The Benefit
Establishing the entry and exit criteria for each stage will help you understand how the customer experience flows from one end of the stream to the other.

Outline the key metric(s) for each stage

The Benefit
Setting metrics for each stage will facilitate the tracking of success and inform the business architecture practitioner of where investments should be made.

Example value stream map: Sell Product

Assess the stages of your value stream map to determine which capabilities to examine further

To determine which specific business capabilities you should seek to assess and potentially refine, you must review performance toward target metrics at each stage of the value stream.

Stages that are not performing to their targets should be examined further by assessing the capabilities that enable them.

Determine the business capabilities that support the value stage corresponding with the failing metric

Sell Product

Identify Options > Evaluate Options > Negotiate Price and Delivery Date > Place Order > Get Invoice > Make Payment

The value stage(s) that doesn’t meet its objective metrics should be examined further.

• This is done through business capability mapping and assessment.
• Starting at the highest level (level 0) view of a business, the business architecture practitioner must drill down into the lower level capabilities that support the specific value stage to diagnose/improve an issue.

Info-Tech Insight
In the absence of tangible metrics, you will have to make a qualitative judgement about which stage(s) of the value stream warrant further examination for problems and opportunities.

Build business capability map

Align supporting capabilities to priority activities.

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Determine which business capabilities support value streams
• Accelerate the process with an industry reference architecture
• Validate the business capability map
• Establish level 2 capability

This step involves the following participants:

• Enterprise/Business Architect
• Business Analysts
• Business Unit Leads
• CIO
• Departmental Executives & Senior Managers

Outcomes of this step

Develop a business capability map – level 1

• Business architecture consists of a set of techniques to create multiple views of an organization; the primary view is known as a business capability map.
• A business capability defines what a business does to enable value creation and achieve outcomes, rather than how. Business capabilities are business terms defined using descriptive nouns such as “Marketing” or “Research and Development.” They represent stable business functions, are unique and independent of each other, and typically will have a defined business outcome. Business capabilities should not be defined as organizational units and are typically longer lasting than organizational structures.
• A business capability mapping process should begin at the highest-level view of an organization, the level 1, which presents the entire business on a page.
• An effective method of organizing business capabilities is to split them into logical groupings or categories. At the highest level, capabilities are either “core” (customer-facing functions) or “enabling” (supporting functions).
• As a best practice, Info-Tech recommends dividing business capabilities into the categories illustrated to the right.

The Business Capability Map is the primary visual representation of the organization’s key abilities or services that are delivered to stakeholders. This model forms the basis of strategic planning discussions.

Example business capability map – Higher Education

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and represents a view of what your data program must support.

Validate your business capability map with the right stakeholders, including your executive team, business unit leaders, and/or other key stakeholders.

Example business capability map for: Higher Education

Example business capability map – Local Government

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and represents a view of what your data program must support.

Validate your business capability map with the right stakeholders, including your executive team, business unit leaders, and/or other key stakeholders.

Example business capability map for: Local Government

Map capabilities to value stage

Source: Lambert, “Practical Guide to Agile Strategy Execution”

3.1 Build level 1 business capability map

1-3 hours

1. Analyze the value streams to identify and describe the organization’s capabilities that support them. This stage requires a good understanding of the business and will be a critical foundation for the business capability map. Use the reference business architecture’s business capability map for your industry for examples of level 1 and 2 business capabilities and the capability map template to work in.
2. Avoid:
1. Don’t repeat capabilities. Capabilities are typically mutually exclusive activities.
2. Don’t include temporary initiatives. Capabilities should be stable over time. The people, processes, and technologies that support capabilities will change continuously.

Ensure you engage with the right stakeholders:

Don’t waste your efforts building an inaccurate depiction of the business: The exercise of identifying capabilities for an organization is very introspective and requires deep analysis.

It is challenging to develop a common language that everyone will understand and be able to apply. Invest in the time to ensure the right stakeholders are brought into the fold and bring their business area expertise and understanding to the table.

Prioritize one value stream and build a business architecture to level 2 capabilities

Prioritize your innovation objectives and business goals, and identify a value stream to transform.

Align the innovation goals and business objectives of your organization to your value streams (the critical actions that take place within your organization to add value to a customer).
Prioritize a value stream to transform based on the number of priorities aligned to a value stream and/or the business value (e.g. revenue, EBITDA earnings, competitive differentiation, or cost efficiency).
Working alongside a business or enterprise architect, build a reference architecture for the prioritized value stream up to level 2.

Info-Tech Insight
To produce maximum impact, focus on value streams that provide two-thirds of your enterprise value (EBITDA earnings).

From level 1 to level 2 business capabilities

3.2 Build level 2 business capability map

1-3 hours

It is only at level 2 and further that we can pinpoint the business capabilities – the exact resources, whether applications or data or processes – that we need to focus on to realize improvements in the organization’s performance and customer experience.

1. Gather industry reference models and any existing business capability maps.
2. For the selected value stream, further break down its level 1 business capabilities into level 2 capabilities.
3. You can often represent the business capabilities on a single page, providing a holistic visual for decision makers.
4. Use meaningful names for business capabilities so that planners, stakeholders, and subject matter experts can easily search the map.

Download: See your Account Representative for access to Info-Tech’s Reference Architecture Template

3.3 Heatmap business capability map

1-3 hours

Determine the organization’s key capabilities.

1. Determine cost advantage creators. If your organization has a cost advantage over competitors, the capabilities that enable it should be identified and prioritized. Highlight these capabilities and prioritize the programs that support them.
2. Determine competitive advantage creators. If your organization does not have a cost advantage over competitors, determine if it can deliver differentiated end-customer experiences. Once you have identified the competitive advantages, understand which capabilities enable them. These capabilities are critical to the success of the organization and should be highly supported.
3. Define key future state capabilities. In addition to the current and competitive advantage creators, the organization may have the intention to enhance new capabilities. Discuss and select the capabilities that will help drive the attainment of future goals.
4. Assess how well information, applications, and processes support capabilities.

Download: See your Account Representative for access to Info-Tech’s Reference Architecture Template

Business capability map: Education

Define key capabilities

Note: Illustrative Example

Business process review

Note: Illustrative Example

Information assessment

Note: Illustrative Example

Application assessment

Note: Illustrative Example

MoSCoW analysis for business capabilities

Note: Illustrative Example

Ranked list of IT implications

3.4 Roadmap business architecture initiatives

1-3 hours

Unify the organization’s perspective on how it creates value.

1. Write a short description of the value stream that includes a statement about the value provided and a clear start and end for the value stream. Validate the accuracy of the descriptions with your key stakeholders.
2. Consider:
1. How does the organization deliver those benefits?
2. How does the customer receive the benefits?
3. What is the scope of your value stream? What will trigger the stream to start and what will the final value be?
3. Don’t start with a blank page. Use Info-Tech’s business architecture models for sample value streams.

Download: See your Account Representative for access to Info-Tech’s Reference Architecture Template

Example: Business architecture deliverables

Tools and templates to compile and communicate your business architecture work

The Industry Business Reference Architecture Template for your industry is a place for you to collect all of the activity outputs and outcomes you’ve completed for use in next-steps.

Download the Industry Business Reference Architecture Template for your industry

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options

Research Contributors and Experts

Bibliography

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Lambert, Daniel. “Practical Guide to Agile Strategy Execution.” 18 February 2020.

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“The Definitive Guide to Business Capabilities.” LeanIX, n.d. Web.

TOGAF 9. Version 9.1. The Open Group, 2011. Web.

“What is Business Architecture?” STA Group, 2017. PDF.

Whittie, Ralph. “The Business Architecture, Value Streams and Value Chains.” BA Institute, n.d. Web.

Make the Case for Product Delivery

Align your organization on the practices to deliver what matters most.

Table of Contents

Define product

Define your drivers and goals

Understand the role of product ownership

Communicate what comes next

Make the case to your stakeholders

Appendix: Additional research

Appendix: Product delivery strategy communication

Appendix: Manage stakeholder influence

Appendix: Product owner capability details

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Delivering products doesn’t mean you will stop delivering projects! Product-centric delivery is intended to address the misalignment between the long-term delivery of value that organizations demand and the nature of traditional project-focused environments.

Many executives perceive IT as being poorly aligned with business objectives

Info-Tech’s CIO Business Vision Survey data highlights the importance of IT initiatives in supporting the business in achieving its strategic goals.

However, Info-Tech’s CEO-CIO Alignment Survey (2021; N=58) data indicates that CEOs perceive IT to be poorly aligned to business’ strategic goals.

Info-Tech CEO-CIO Alignment Diagnostics, 2021 (N=58)

40% Of CEOs believe that business goals are going unsupported by IT.

34% Of business stakeholders are supporters of their IT departments (n=334).

40% Of CIOs/CEOs are misaligned on the target role for IT.

Info-Tech Insight

Great technical solutions are not the primary driver of IT success. Focusing on delivery of digital products that align with organizational goals will produce improved outcomes and will foster an improved relationship between business and IT.

Increase product success by involving IT, business, and customers in your product roadmaps, planning, and delivery

Product management and delivery seek to promote improved relationships among IT, business, and customers, a critical driver for business satisfaction.

IT	1	Collaboration IT, business, and customers work together through all stages of the product lifecycle, from market research through the roadmapping and delivery processes and into maintenance and retirement. The goal is to ensure the risks and dependencies are realized before work is committed.	Stakeholders, Customers, and Business
	2	Communication Prioritize high-value modes of communication to break down existing silos and create common understanding and alignment across functions. This approach increases transparency and visibility across the entire product lifecycle.
	3	Integration Explore methods to integrate the workflows, decision making, and toolsets among the business, IT, and customers. The goal is to become more reactive to changes in business and customer expectations and more proactive about market trends.

Product does not mean the same thing to everyone

Do not expect a universal definition of products.
Every organization and industry has a different definition of what a product is. Organizations structure their people, processes, and technologies according to their definition of the products they manage. Conflicting product definitions between teams increase confusion and misalignment of product roadmaps.

Organizations need a common understanding of what a product is and how it pertains to the business.

This understanding needs to be accepted across the organization.

“There is not a lot of guidance in the industry on how to define [products]. This is dangerous because what will happen is that product backlogs will be formed in too many areas. All that does is create dependencies and coordination across teams … and backlogs.” (Chad Beier, “How Do You Define a Product?” Scrum.org)

Products enable the long-term and continuous delivery of value

Phase 1

Build the case for product-centric delivery

Phase 1
1.1 Define product
1.2 Define your drivers and goals
1.3 Understand the role of product ownership
1.4 Communicate what comes next
1.5 Make the case to your stakeholders

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Define product in your context.
• Define your drivers and goals for moving to product delivery.
• Understand the role of product ownership.
• Communicate what comes next for your transition to product.
• Lay out the case to your stakeholders.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Product owners
• Product managers
• Development team leads
• Portfolio managers
• Business analysts

Step 1.1

Define product

Activities

• 1.1.1 Define “product” in your context
• 1.1.2 Consider examples of what is (and is not) a product in your organization
• 1.1.3 Identify the differences between project and product delivery

This step involves the following participants:

• Product owners
• Product managers
• Development team leads
• Portfolio managers
• Business analysts

Outcomes of this step

• A clear definition of product in your organization’s context.

Make the Case for Product Delivery

Exercise 1.1.1 Define “product” in your context

30-60 minutes

Output: Your enterprise/organizational definition of products and services

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. Discuss what “product” means in your organization.
2. Create a common, enterprise-wide definition for “product.”

Record the results in the Make the Case for Product-Centric Delivery Workbook.

Example: What is a product?

Not all organizations will define products in the same way. Take this as a general example:

“A tangible solution, tool, or service (physical or digital) that enables the long-term and evolving delivery of value to customers and stakeholders based on business and user requirements.” Info-Tech Insight A proper definition of product recognizes three key facts: Products are long-term endeavors that don’t end after the project finishes. Products are not just “apps” but can be software or services that drive the delivery of value. There is more than one stakeholder group that derives value from the product or service.

How do we know what is a product?

Exercise 1.1.2 Consider examples of what is (and is not) a product in your organization

Output: Examples of what is and isn’t a product in your specific context.

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. Leverage the definition you created in exercise 1.1.1 and the explanation on the slide What is a product?
2. Pick examples that effectively show the difference between products and non-products and facilitate a conversation on the ones that seem to be on the line. Specific server instances, or instances of providing a service, are worthwhile examples to consider.
3. From the list you come up with, take the top three examples and put them into the Make the Case for Product Delivery Presentation Template.

Record the results in the Make the Case for Product Delivery Workbook.

Product delivery practices should consider everything required to support it, not just what users see.

Products and services share the same foundation and best practices

Exercise 1.1.3 Identify the differences between project and product delivery

30-60 minutes

Output: List of differences between project and product delivery

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. Consider project delivery and product delivery.
2. Discuss what some differences are between the two.
   Note: This exercise is not about identifying the advantages and disadvantages of each style of delivery. This is to identify the variation between the two.

Record the results in the Make the Case for Product Delivery Workbook.

Identify the differences between a project-centric and a product-centric organization

Info-Tech Insights

• Product ownership should be one of your first areas of focus when transitioning from project to product delivery.
• Product delivery requires significant shifts in the way you complete development work and deliver value to your users. Make the changes that support improving end-user value and enterprise alignment.

Projects can be a mechanism for funding product changes and improvements

Projects within products Regardless of whether you recognize yourself as a product-based or project-based shop, the same basic principles should apply. The purpose of projects is to deliver the scope of a product release. The shift to product delivery leverages a product roadmap and backlog as the mechanism for defining and managing the scope of the release. Eventually, teams progress to continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) where they can release on demand or as scheduled, requiring org change management.

Step 1.2

Define your drivers and goals

Activities

• 1.2.1 Understand your drivers for product-centric delivery
• 1.2.2 Define the goals for your product-centric organization

This step involves the following participants:

• Product owners
• Product managers
• Development team leads
• Portfolio managers
• Business analysts

Outcomes of this step

• A clear understanding of your motivations and desired outcomes for moving to product delivery.

Make the Case for Product Delivery

Exercise 1.2.1 Understand your drivers for product-centric delivery

30-60 minutes

Output: Organizational drivers to move to product-centric delivery.

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. Identify your pain points in the current delivery model.
2. What is the root cause of these pain points?
3. How will a product-centric delivery model fix the root cause (drivers)?

Record the results in the Make the Case for Product Delivery Workbook.

Exercise 1.2.2 Define the goals for your product-centric organization

30 minutes

Output: Goals for product-centric delivery

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. Review the differences between project and product delivery from exercise 1.1.3 and the list of drivers from exercise 1.2.1.
2. Define your goals for achieving a product-centric organization.
   Note: Your drivers may have already covered the goals. If so, review if you would like to change the drivers based on your renewed understanding of the differences between project and product delivery.

Record the results in the Make the Case for Product Delivery Workbook.

Step 1.3

Understand the role of product ownership

Activities

• 1.3.1 Identify product ownership capabilities

This step involves the following participants:

• Product owners
• Product managers
• Development team leads
• Portfolio managers
• Business analysts

Outcomes of this step

• Product owner capabilities that you agree are critical to start your product transformation.

Make the Case for Product Delivery

Accountability for the delivery of value through product ownership is not optional

Info-Tech Insight People treat the assignment of accountability for products (aka product ownership) as optional. Without assigning accountability up front, your transition to product delivery will stall. Accountable individuals will be focused on the core outcome for product delivery, which is the delivery of the right value, at the right time, to the right people.

Recognize the different product owner perspectives

Info-Tech Best Practice

Product owners must translate needs and constraints from their perspective into the language of their audience. Kathy Borneman, Digital Product Owner at SunTrust Bank, noted the challenges of finding a common language between lines of business and IT (e.g. what is a unit?).

Info-Tech Insight

Recognize that product owners represent one of three primary perspectives. Although all share the same capabilities, how they approach their responsibilities is influenced by their perspective.

“A Product Owner in its most beneficial form acts like an Entrepreneur, like a 'mini-CEO'. The Product Owner is someone who really 'owns' the product.” (Robbin Schuurman, “Tips for Starting Product Owners”)

Implement the Info-Tech product owner capability model

As discussed in Build a Better Product Owner, most product owners operate with an incomplete knowledge of the skills and capabilities needed to perform the role. Common gaps include focusing only on product backlogs, acting as a proxy for product decisions, and ignoring the need for key performance indicators (KPIs) and analytics in both planning and value realization.
Vision Market Analysis Business Alignment Product Roadmap Leadership Soft Skills Collaboration Decision Making Product Lifecycle Management Plan Build Run Value Realization KPIs Financial Management Business Model

Details on product ownership capabilities can be found in the appendix.

Exercise 1.3.1 Identify product ownership capabilities

60 minutes

Output: Product owner capability mapping

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. Write down the capabilities product owners need to perform their duties (one per sticky note) in order to describe product ownership in your organization. Consider people, processes, and tools.
2. Mark each capability with a plus (current capability), circle (some proficiency), or dash (missing capability).
3. Discuss each capability and place on the appropriate quadrant.

Record the results in the Make the Case for Product Delivery Workbook.

Differentiate between product owners and product managers

Info-Tech Insight

“Product owner” and “product manager” are terms that should be adapted to fit your culture and product hierarchy. These are not management relationships but rather a way to structure related products and services that touch the same end users.

Step 1.4

Communicate what comes next

Activities

• 1.4.1 How do we get started?

This step involves the following participants:

• Product owners
• Product managers
• Development team leads
• Portfolio managers
• Business analysts

Outcomes of this step

• A now, next, later roadmap indicating your overall next steps.

Make the Case for Product Delivery

Make a plan in order to make a plan!

Consider some of the techniques you can use to validate your strategy.		Go to your backlog and prioritize the elements that need to be answered sooner rather than later. Possible areas of focus: Regulatory requirements or questions to answer around accessibility, security, privacy. Stress testing any new processes against situations that may occur.
Learning Milestones The completion of a set of artifacts dedicated to validating business opportunities and hypotheses. Possible areas of focus: Align teams on product strategy prior to build Market research and analysis Dedicated feedback sessions Provide information on feature requirements	Sprint Zero (AKA Project-before-the-project) The completion of a set of key planning activities, typically the first sprint. Possible areas of focus: Focus on technical verification to enable product development alignment Sign off on architectural questions or concerns

The “Now, Next, Later” roadmap

Use this when deadlines and delivery dates are not strict. This is best suited for brainstorming a product plan when dependency mapping is not required.

Now What are you going to do now? Next What are you going to do very soon? Later What are you going to do in the future?

(Source: “Tips for Agile product roadmaps & product roadmap examples,” Scrum.org, 2017)

Exercise 1.4.1 How do we get started?

30-60 minutes

Output: Product transformation critical steps and basic roadmap

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

Identify what the critical steps are for the organization to embrace product-centric delivery. Group each critical step by how soon you need to address it: Now: Let’s do this ASAP. Next: Sometime very soon, let’s do these things. Later: Much further off in the distance, let’s consider these things.

(Source: “Tips for Agile product roadmaps & product roadmap examples,” Scrum.org, 2017)

Record the results in the Make the Case for Product Delivery Workbook.

Example

Step 1.5

Make the case to your stakeholders

Activities

• 1.5.1 Identify what support you need from your stakeholders
• 1.5.2 Build your pitch for product delivery

This step involves the following participants:

• Product owners
• Product managers
• Development team leads
• Portfolio managers
• Business analysts

Outcomes of this step

• A deliverable that helps make the case for product delivery.

Make the Case for Product Delivery

Develop a stakeholder strategy to define your product owner landscape

Stakeholder Influence Stakeholders are a critical cornerstone to product ownership. They provide the context, alignment, and constraints that influence or control what a product owner is able to accomplish. Product teams operate within this network of stakeholders who represent different perspectives within the organization. See the appendix for activities and guidance on how to devise a strategy for managing stakeholders.

Exercise 1.5.1 Identify what support you need from your stakeholders

30 minutes

Output: Clear understanding of stakeholders, what they need from you, and what you need from them.

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. If you don’t yet know who your stakeholders are, consider completing one or more of the stakeholder management exercises in the appendix.
2. Identify your key stakeholders who have an interest in solution delivery.
3. Consider their perspective on product-centric delivery. (For example: For head of support, what does solution delivery mean to them?)
4. Identify what role each stakeholder would play in the transformation.
   • This role represents what you need from them for this transformation to product-centric delivery.

Record the results in the Make the Case for Product Delivery Workbook.

Exercise 1.5.2 Build your pitch deck

30 minutes (and up)

Output: A completed presentation to help you make the case for product delivery.

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. Take the results from the Make the Case for Product Delivery Workbook and transfer them into the presentation template.
2. Follow the instructions on each page listed in the instruction bubbles to know what results to place where.
3. This is meant to be a template; you are welcome to add and remove slides as needed to suit your audience!

Record the results in the Make the Case for Product Delivery Workbook.

Appendix

Additional research to start your journey

Related Info-Tech Research

Related Info-Tech Research

Application Portfolio Management

Related Info-Tech Research

Value, Delivery Metrics, Estimation

Related Info-Tech Research

Org Design and Performance

Appendix

Product delivery strategy communication

Product roadmaps guide delivery and communicate your strategy

In Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision, we demonstrate how the product roadmap is core to value realization. The product roadmap is your communicated path, and as a product owner, you use it to align teams and changes to your defined goals while aligning your product to enterprise goals and strategy.

(Adapted from: Pichler, “What Is Product Management?”)

Info-Tech Insight

The quality of your product backlog – and your ability to realize business value from your delivery pipeline – is directly related to the input, content, and prioritization of items in your product roadmap.

Define product value by aligning backlog delivery with roadmap goals

In each product plan, the backlogs show what you will deliver.
Roadmaps identify when and in what order you will deliver value, capabilities, and goals.

Multiple roadmap views can communicate differently, yet tell the same truth

Appendix

Managing stakeholder influence

From Build a Better Product Owner

Step 1.3 (from Build a Better Product Owner)

Manage Stakeholder Influence

Activities

• 1.3.1 Visualize interrelationships to identify key influencers
• 1.3.2 Group your product owners into categories
• 1.3.3 Prioritize your stakeholders
• 1.3.4 Delegation Poker: Reach better decisions

This step will walk you through the following activities:

To be successful, product owners need to identify and manage all stakeholders for their products. This step will build a stakeholder map and strategy.

This step involves the following participants:

• Product owners
• Product managers
• Development team leads
• Portfolio managers
• Delivery managers
• Business analysts

Outcomes of this step

• Relationships among stakeholders and influencers
• Categorization of stakeholders and influencers
• Stakeholder and influencer prioritization
• Better understanding of decision-making approaches and delegation

Develop a product owner stakeholder strategy

Stakeholder Influence Stakeholders are a critical cornerstone to product ownership. They provide the context, alignment, and constraints that influence or control what a product owner is able to accomplish. Product owners operate within this network of stakeholders who represent different perspectives within the organization. First, product owners must identify members of their stakeholder network. Next, they should devise a strategy for managing stakeholders. Without accomplishing these missing pieces, product owners will encounter obstacles, resistance, or unexpected changes.

Create a stakeholder network map to product roadmaps and prioritization

Follow the trail of breadcrumbs from your direct stakeholders to their influencers to uncover hidden stakeholders.

Legend Black arrows indicate the direction of professional influence Dashed green arrows indicate bidirectional, informal influence relationships

Info-Tech Insight

Your stakeholder map defines the influence landscape your product operates in. It is every bit as important as the teams who enhance, support, and operate your product directly.

Use “connectors” to determine who may be influencing your direct stakeholders. They may not have any formal authority within the organization, but they may have informal yet substantive relationships with your stakeholders.

1.3.1 Visualize interrelationships to identify key influencers

60 minutes

Input: List of product stakeholders

Output: Relationships among stakeholders and influencers

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Markers, Build a Better Product Owner Workbook

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. List direct stakeholders for your product.
2. Determine the stakeholders of your stakeholders and consider adding each of them to the stakeholder list.
3. Assess who has either formal or informal influence over your stakeholders; add these influencers to your stakeholder list.
4. Construct a diagram linking stakeholders and their influencers together.
   1. Use black arrows to indicate the direction of professional influence.
   2. Use dashed green arrows to indicate bidirectional, informal influence relationships.
5. Record the results in the Build a Better Product Owner Workbook.

Record the results in the Build a Better Product Owner Workbook.

Categorize your stakeholders with a prioritization map

1.3.2 Group your product owners into categories

30 minutes

Input: Stakeholder map

Output: Categorization of stakeholders and influencers

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Markers, Build a Better Product Owner Workbook

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

Identify your stakeholder’s interest in and influence on your Agile implementation as high, medium, or low by rating the attributes below. Map your results to the model below to determine each stakeholder’s category. Record the results in the Build a Better Product Owner Workbook.
Level of Influence Power: Ability of a stakeholder to effect change. Urgency: Degree of immediacy demanded. Legitimacy: Perceived validity of stakeholder’s claim. Volume: How loud their “voice” is or could become. Contribution: What they have that is of value to you.	Level of Interest How much are the stakeholder’s individual performance and goals directly tied to the success or failure of the product?

Record the results in the Build a Better Product Owner Workbook.

Prioritize your stakeholders

There may be too many stakeholders to be able to manage them all. Focus your attention on the stakeholders that matter most.

Consider the three dimensions for stakeholder prioritization: influence, interest, and support. Support can be determined by rating the following question: how likely is it that your stakeholder would recommend your product? These parameters are used to prioritize which stakeholders are most important and should receive the focus of your attention. The table to the right indicates how stakeholders are ranked.

1.3.3 Prioritize your stakeholders

30 minutes

Input: Stakeholder matrix, Stakeholder prioritization

Output: Stakeholder and influencer prioritization

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Markers, Build a Better Product Owner Workbook

Participants: Product owners, Product managers, Development team leads, Portfolio managers, Business analysts

1. Identify the level of support of each stakeholder by answering the following question: how likely is it that your stakeholder would endorse your product?
2. Prioritize your stakeholders using the prioritization scheme on the previous slide.
3. Record the results in the Build a Better Product Owner Workbook.