Implement a New IT Organizational Structure

Prioritize quick wins and critical services during IT org changes.

This blueprint is part 3/3 in Info-Tech’s organizational design program and focuses on implementing a new structure

Monitor and Sustain Stakeholder Engagement →

The sections highlighted in green are in scope for this blueprint. Click here for more information on designing or on structuring a new organization.

Our understanding of the problem

This Research is Designed For:

• CIOs

This Research Will Help You:

• Effectively implement a new organizational structure.
• Develop effective communications to minimize turnover and lost productivity during transition.
• Identify a detailed transition strategy to move to your new structure with minimal interruptions to service quality.
• Train managers to lead through change and measure ongoing employee engagement.

This Research Will Also Assist:

• IT Leaders

This Research Will Help Them:

• Effectively lead through the organizational change.
• Manage difficult conversations with staff and mitigate staff concerns and turnover.
• Build clear transition plans for their teams.

Executive summary

Situation

• Organizational Design (OD) projects are typically undertaken in order to enable organizational priorities, improve IT performance, or to reduce IT costs. However, due to the highly disruptive nature of the change, only 25% of changes achieve their objectives over the long term. (2013 Towers Watson Change and Communication ROI Survey)

Complication

• OD implementations can be highly disruptive for IT staff and business partners. Without a structured approach, IT leaders may experience high turnover, decreased productivity, and resistance to the change.
• CIOs walk a tightrope as they manage the operational and emotional turbulence while aiming to improve business satisfaction within IT. Failure to achieve balance could result in irreparable failure.

Resolution

• Leverage Info-Tech’s organizational design implementation process and deliverables to build and implement a detailed transition strategy and to prepare managers to lead through change. Follow Info-Tech’s 5-step process to:
  1. Effect change and sustain productivity through real-time employee engagement monitoring.
  2. Kick off the organizational design implementation with effective communication.
  3. Build an integrated departmental transition strategy.
  4. Train managers to effectively lead through change.
  5. Develop personalized transition plans.

Info-Tech Insight

1. Mismanagement will hurt you. The majority of IT organizations do not manage OD implementations effectively, resulting in decreased satisfaction, productivity loss, and increased IT costs.
2. Preventing mismanagement is within your control. 72% of change management issues can be directly improved by managers. (Abilla, 2009) IT leaders have a tendency to focus their efforts on operational changes rather than on people. This is a recipe for failure.

Organizational Design Implementation

Managing organizational design (OD) changes effectively is critical to maintaining IT service levels and retaining top talent throughout a restructure. Nevertheless, many organizations fail to invest appropriate consideration and resources into effective OD change planning and execution.

THREE REASONS WHY CIOS NEED TO EFFECTIVELY MANAGE CHANGE:

1. Failure is the norm; not the exception. According to a study by Towers Watson, only 55% of organizations experience the initial value of a change. Even fewer organizations, a mere 25%, are actually able to sustain change over time to experience the full expected benefits. (2013 Towers Watson Change and Communication ROI Survey)
2. People are the biggest cause of failure. Organizational design changes are one of the most difficult types of changes to manage as staff are often highly resistant. This leads to decreased productivity and poor results. The most significant people challenge is the loss of momentum through the change process which needs to be actively managed.
3. Failure costs money. Poor IT OD implementations can result in increased turnover, lost productivity, and decreased satisfaction from the business. Managing the implementation has a clear ROI as the cost of voluntary turnover is estimated to be 150% of an employee’s annual salary. (Inc)

86% of IT leaders believe organization and leadership processes are critical, yet the majority struggle to be effective

PERCENTAGE OF IT LEADERS WHO BELIEVE THEIR ORGANIZATION AND LEADERSHIP PROCESSES ARE HIGHLY IMPORTANT AND HIGHLY EFFECTIVE

GAP BETWEEN IMPORTANCE AND EFFECTIVENESS

Human Resources Management - 61%

Leadership, Culture, Values - 48%

Organizational Change Management - 55%

Organizational Design - 45%

Note: Importance and effectiveness were determined by identifying the percentage of individuals who responded with 8-10/10 to the questions…

• “How important is this process to the organization’s ability to achieve business and IT goals?” and…
• “How effective is this process at helping the organization to achieve business and IT goals?”

Source: Info-Tech Research Group, Management and Governance Diagnostic. N=22,800 IT Professionals

Follow a structured approach to your OD implementation to improve stakeholder satisfaction with IT and minimize risk

• IT reorganizations are typically undertaken to enable strategic goals, improve efficiency and performance, or because of significant changes to the IT budget. Without a structured approach to manage the organizational change, IT might get the implementation done, but fail to achieve the intended benefits, i.e. the operation succeeds, but the patient has died on the table.
• When implementing your new organizational design, it’s critical to follow a structured approach to ensure that you can maintain IT service levels and performance and achieve the intended benefits.
• The impact of organizational structure changes can be emotional and stressful for staff. As such, in order to limit voluntary turnover, and to maintain productivity and performance, IT leaders need to be strategic about how they communicate and respond to resistance to change.

TOP 3 BENEFITS OF FOLLOWING A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTING ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

1. Improved stakeholder satisfaction with IT. A detailed change strategy will allow you to successfully transition staff into new roles with limited service interruptions and with improved stakeholder satisfaction.
2. Experience minimal voluntary turnover throughout the change. Know how to actively engage and minimize resistance of stakeholders throughout the change.
3. Execute implementation on time and on budget. Effectively managed implementations are 65–80% more likely to meet initial objectives than those with poor organizational change management. (Boxley Group, LLC)

Optimize your organizational design implementation results by actively preparing managers to lead through change

IT leaders have a tendency to make change even more difficult by focusing on operations rather than on people. This is a recipe for failure. People pose the greatest risk to effective implementation and as such, IT managers need to be prepared and trained on how to lead their staff through the change. This includes knowing how to identify and manage resistance, communicating the change, and maintaining positive momentum with staff.

Staff resistance and momentum are the most challenging part of leading through change (McLean & Company, N=196)

Reasons why change fails: 72% of failures can be directly improved by the manager (shmula)

Leverage organizational change management (OCM) best practices for increased OD implementation success

Effective change management correlates with project success

Source: Prosci. From Prosci’s 2012 Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking report.

95% of projects with excellent change management met or EXCEEDED OBJECTIVES, vs. 15% of those with poor OCM. (Prosci)

143% ROI on projects with excellent OCM. In other words, for every dollar spent on the project, the company GAINS 43 CENTS. This is in contrast to 35% ROI on projects with poor OCM. (McKinsey)

Info-Tech’s approach to OD implementation is a practical and tactical adaptation of several successful OCM models

BUSINESS STRATEGY-ORIENTED OCM MODELS. John Kotter’s 8-Step model, for instance, provides a strong framework for transformational change but doesn’t specifically take into account the unique needs of an IT transformation.

GENERAL-PURPOSE OCM FRAMEWORKS such as ACMP’s Standard for Change Management, CMI’s CMBoK, and Prosci’s ADKAR model are very comprehensive and need to be configured to organizational design implementation-specific initiatives.

COBIT MANAGEMENT PRACTICE BAI05: MANAGE ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE ENABLEMENT follows a structured process for implementing enterprise change quickly. This framework can be adapted to OD implementation; however, it is most effective when augmented with the people and management training elements present in other frameworks.

References and Further Reading

• ADKAR (Prosci)
• CMBoK (CMI)
• COBIT 5
• Kotter’s 8 Principles
• Managing Transitions
• Kubler-Ross Curve
• The Classic Change Curve Standard for Change Management (ACMP)

Tailoring a comprehensive, general-purpose OCM framework to an OD implementation requires familiarity and experience. Info-Tech’s OD implementation model adapts the best practices from a wide range of proven OCM models and distills it into a step-by-step process that can be applied to an organizational design transformation.

The following OD implementation symptoms can be avoided through structured planning

IN PREVIOUS ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES, I’VE EXPERIENCED…

“Difficultly motivating my staff to change.”

“Higher than average voluntary turnover during and following the implementation.”

“An overall sense of staff frustration or decreased employee engagement.”

“Decreased staff productivity and an inability to meet SLAs.”

“Increased overtime caused by being asked to do two jobs at once.”

“Confusion about the reporting structure during the change.”

“Difficulty keeping up with the rate of change and change fatigue from staff.”

“Business partner dissatisfaction about the change and complaints about the lack of effort or care put in by IT employees.”

“Business partners not wanting to adjust to the change and continuing to follow outdated processes.”

“Decrease in stakeholder satisfaction with IT.”

“Increased prevalence of shadow IT during or following the change.”

“Staff members vocally complaining about the IT organization and leadership team.”

Follow this blueprint to develop and execute on your OD implementation

IT leaders often lack the experience and time to effectively execute on organizational changes. Info-Tech’s organizational design implementation program will provide you with the needed tools, templates, and deliverables. Use these insights to drive action plans and initiatives for improvement.

How we can help

• Measure the ongoing engagement of your employees using Info-Tech’s MLI diagnostic. The diagnostic comes complete with easily customizable reports to track and act on employee engagement throughout the life of the change.
• Use Info-Tech’s customizable project management tools to identify all of the critical changes, their impact on stakeholders, and mitigate potential implementation risks.
• Develop an in-depth action plan and transition plans for individual stakeholders to ensure that productivity remains high and that service levels and project expectations are met.
• Align communication with real-time staff engagement data to keep stakeholders motivated and focused throughout the change.
• Use Info-Tech’s detailed facilitation guide to train managers on how to effectively communicate the change, manage difficult stakeholders, and help ensure a smooth transition.

Leverage Info-Tech’s customizable deliverables to execute your organizational design implementation

CUSTOMIZABLE PROJECT DELIVERABLES

1. BUILD A CHANGE COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

• McLean Leadership Index: Real-Time Employee Engagement Dashboard
• Organizational Design
• Implementation Kick-Off Presentation
• Organizational Design Implementation FAQ

2. BUILD THE ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSITION PLAN

• Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool

3.1 TRAIN MANAGERS TO LEAD THROUGH CHANGE

3.2 TRANSITION STAFF TO NEW ROLES

• Organizational Design Implementation Manager Training Guide
• Organizational Design Implementation Transition Plan Template

Leverage Info-Tech’s tools and templates to overcome key engagement program implementation challenges

KEY SECTION INSIGHTS:

BUILD A CHANGE COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

Effective organizational design implementations mitigate the risk of turnover and lost productivity through ongoing monitoring and managing of employee engagement levels. Take a data-driven approach to managing engagement with Info-Tech’s real-time MLI engagement dashboard and adjust your communication and implementation strategy before engagement risks become issues.

BUILD THE ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSITION PLAN

Your organizational design implementation is made up of a series of projects and needs to be integrated into your larger project schedule. Too often, organizations attempt to fit the organizational design implementation into their existing schedules which results in poor resource planning, long delays in implementation, and overall poor results.

LEAD STAFF THROUGH THE REORGANIZATION

The majority of IT managers were promoted because they excelled at the technical aspect of their job rather than in people management. Not providing training is setting your organization up for failure. Train managers to effectively lead through change to see a 72% decrease in change management issues. (Abilla, 2009)

METRICS:

1. Voluntary turnover: Conduct an exit interview with all staff members during and after transition. Identify any staff members who cite the change as a reason for departure. For those who do leave, multiply their salary by 1.5% (the cost of a new hire) and track this over time.
2. Business satisfaction trends: Conduct CIO Business Vision one year prior to the change vs. one year after change kick-off. Prior to the reorganization, set metrics for each category for six months after the reorganization, and one year following.
3. Saved development costs: Number of hours to develop internal methodology, tools, templates, and process multiplied by the salary of the individual.

Use this blueprint to save 1–3 months in implementing your new organizational structure

These estimates are based on reviews with Info-Tech clients and our experience creating the blueprint.

Totals:

Workshop: 1 week

GI/DIY: 2-6 weeks

Time and Effort Saved: 8-17 weeks

CIO uses holistic organizational change management strategies to overcome previous reorganization failures

CASE STUDY

Industry: Manufacturing

Source: Client interview

Problem

When the CIO of a large manufacturing company decided to undertake a major reorganization project, he was confronted with the stigma of a previous CIO’s attempt. Senior management at the company were wary of the reorganization since the previous attempt had failed and cost a lot of money. There was major turnover since staff were not happy with their new roles costing $250,000 for new hires. The IT department saw a decline in their satisfaction scores and a 10% increase in help desk tickets. The reorganization also cost the department $400,000 in project rework.

Solution

The new CIO used organizational change management strategies in order to thoroughly plan the implementation of the new organizational structure. The changes were communicated to staff in order to improve adoption, every element of the change was mapped out, and the managers were trained to lead their staff through the change.

Results

The reorganization was successful and eagerly adopted by the staff. There was no turnover after the new organizational structure was implemented and the engagement levels of the staff remained the same.

$250,000 - Cost of new hires and salary changes

10% - Increase in help desk tickets

$400,000 - Cost of project delays due to the poorly effective implementation of changes

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

Implement a New Organizational Structure

Workshop overview

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

Phase 1

Build a Change Communication Strategy

Build a change communication strategy

Outcomes of this Section:

• Launch the McLean Leadership Index
• Define your change team
• Build your reorganization kick-off presentation and FAQ for staff and business stakeholders

This section involves the following participants:

• CIO
• IT leadership team
• IT staff

Key Section Insight:

Effective organizational design implementations mitigate the risk of turnover and lost productivity through ongoing monitoring of employee engagement levels. Take a data-driven approach to managing engagement with Info-Tech’s real-time MLI engagement dashboard and adjust your communication and implementation strategy in real-time before engagement risks become issues.

Phase 1 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 1: Build a Change Communication Strategy

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 1-6 weeks

Step 1.1: Launch Your McLean Leadership Index Survey

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Discuss the benefits and uses of the MLI.
• Go over the required information (demographics, permissions, etc.).
• Set up a live demo of the survey.

Then complete these activities…

• Launch the survey with your staff.
• Have a results call with a member of the Info-Tech staff.

With these tools & templates:

McLean Leadership Index

Step 1.2: Establish Your Implementation Team

Review findings with analyst:

• Review what members of your department should participate.
• Build a RACI to determine the roles of your team members.

Then complete these activities…

• Hold a kick-off meeting with your new implementation team.
• Build the RACI for your new team members and their roles.

Step 1.3: Build Your Change Communication Strategy

Finalize phase deliverable:

• Customize your reorganization kick-off presentation.
• Create your change vision. Review the communication strategy.

Then complete these activities…

• Hold your kick-off presentation with staff members.
• Launch the reorganization communications.

With these tools & templates:

• Organizational Design Implementation Kick-Off Presentation
• Organizational Design Implementation FAQ

Set the stage for the organizational design implementation by effectively introducing and communicating the change to staff

Persuading people to change requires a “soft,” empathetic approach to keep them motivated and engaged. But don’t mistake “soft” for easy. Managing the people and communication aspects around the change are amongst the toughest work there is, and require a comfort and competency with uncertainty, ambiguity, and conflict.

Communication and engagement are the chains linking your design to transition. If the organizational design initiative is going to be successful it is critical that you manage this effectively. The earlier you begin planning the better. The more open and honest you are about the change the easier it will be to maintain engagement levels, business satisfaction, and overall IT productivity.

Kick-Off Presentation Inputs

• LAUNCH THE MCLEAN LEADERSHIP INDEX
• IDENTIFY YOUR CHANGE TEAM
• DETERMINE CHANGE TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES
• DEVELOP THE CHANGE VISION
• DEFINE KEY MESSAGES AND GOALS
• IDENTIFY MAJOR CHANGES
• IDENTIFY KEY MILESTONES
• BUILD AND MAINTAIN A CHANGE FAQ

Use the MLI engagement dashboard to measure your current state and the impact of the change in real-time

The McLean Leadership Index diagnostic is a low-effort, high-impact program that provides real-time metrics on staff engagement levels. Use these insights to understand your employees’ engagement levels throughout the organizational design implementation to measure the impact of the change and to manage turnover and productivity levels throughout the implementation.

WHY CARE ABOUT ENGAGEMENT DURING THE CHANGE? ENGAGED EMPLOYEES REPORT:

39% Higher intention to stay at the organization.

29% Higher performance and increased likelihood to work harder and longer hours. (Source: McLean and Company N=1,308 IT Employees)

Why the McLean Leadership Index?

Based on the Net Promoter Score (NPS), the McLean Leadership Index is one question asked monthly to assess engagement at various points in time.

Individuals responding to the MLI question with a 9 or 10 are your Promoters and are most positive and passionate. Those who answer 7 or 8 are Passives while those who answer 0 to 6 are Detractors.

Track your engagement distribution using our online dashboard to view MLI data at any time and view results based on teams, locations, manager, tenure, age, and gender. Assess the reactions to events and changes in real-time, analyze trends over time, and course-correct.

Dashboard reports: Know your staff’s overall engagement and top priorities

McLean Leadership Index

OVERALL ENGAGEMENT RESULTS

You get:

• A clear breakdown of your detractors, passives, and promotors.
• To view results by team, location, and individual manager.
• To dig deeper into results by reviewing results by age, gender, and tenure at the organization to effectively identify areas where engagement is weak.

TIME SERIES TRENDS

You get:

• View of changes in engagement levels for each team, location, and manager.
• Breakdown of trends weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.
• To encourage leaders to monitor results to analyze root causes for changes and generate improvement initiatives.

QUALITATIVE COMMENTS

You get:

• To view qualitative comments provided by staff on what is impacting their engagement.
• To reply directly to comments without impacting the anonymity of the individuals making the comments.
• To leverage trends in the comments to make changes to communication approaches.

Launch the McLean Leadership Index in under three weeks

Info-Tech’s dedicated team of program managers will facilitate this diagnostic program remotely, providing you with a convenient, low-effort, high-impact experience.

We will guide you through the process with your goals in mind to deliver deep insight into your successes and areas to improve.

What You Need To Do:

1. Contact Info-Tech to launch the program and test the functionality in a live demo.
2. Identify demographics and set access permissions.
3. Complete manager training with assistance from Info-Tech Advisors.
4. Participate in a results call with an Info-Tech Advisor to review results and develop an action plan.

Info-Tech’s Program Manager Will:

1. Collect necessary inputs and generate your custom dashboard.
2. Launch, maintain, and support the online system in the field.
3. Send out a survey to 25% of the staff each week.
4. Provide ongoing support over the phone, and the needed tools and templates to communicate and train staff as well as take action on results.

Explore your initial results in a one-hour call with an Executive Advisor to fully understand the results and draw insights from the data so you can start your action plan.

Start Your Diagnostic Now

We'll help you get set up as soon as you're ready.

Start Now

Communication has a direct impact on employee engagement; measure communication quality using your MLI results

(McLean & Company, 2015 N=17,921)

A clear relationship exists between how effective a manager’s communication is perceived to be and an employee’s level of engagement. If engagement drops, circle back with employees to understand the root causes.

Establish an effective implementation team to drive the organizational change

The implementation team is responsible for developing and disseminating information around the change, developing the transition strategy, and for the ongoing management of the changes.

The members of the implementation team should include:

• CIO
• Current IT leadership team
• Project manager
• Business relationship managers
• Human resources advisor

Don’t be naïve – building and executing the implementation plan will require a significant time commitment from team members. Too often, organizations attempt to “fit it in” to their existing schedules resulting in poor planning, long delays, and overall poor results. Schedule this work like you would a project.

TOP 3 TIPS FOR DEFINING YOUR IMPLEMENTATION TEAM

1. Select a Project Manager. Info-Tech strongly recommends having one individual accountable for key project management activities. They will be responsible for keeping the project on time and maintaining a holistic view of the implementation.
2. Communication with Business Partners is Critical. If you have Business Relationship Managers (BRMs), involve them in the communication planning or assign someone to play this role. You need your business partners to be informed and bought in to the implementation to maintain satisfaction.
3. Enlist Your “Volunteer Army.” (Kotter’s 8 Principles) If you have an open culture, Info-Tech encourages you to have an extended implementation team made up of volunteers interested in supporting the change. Their role will be to support the core group, assist in planning, and communicate progress with peers.

Determine the roles of your implementation team members

1.1 30 Minutes

Input

• Implementation team members

Output

• RACI for key transition elements

Materials

• RACI chart and pen

Participants

• Core implementation committee

1. Each member should be actively engaged in all elements of the organizational design implementation. However, it’s important to have one individual who is accountable for key activities and ensures they are done effectively and measured.
2. Review the chart below and as a group, brainstorm any additional key change components.
3. For each component listed below, identify who is Accountable, Responsible, Consulted, and Informed for each (suggested responsibility below).

Fast-track your communication planning with Info-Tech’s Organizational Design Implementation Kick-Off Presentation

Organizational Design Implementation Kick-Off Presentation

Communicate what’s important to your staff in a simple, digestible way. The communication message should reflect what is important to your stakeholders and what they want to know at the time.

• Why is this change happening?
• What are the goals of the reorganization?
• What specifically is changing?
• How will this impact me?
• When is this changing?
• How and where can I get more information?

It’s important that the tone of the meeting suits the circumstances.

• If the reorganization is going to involve lay-offs: The meeting should maintain a positive feel, but your key messages should stress the services that will be available to staff, when and how people will be communicated with about the change, and who staff can go to with concerns.
• If the reorganization is to enable growth: Focus on celebrating where the organization is going, previous successes, and stress that the staff are critical in enabling team success.

Modify the Organizational Design ImplementationKick-Off Presentation with your key messages and goals

1.2 1 hour

Input

• New organizational structure

Output

• Organizational design goal statements

Materials

• Whiteboard & marker
• ODI Kick-off Presentation

Participants

• OD implementation team

1. Within your change implementation team, hold a meeting to identify and document the change goals and key messages.
2. As a group, discuss what the key drivers were for the organizational redesign by asking yourselves what problem you were trying to solve.
3. Select 3–5 key problem statements and document them on a whiteboard.
4. For each problem statement, identify how the new organizational design will allow you to solve those problems.
5. Document these in your Organizational Design Implementation Kick-Off Presentation.

Modify the presentation with your unique change vision to serve as the center piece of your communication strategy

1.3 1 hour

Input

• Goal statements

Output

• Change vision statement

Materials

• Sticky notes
• Pens
• Voting dots

Participants

• Change team

1. Hold a meeting with the change implementation team to define your change vision. The change vision should provide a picture of what the organization will look like after the organizational design is implemented. It should represent the aspirational goal, and be something that staff can all rally behind.
2. Hand out sticky notes and ask each member to write down on one note what they believe is the #1 desired outcome from the organizational change and one thing that they are hoping to avoid (you may wish to use your goal statements to drive this).
3. As a group, review each of the sticky notes and group similar statements in categories. Provide each individual with 3 voting dots and ask them to select their three favorite statements.
4. Select your winning statements in teams of 2–3. Review each statement and as a team work to strengthen the language to ensure that the statement provides a call to action, that it is short and to the point, and motivational.
5. Present the statements back to the group and select the best option through a consensus vote.
6. Document the change vision in your Organizational Design Implementation Kick-Off Presentation.

Customize the presentation identifying key changes that will be occurring

1.4 2 hours

Input

• Old and new organizational sketch

Output

• Identified key changes that are occurring

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Sticky notes & Pens
• Camera

Participants

• OD implementation team

1. On a whiteboard, draw a high-level picture of your previous organizational sketch and your new organizational sketch.
2. Using sticky notes, ask individuals to highlight key high-level challenges that exist in the current model (consider people, process, and technology).
3. Consider each sticky note, and highlight and document how and where your new sketch will overcome those challenges and the key differences between the old structure and the new.
4. Take a photo of the two sketches and comments, and document these in your Organizational Design Implementation Kick-Off Presentation.

Modify the presentation by identifying and documenting key milestones

1.5 1 hour

Input

• OD implementation team calendars

Output

• OD implementation team timeline

Materials

• OD Implementation Kick-Off Presentation

Participants

• OD implementation team

1. Review the timeline in the Organizational Design Implementation Kick-Off Presentation. As a group, discuss the key milestones identified in the presentation:
   • Kick-off presentation
   • Departmental transition strategy built
   • Organizational transition strategy built
   • Manager training
   • One-on-one meetings with staff to discuss changes to roles
   • Individual transition strategy development begins
2. Review the timeline, and keeping your other commitments in mind, estimate when each of these tasks will be completed and update the timeline.

Build an OD implementation FAQ to proactively address key questions and concerns about the change

Organizational Design Implementation FAQ

Leverage this template as a starting place for building an organizational design implementation FAQ.

This template is prepopulated with example questions and answers which are likely to arise.

Info-Tech encourages you to use the list of questions as a basis for your FAQ and to add additional questions based on the changes occurring at your organization.

It may also be a good idea to store the FAQ on a company intranet portal so that staff has access at all times and to provide users with a unique email address to forward questions to when they have them.

Build your unique organizational design implementation FAQ to keep staff informed throughout the change

1.6 1 hour + ongoing

Input

• OD implementation team calendars

Output

• OD implementation team timeline

Materials

• OD Implementation Kick-Off Presentation

Participants

• OD implementation team

1. Download a copy of the Organizational Design Implementation FAQ and as a group, review each of the key questions.
2. Delete any questions that are not relevant and add any additional questions you either believe you will receive or which you have already been asked.
3. Divide the questions among team members and have each member provide a response to these questions.
4. The CIO and the project manager should review the responses for accuracy and ensure they are ready to be shared with staff.
5. Publish the responses on an IT intranet site and make the location known to your IT staff.

Dispelling rumors by using a large implementation team

CASE STUDY

Industry: Manufacturing

Source: CIO

Challenge

When rumors of the impending reorganization reached staff, there was a lot of confusion and some of the more vocal detractors in the department enforced these rumors.

Staff were worried about changes to their jobs, demotions, and worst of all, losing their jobs. There was no communication from senior management to dispel the gossip and the line managers were also in the dark so they weren’t able to offer support.

Staff did not feel comfortable reaching out to senior management about the rumors and they didn’t know who the change manager was.

Solution

The CIO and change manager put together a large implementation team that included many of the managers in the department. This allowed the managers to handle the gossip through informal conversations with their staff.

The change manager also built a communication strategy to communicate the stages of the reorganization and used FAQs to address the more common questions.

Results

The reorganization was adopted very quickly since there was little confusion surrounding the changes with all staff members. Many of the personnel risks were mitigated by the communication strategy because it dispelled rumors and took some of the power away from the vocal detractors in the department.

An engagement survey was conducted 3 months after the reorganization and the results showed that the engagement of staff had not changed after the reorganization.

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:

1a: Launch the MLI Dashboard (Pre-Work)

Prior to the workshop, Info-Tech’s advisors will work with you to launch the MLI diagnostic to understand the overall engagement levels of your organization.

1b: Review Your MLI Results

The analysts will facilitate several exercises to help you and your team identify your current engagement levels, and the variance across demographics and over time.

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: Define Your Change Team Responsibilities

Review the key responsibilities of the organizational design implementation team and define the RACI for each individual member.

1.3: Define Your Change Vision and Goals

Identify the change vision statement which will serve as the center piece for your change communications as well as the key message you want to deliver to your staff about the change. These messages should be clear, emotionally impactful, and inspirational.

1.4: Identify Key Changes Which Will Impact Staff

Collectively brainstorm all of the key changes that are happening as a result of the change, and prioritize the list based on the impact they will have on staff. Document the top 10 biggest changes – and the opportunities the change creates or problems it solves.

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:

1.5: Define the High-Level Change Timeline

Identify and document the key milestones within the change as a group, and determine key dates and change owners for each of the key items. Determine the best way to discuss these timelines with staff, and whether there are any which you feel will have higher levels of resistance.

1.5: Build the FAQ and Prepare for Objection Handling

As a group, brainstorm the key questions you believe you will receive about the change and develop a common FAQ to provide to staff members. The advisor will assist you in preparing to manage objections to limit resistance.

Phase 2

Build The Organizational Transition Plan

Build the organizational transition plan

Outcomes of this section:

• A holistic list of projects that will enable the implementation of the organizational structure.
• A schedule to monitor the progress of your change projects.

This section involves the following participants:

• CIO
• Reorganization Implementation Team

Key Section Insight:

Be careful to understand the impacts of the change on all groups and departments. For best results, you will need representation from all departments to limit conflict and ensure a smooth transition. For large IT organizations, you will need to have a plan for each department/work unit and create a larger integration project.

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: Build the Organizational Transition Plan

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 2-4 weeks

Step 2.1: Review the Change Dimensions and How They Are Used to Plan Change Projects

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Review the purpose of the kick-off meeting.
• Review the change project dimensions.
• Review the Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool.

Then complete these activities…

• Conduct your kick-off meeting.
• Brainstorm a list of reorganization projects and their related tasks.

With these tools & templates:

• Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool

Step 2.2: Review the List of Change Projects

Review findings with analyst:

• Revisit the list of projects and tasks developed in the brainstorming session.
• Assess the list and determine resourcing and dependencies for the projects.
• Review the monitoring process.

Then complete these activities…

• Complete the Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool.
• Map out your project dependencies and resourcing.
• Develop a schedule for monitoring projects.

With these tools & templates:

• Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool

Use Info-Tech’s Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool to plan and track your reorganization

• Use Info-Tech’s Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool to document and track all of the changes that are occurring during your reorganization.
• Automatically build Gantt charts for all of the projects that are being undertaken, track problems in the issue log, and monitor the progress of projects in the reporting tab.
• Each department/work group will maintain its own version of this tool throughout the reorganization effort and the project manager will maintain a master copy with all of the projects listed.
• The chart comes pre-populated with example data gathered through the research and interview process to help generate ideas for your own reorganization.
• Review the instructions at the top of each work sheet for entering and modifying the data within each chart.

Have a short kick-off meeting to introduce the project planning process to your implementation team

2.1 30 minutes

Output

• Departmental ownership of planning tool

Materials

• OD Implementation Project Planning Tool

Participants

• Change Project Manager
• Implementation Team
• Senior Management (optional)

1. The purpose of this kick-off meeting is to assign ownership of the project planning process to members of the implementation team and to begin thinking about the portfolio of projects required to successfully complete the reorganization.
2. Use the email template included on this slide to invite your team members to the meeting.
3. The topics that need to be covered in the meeting are:
   • Introducing the materials/templates that will be used throughout the process.
   • Assigning ownership of the Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool to members of your team.
   • Ownership will be at the departmental level where each department or working group will manage their own change projects.
   • Prepare your implementation team for the next meeting where they will be brainstorming the list of projects that will need to be completed throughout the reorganization.
4. Distribute/email the tools and templates to the team so that they may familiarize themselves with the materials before the next meeting.

Hello [participant],

We will be holding our kickoff meeting for our reorganization on [date]. We will be discussing the reorganization process at a high level with special attention being payed to the tools and templates that we will be using throughout the process. By the end of the meeting, we will have assigned ownership of the Project Planning Tool to department representatives and we will have scheduled the next meeting where we’ll brainstorm our list of projects for the reorganization.

Consider Info-Tech’s four organizational change dimensions when identifying change projects

CHANGE DIMENSIONS

• TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS
• COMMUNICATION
• STAFFING
• PROCESS

Technology and Logistics

• These are all the projects that will impact the technology used and physical logistics of your workspace.
• These include new devices, access/permissions, new desks, etc.

Communication

• All of the required changes after the reorganization to ongoing communications within IT and to the rest of the organization.
• Also includes communication projects that are occurring during the reorganization.

Staffing

• These projects address the changes to your staff’s roles.
• Includes role changes, job description building, consulting with HR, etc.

Process

• Projects that address changes to IT processes that will occur after the reorganization.

Use these trigger questions to help identify all aspects of your coming changes

STAFFING

• Do you need to hire short or long-term staff to fill vacancies?
• How long does it typically take to hire a new employee?
• Will there be staff who are new to management positions?
• Is HR on board with the reorganization?
• Have they been consulted?
• Have transition plans been built for all staff members who are transitioning roles/duties?
• Will gaps in the structure need to be addressed with new hires?

COMMUNICATION

• When will the change be communicated to various members of the staff?
• Will there be disruption to services during the reorganization?
• Who, outside of IT, needs to know about the reorganization?
• Do external communications need to be adjusted because of the reorganization? Moving/centralizing service desk, BRMs, etc.?
• Are there plans/is there a desire to change the way IT communicates with the rest of the organization?
• Will the reorganization affect the culture of the department? Is the new structure compatible with the current culture?

Use these trigger questions to help identify all aspects of your coming changes (continued)

TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS

• Will employees require new devices in their new roles?
• Will employees be required to move their workspace?
• What changes to the workspace are required to facilitate the new organization?
• Does new furniture have to be purchased to accommodate new spaces/staff?
• Is the workspace adequate/up to date technologically (telephone network, Wi-Fi coverage, etc.)?
• Will employees require new permissions/access for their changing roles?
• Will permissions/access need to be removed?
• What is your budget for the reorganization?
• If a large geographical move is occurring, have problems regarding geography, language barriers, and cultural sensitivities been addressed?

PROCESS

• What processes need to be developed?
• What training for processes is required?
• Is the daily functioning of the IT department predicted to change?
• Are new processes being implemented during the reorganization?
• How will the project portfolio be affected by the reorganization?
• Is new documentation required to accompany new/changing processes?

Brainstorm the change projects to be carried out during the reorganization for your team/department

2.2 3 hours

Input

• Constructive group discussion

Output

• Thorough list of all reorganization projects

Materials

• Whiteboard, sticky notes
• OD Implementation Project Planning Tool

Participants

• Implementation Team
• CIO
• Senior Management

1. Before the meeting, distribute the list of trigger questions presented on the two previous slides to prepare your implementation team for the brainstorming session.
2. Begin the meeting by dividing up your implementation team into the departments/work groups that they represent (and have ownership of the tool over).
3. Distribute a different color of sticky notes to each team and have them write out each project they can think of for each of the change planning dimensions (Staffing, Communication, Process and Technology/Logistics) using the trigger questions.
4. After one hour, ask the groups to place the projects that they brainstormed onto the whiteboard divided into the four change dimensions.
5. Discuss the complete list of projects on the board.
   • Remove projects that are listed more than once since some projects will be universal to some/all departments.
   • Adjust the wording of projects for the sake of clarity.
   • Identify projects that are specific to certain departments.
6. Document the list of high-level projects on tab 2 “Project Lists” within the OD Implementation Project Planning Tool after the activity is complete.

Prioritize projects to assist with project planning modeling

Prioritization is the process of ranking each project based on its importance to implementation success. Hold a meeting for the implementation team and extended team to prioritize the project list. At the conclusion of the meeting, each requirement should be assigned a priority level. The implementation teams will use these priority levels to ensure efforts are targeted towards the proper projects. A simple way to do this for your implementation is to use the MoSCoW Model of Prioritization to effectively order requirements.

The MoSCoW Model of Prioritization

MUST HAVE - Projects must be implemented for the organizational design to be considered successful.

SHOULD HAVE - Projects are high priority that should be included in the implementation if possible.

COULD HAVE - Projects are desirable but not necessary and could be included if resources are available.

WON'T HAVE - Projects won’t be in the next release, but will be considered for the future releases.

The MoSCoW model was introduced by Dai Clegg of Oracle UK in 1994.

Keep the following criteria in mind as you determine your priorities

Effective Prioritization Criteria

Prioritize the change projects within your team/department to be executed during the reorganization

2.3 3 hours

Input

• Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool

Output

• Prioritized list of projects

Materials

• Whiteboard, sticky notes
• OD Implementation Project Planning Tool

Participants

• Implementation Team
• Extended Implementation Team

1. Divide the group into their department teams. Draw 4 columns on a whiteboard, including the following:
   • Must have
   • Should have
   • Could have
   • Won’t have
2. As a group, review each project and collaboratively identify which projects fall within each category. You should have a strong balance between each of the categories.
3. Beginning with the “must have” projects, determine if each has any dependencies. If any of the projects are dependent on another, add the dependency project to the “must have” category. Group and circle the dependent projects.
4. Continue the same exercise with the “should have” and “could have” options.
5. Record the results on tab “2. Project List” of the Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool using the drop down option.

Determine resource availability for completing your change projects

2.4 2 hours

Input

• Constructive group discussion

Output

• Thorough list of all reorganization projects

Materials

• Whiteboard, sticky notes
• OD Implementation Project Planning Tool

Participants

• Implementation Team
• CIO
• Senior Management

1. Divide the group into their department teams to plan the execution of the high-level list of projects developed in activity 2.2.
2. Review the list of high-level projects and starting with the “must do” projects, consider each in turn and brainstorm all of the tasks required to complete these projects. Write down each task on a sticky note and place it under the high-level project.
3. On the same sticky note as the task, estimate how much time would be required to complete each task. Be realistic about time frames since these projects will be on top of all of the regular day-to-day work.
4. Along with the time frame, document the resources that will be required and who will be responsible for the tasks. If you have a documented Project Portfolio, use this to determine resourcing.
5. After mapping out the tasks, bring the group back together to present their list of projects, tasks, and required resources.

• Go through the project task lists to make sure that nothing is missed.
• Review the timelines to make sure they are feasible.
• Review the resources to ensure that they are available and realistic based on constraints (time, current workload, etc.).
• Repeat the process for the Should do and Could do projects.

1. Document the tasks and resources in tab “3. Task Monitoring” in the OD Implementation Project Planning Tool after the activity is complete.

Map out the change project dependencies at the departmental level

2.5 2 hours

Input

• Constructive group discussion

Output

• Thorough list of all reorganization projects

Materials

• Whiteboard, sticky notes
• OD Implementation Project Planning Tool

Participants

• Implementation Team
• CIO
• Senior Management

1. Divide the group into their department teams to map the dependencies of their tasks created in activity 2.3.
2. Take the project task sticky notes created in the previous activity and lay them out along a timeline from start to finish.
3. Determine the dependencies of the tasks internal to the department. Map out the types of dependencies.
   • Finish to Start: Preceding task must be completed before the next can start.
   • Start to Start: Preceding task must start before the next task can start.
   • Finish to Finish: Predecessor must finish before successor can finish.
   • Start to Finish: Predecessor must start before successor can finish.
4. Bring the group back together and review each group’s timeline and dependencies to make sure that nothing has been missed.
5. As a group, determine whether there are dependencies that span the departmental lists of projects.
6. Document all of the dependencies within the department and between departmental lists of projects and tasks in the OD Implementation Project Planning Tool.

Amalgamate all of the departmental change planning tools into a master copy

2.6 3 hours

Input

• Department-specific copies of the OD Implementation Project Planning Tool

Output

• Universal list of all of the change projects

Materials

• Whiteboard and sticky notes

Participants

• Implementation Project Manager
• Members of the implementation team for support (optional)

1. Before starting the activity, gather all of the OD Implementation Project Planning Tools completed at the departmental level.
2. Review each completed tool and write all of the individual projects with their timelines on sticky notes and place them on the whiteboard.
3. Build timelines using the documented dependencies for each department. Verify that the resources (time, people, physical) are adequate and feasible.
4. Combine all of the departmental project planning tools into one master tool to be used to monitor the overall status of the reorganization. Separate the projects based on the departments they are specific to.
5. Finalize the timeline based on resource approval and using the dependencies mapped out in the previous exercise.
6. Approve the planning tools and store them in a shared drive so they can be accessed by the implementation team members.

Create a progress monitoring schedule

2.7 1 hour weekly

Input

• OD Implementation Project Planning Tools (departmental & organizational)

Output

• Actions to be taken before the next pulse meeting

Participants

• Implementation Project Manager
• Members of the implementation team for support
• Senior Management

1. Hold weekly pulse meetings to keep track of project progress.
2. The agenda of each meeting should include:
   • Resolutions to problems/complications raised at the previous week’s meeting.
   • Updates on each department’s progress.
   • Raising any issues/complications that have appeared that week.
   • A discussion of potential solutions to the issues/complications.
   • Validating the work that will be completed before the next meeting.
   • Raising any general questions or concerns that have been voiced by staff about the reorganization.
3. Upload notes from the meeting about resolutions and changes to the schedules to the shared drive containing the tools.
4. Increase the frequency of the meetings towards the end of the project if necessary.

Building a holistic change plan enables adoption of the new organizational structure

CASE STUDY

Industry: Manufacturing

Source: CIO

Challenge

The CIO was worried about the impending reorganization due to problems that they had run into during the last reorganization they had conducted. The change management projects were not planned well and they led to a lot of uncertainty before and after the implementation.

No one on the staff was ready for the reorganization. Change projects were completed four months after implementation since many of them had not been predicted and cataloged. This caused major disruptions to their user services leading to drops in user satisfaction.

Solution

Using their large and diverse implementation team, they spent a great deal of time during the early stages of planning devoted to brainstorming and documenting all of the potential change projects.

Through regular meetings, the implementation team was able to iteratively adjust the portfolio of change projects to fit changing needs.

Results

Despite having to undergo a major reorganization that involved centralizing their service desk in a different state, there were no disruptions to their user services.

Since all of the change projects were documented and completed, they were able to move their service desk staff over a weekend to a workspace that was already set up. There were no changes to the user satisfaction scores over the period of their reorganization.

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:

2.2 Brainstorm Your List of Change Projects

Review your reorganization plans and facilitate a brainstorming session to identify a complete list of all of the projects needed to implement your new organizational design.

2.5 Map Out the Dependencies and Resources for Your Change Projects

Examine your complete list of change projects and determine the dependencies between all of your change projects. Align your project portfolio and resource levels to the projects in order to resource them adequately.

Phase 3

Lead Staff Through the Reorganization

Train managers to lead through change

Outcomes of this Section:

• Completed the workshop: Lead Staff Through Organizational Change
• Managers possess stakeholder engagement plans for each employee
• Managers are prepared to fulfil their roles in implementing the organizational change

This section involves the following participants:

• CIO
• IT leadership team
• IT staff

Key Section Insight:

The majority of IT managers were promoted because they excelled at the technical aspect of their job rather than in people management. Not providing training is setting your organization up for failure. Train managers to effectively lead through change to see a 72% decrease in change management issues. (Source: Abilla, 2009)

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: Train Managers to Lead Through Change

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 1-2 weeks

Step 3.1: Train Your Managers to Lead Through the Change

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Go over the manager training workshop section of this deck.
• Review the deliverables generated from the workshop (stakeholder engagement plan and conflict style self-assessment).

Then complete these activities…

• Conduct the workshop with your managers.

With these tools & templates:

• Organizational Design Implementation Manager Training Guide
• Organizational Design Implementation Stakeholder Engagement Plan Template

Step 3.2: Debrief After the Workshop

Review findings with analyst:

• Discuss the outcomes of the manager training.
• Mention any feedback.
• High-level overview of the workshop deliverables.

Then complete these activities…

• Encourage participants to review and revise their stakeholder engagement plans.
• Review the Organizational Design Implementation Transition Plan Template and next steps.

Get managers involved to address the majority of obstacles to successful change

Managers all well-positioned to translate how the organizational change will directly impact individuals on their teams.

Reasons Why Change Fails

EMPLOYEE RESISTANCE TO CHANGE - 39%

MANAGEMENT BEHAVIOR NOT SUPPORTIVE OF CHANGE - 33%

INADEQUATE RESOURCE OR BUDGET - 14%

OTHER OBSTACLES - 14%

72% of change management issues can be directly improved by management.

(Source: shmula)

Why are managers crucial to organizational change?

• Managers are extremely well-connected.
  • They have extensive horizontal and vertical networks spanning the organization.
  • Managers understand the informal networks of the organization.
• Managers are valuable communicators.
  • Managers have established strong relationships with employees.
  • Managers influence the way staff perceive messaging.

Conduct a workshop with managers to help them lead their teams through change

Organizational Design Implementation Manager Training Guide

Give managers the tools and skills to support their employees and carry out difficult conversations.

Understand the role of management in communicating the change

Understand reactions to change

Resolve conflict

Respond to FAQs

Monitor and measure employee engagement

Prepare managers to effectively execute their role in the organizational change by running a 2-hour training workshop.

Complete the activities on the following slides to:

• Plan and prepare for the workshop.
• Execute the group exercises.
• Help managers develop stakeholder engagement plans for each of their employees.
• Initiate the McLean Leadership Index™ survey to measure employee engagement.

Plan and prepare for the workshop

3.1 Plan and prepare for the workshop.

Output

• Workshop participants
• Completed workshop prep

Materials

• Organizational Design Implementation Manager Training Guide

Instructions

1. Create a list of all managers that will be responsible for leading their teams through the change.
2. Select a date for the workshop.
   • The training session will run approximately 2 hours and should be scheduled within a week of when the implementation plan is communicated organization-wide.
3. Review the material outlined in the presentation and prepare the Organizational Design Implementation Manager Training Guide for the workshop:
   • Copy and print the “Pre-workshop Facilitator Instructions” and “Facilitator Notes” located in the notes section below each slide.
   • Revise frequently asked questions (FAQs) and responses.
   • Delete instruction slides.

Invite managers to the workshop

Workshop Invitation Email Template

Make necessary modifications to the Workshop Invitation Email Template and send invitations to managers.

Hi ________,

As you are aware, we are starting to roll out some of the initiatives associated with our organizational change mandate. A key component of our implementation plan is to ensure that managers are well-prepared to lead their teams through the transition.

To help you proactively address the questions and concerns of your staff, and to ensure that the changes are implemented effectively, we will be conducting a workshop for managers on .

While the change team is tasked with most of the duties around planning, implementing, and communicating the change organization-wide, you and other managers are responsible for ensuring that your employees understand how the change will impact them specifically. The workshop will prepare you for your role in implementing the organizational changes in the coming weeks, and help you refine the skills and techniques necessary to engage in challenging conversations, resolve conflicts, and reduce uncertainty.

Please confirm your attendance for the workshop. We look forward to your participation.

Kind regards,

Change team

Prepare managers for the change by helping them build useful deliverables

ODI Stakeholder Engagement Plan Template & Conflict Style Self-Assessment

Help managers create useful deliverables that continue to provide value after the workshop is completed.

Workshop Deliverables

Organizational Design Implementation Stakeholder Engagement Plan Template

• Document the areas of change resistance, detachment, uncertainty, and support for each employee.
• Document strategies to overcome resistance, increase engagement, reduce uncertainty, and leverage their support.
• Create action items to execute after the workshop.

Conflict Style Self-Assessment

• Determine how you approach conflicts.
• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.
• Identify ways to adopt different conflict styles depending on the situation.

Book a follow-up meeting with managers and determine which strategies to Start, Stop, or Continue

3.2 1 hour

Output

• Stakeholder engagement templates

Materials

• Sticky notes
• Pen and paper

Participants

• Implementation Team
• Managers

1. Schedule a follow-up meeting 2–3 weeks after the workshop.
2. Facilitate an open conversation on approaches and strategies that have been used or could be used to:
   • Overcome resistance
   • Increase engagement
   • Reduce uncertainty
   • Leverage support
3. During the discussion, document ideas on the whiteboard.
4. Have participants vote on whether the approaches and strategies should be started, stopped, or continued.
   • Start: actions that the team would like to begin.
   • Stop: actions that the team would like to stop.
   • Continue: actions that work for the team and should proceed.
5. Encourage participants to review and revise their stakeholder engagement plans.

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:

3.1 The Change Maze

Break the ice with an activity that illustrates the discomfort of unexpected change, and the value of timely and instructive communication.

3.2 Perform a Change Management Retrospective

Leverage the collective experience of the group. Share challenges and successes from previous organizational changes and apply those lessons to the current transition.

3.3 Create a Stakeholder Engagement Plan

Have managers identify areas of resistance, detachment, uncertainty, and support for each employee and share strategies for overcoming resistance and leveraging support to craft an action plan for each of their employees.

3.4 Conduct a Conflict Style Self-Assessment

Give participants an opportunity to better understand how they approach conflicts. Administer the Conflict Style Self-Assessment to identify conflict styles and jumpstart a conversation about how to effectively resolve conflicts.

Transition your staff to their new roles

Outcomes of this Section:

• Identified key responsibilities to transition
• Identified key relationships to be built
• Built staff individual transition plans and timing

This section involves the following participants:

• All IT staff members

Key Section Insight

In order to ensure a smooth transition, you need to identify the transition scheduled for each employee. Knowing when they will retire and assume responsibilities and aligning this with the organizational transition will be crucial.

Phase 3b 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 3b: Transition Staff to New Roles

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 2-4

Step 4.1: Build Your Transition Plans

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Review the Organizational Design Implementation Transition Plan Template and its contents.
• Return to the new org structure and project planning tool for information to fill in the template.

Then complete these activities…

• Present the template to your managers.
• Have them fill in the template with their staff.
• Approve the completed templates.

With these tools & templates:

• Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool
• Organizational Design Implementation Transition Plan Template

Step 4.2: Finalize Your Transition Plans

Review findings with analyst:

• Discuss strategies for timing the transition of your employees.
• Determine the readiness of your departments for transitioning.

Then complete these activities…

• Build a transition readiness timeline of your departments.
• Move your employees to their new roles.

With these tools & templates:

• Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool
• Organizational Design Implementation Transition Plan Template

Use Info-Tech’s transition plan template to map out all of the changes your employees will face during reorganization

Organizational Design Implementation Transition Plan Template

• Use Info-Tech’s Organizational Design Implementation Transition Plan Template to document (in consultation with your employees) all of the changes individual staff members need to go through in order to transition into their new roles.
• It provides a holistic view of all of the changes aligned to the change planning dimensions, including:
  • Current and new job responsibilities
  • Outstanding projects
  • Documenting where the employee may be moving
  • Technology changes
  • Required training
  • New relationships that need to be made
  • Risk mitigation
• The template is designed to be completed by managers for their direct reports.

Customize the transition plan template for all affected staff members

4.1 30 minutes per employee

Output

• Completed transition plans

Materials

• Individual transition plan templates (for each employee)

Participants

• Implementation Team
• Managers

1. Implementation team members should hold one-on-one meetings with the managers from the departments they represent to go through the transition plan template.
2. Some elements of the transition plan can be completed at the initial meeting with knowledge from the implementation team and documentation from the new organizational structure:
   • Employee information (except for the planned transition date)
   • New job responsibilities
   • Logistics and technology changes
   • Relationships (recommendations can be made about beneficial relationships to form if the employee is transitioning to a new role)
3. After the meeting, managers can continue filling in information based on their own knowledge of their employees:
   • Current job responsibilities
   • Outstanding projects
   • Training (identify gaps in the employee’s knowledge if their role is changing)
   • Risks (potential concerns or problems for the employee during the reorganization)

Verify and complete the individual transition plans by holding one-on-one meetings with the staff

4.2 30 minutes per employee

Output

• Completed transition plans

Materials

• Individual transition plan templates (for each employee)

Participants

• Managers
• Staff (Managers’ Direct Reports)

1. After the managers complete everything they can in the transition plan templates, they should schedule one-on-one meetings with their staff to review the completed document to ensure the information is correct.
2. Begin the meeting by verifying the elements that require the most information from the employee:
   • Current job responsibilities
   • Outstanding projects
   • Risks (ask about any problems or concerns they may have about the reorganization)
3. Discuss the following elements of the transition plan to get feedback:
   • Training (ask if there is any training they feel they may need to be successful at the organization)
   • Relationships (determine if there are any relationships that the employee would like to develop that you may have missed)
4. Since this may be the first opportunity that the staff member has had to discuss their new role (if they are moving to one), review their new job title and new job responsibilities with them. If employees are prepared for their new role, they may feel more accountable for quickly adopting the reorganization.
5. Document any questions that they may have so that they can be answered in future communications from the implementation team.
6. After completing the template, managers will sign off on the document in the approval section.

Validate plans with organizational change project manager and build the transition timeline

4.3 3 hours

Input

• Individual transition plans
• Organizational Design Implementation Project Planning Tool

Output

• Timeline outlining departmental transition readiness

Materials

• Whiteboard

Participants

• Implementation Project Manager
• Implementation Team
• Managers

1. After receiving all of the completed individual transition plan templates from managers, members of the implementation team need to approve the contents of the templates (for the departments that they represent).
2. Review the logistics and technology requirements for transition in each of the templates and align them with the completion dates of the related projects in the Project Planning Tool. These dates will serve as the earliest possible time to transition the employee. Use the latest date from the list to serve as the date that the whole department will be ready to transition.
3. Hand the approved transition plan templates and the dates at which the departments will be ready for transitioning to the Implementation Project Manager.
4. The Project Manager needs to verify the contents of the transition plans and approve them.
5. On a calendar or whiteboard, list the dates that each department will be ready for transitioning.
6. Review the master copy of the Project Planning Tool. Determine if the outstanding projects limit your ability to transition the departments (when they are ready to transition). Change the ready dates of the departments to align with the completion dates of those projects.
7. Use these dates to determine the timeline for when you would like to transition your employees to their new roles.

Overcoming inexperience by training managers to lead through change

CASE STUDY

Industry: Manufacturing

Source: CIO

Challenge

The IT department had not undergone a major reorganization in several years. When they last reorganized, they experienced high turnover and decreased business satisfaction with IT.

Many of the managers were new to their roles and only one of them had been around for the earlier reorganization. They lacked experience in leading their staff through major organizational changes.

One of the major problems they faced was addressing the concerns, fears, and resistance of their staff properly.

Solution

The implementation team ran a workshop for all of the managers in the department to train them on the change and how to communicate the impending changes to their staff. The workshop included information on resistance and conflict resolution.

The workshop was conducted early on in the planning phases of the reorganization so that any rumors or gossip could be addressed properly and quickly.

Results

The reorganization was well accepted by the staff due to the positive reinforcement from their managers. Rumors and gossip about the reorganization were under control and the staff adopted the new organizational structure quickly.

Engagement levels of the staff were maintained and actually improved by 5% immediately after the reorganization.

Voluntary turnover was minimal throughout the change as opposed to the previous reorganization where they lost 10% of their staff. There was an estimated cost savings of $250,000–$300,000.

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:

3.2.1 Build Your Staff Transition Plan

Review the contends of the staff transition plan, and using the organizational change map as a guide, build the transition schedule for one employee.

3.2.1 Review the Transition Plan With the Transition Team

Review and validate the results for your transition team schedule with other team members. As a group, discuss what makes this exercise difficult and any ideas for how to simplify the exercise.

Works cited

American Productivity and Quality Center. “Motivation Strategies.” Potentials Magazine. Dec. 2004. Web. November 2014.

Bersin, Josh. “Time to Scrap Performance Appraisals?” Forbes Magazine. 5 June 2013. Web. 30 Oct 2013.

Bridges, William. Managing Transitions, 3rd Ed. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2009.

Buckley, Phil. Change with Confidence – Answers to the 50 Biggest Questions that Keep Change Leaders up at Night. Canada: Jossey-Bass, 2013.

“Change and project management.” Change First. 2014. Web. December 2009. <http://www.changefirst.com/uploads/documents/Change_and_project_management.pdf>.

Cheese, Peter, et al. “Creating an Agile Organization.” Accenture. Oct. 2009. Web. Nov. 2013.

Croxon, Bruce et al. “Dinner Series: Performance Management with Bruce Croxon from CBC's 'Dragon's Den.'” HRPA Toronto Chapter. Sheraton Hotel, Toronto, ON. 12 Nov. 2013. Panel discussion.

Culbert, Samuel. “10 Reasons to Get Rid of Performance Reviews.” Huffington Post Business. 18 Dec. 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samuel-culbert/performance-reviews_b_2325104.html>.

Denning, Steve. “The Case Against Agile: Ten Perennial Management Objections.” Forbes Magazine. 17 Apr. 2012. Web. Nov. 2013.

Works cited cont.

“Establish A Change Management Structure.” Human Technology. Web. December 2014.

Estis, Ryan. “Blowing up the Performance Review: Interview with Adobe’s Donna Morris.” Ryan Estis & Associates. 17 June 2013. Web. Oct. 2013. <http://ryanestis.com/adobe-interview/>.

Ford, Edward L. “Leveraging Recognition: Noncash incentives to Improve Performance.” Workspan Magazine. Nov 2006. Web. Accessed May 12, 2014.

Gallup, Inc. “Gallup Study: Engaged Employees Inspire Company Innovation.” Gallup Management Journal. 12 Oct. 2006. Web. 12 Jan 2012.

Gartside, David, et al. “Trends Reshaping the Future of HR.” Accenture. 2013. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.

Grenville-Cleave, Bridget. “Change and Negative Emotions.” Positive Psychology News Daily. 2009.

Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Portland: Broadway Books. 2010.

HR Commitment AB. Communicating organizational change. 2008.

Keller, Scott, and Carolyn Aiken. “The Inconvenient Truth about Change Management.” McKinsey & Company, 2009. <http://www.mckinsey.com/en.aspx>.

Works cited cont.

Kotter, John. “LeadingChange: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” Harvard Business Review. March-April 1995. <http://hbr.org>.

Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth and David Kessler. On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss. New York: Scribner. 2007.

Lowlings, Caroline. “The Dangers of Changing without Change Management.” The Project Manager Magazine. December 2012. Web. December 2014. <http://changestory.co.za/the-dangers-of-changing-without-change-management/>.

“Managing Change.” Innovative Edge, Inc. 2011. Web. January 2015. <http://www.getcoherent.com/managing.html>.

Muchinsky, Paul M. Psychology Applied to Work. Florence: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006.

Nelson, Kate and Stacy Aaron. The Change Management Pocket Guide, First Ed., USA: Change Guides LLC, 2005.

Nguyen Huy, Quy. “In Praise of Middle Managers.” Harvard Business Review. 2001. Web. December 2014. <https://hbr.org/2001/09/in-praise-of-middle-managers/ar/1>

“Only One-Quarter of Employers Are Sustaining Gains From Change Management Initiatives, Towers Watson Survey Finds.” Towers Watson. August 2013. Web. January 2015. <http://www.towerswatson.com/en/Press/2013/08/Only-One-Quarter-of-Employers-Are-Sustaining-Gains-From-Change-Management>.

Shmula. “Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” Shmula.com. September 28, 2009. <http://www.shmula.com/why-transformation-efforts-fail/1510/>

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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Manage Your Chromebooks and MacBooks

Financial constraints, strategy, and your user base dictate the need for Chromebooks and MacBooks – now you have to manage them in your environment.

Analyst Perspective

Managing MacBooks and Chromebooks is similar to managing Windows devices in many ways and different in others. The tools have many common features, yet they struggle to achieve the same goals.

Until recently, Windows devices dominated the workplace globally. Computing devices were also rare in many industries such as education. Administrators and administrative staff may have used Windows-based devices, but Chromebooks were not yet in use. Most universities and colleges were Windows-based in offices with some flavor of Unix in other areas, and Apple devices were gaining some popularity in certain circles.

That is a stark contrast compared to today, where Chromebooks dominate the classrooms and MacBooks and Chromebooks are making significant inroads into the enterprise environment. MacBooks are also a common sight on many university campuses. There is no doubt that while Windows may still be the dominant player, it is far from the only one in town.

Now that Chromebooks and MacBooks are a notable, if not significant, part of the education and enterprise environments, they must be afforded the same considerations as Windows devices in those environments when it comes to management. The good news is that there is no lack of available solutions for managing these devices, and the endpoint management landscape is continually evolving and improving.

P.J. Ryan
Research Director, Infrastructure & Operations
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• You modernized your end-user computing strategy and now have Windows 10 devices as well as MacBooks.
• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and desktop as a service (DaaS) are becoming popular. Chromebooks would be ideal as a low-cost interface into DaaS for your employees.
• You are responsible for the management of all the new Chromebooks in your educational district.
• Windows is no longer the only option. MacBooks and Chromebooks are justified, but now you have to manage them.

Common Obstacles

• Endpoint management solutions typically do a great job at managing one category of devices, like Windows or MacBooks, but they struggle to fully manage alternative endpoints.
• Multiple solutions to manage multiple devices will result in multiple dashboards. A single view would be better.
• One solution may not fit all, but multiple solutions is not desirable either, especially if you have Windows devices, MacBooks, and Chromebooks.

Info-Tech's Approach

• Use the tools at your disposal first – don't needlessly spend money if you don't have to. Many solutions can already manage other types of devices to some degree.
• Use the integration capabilities of endpoint management tools. Many of them can integrate with each other to give you a single interface to manage multiple types of devices while taking advantage of additional functionality.
• Don't purchase capabilities you will never use. Using 80% of a less expensive tool is economically smarter than using 10% of a more expensive tool.

Info-Tech Insight

Managing end-user devices may be accomplished with a variety of solutions, but many of those solutions advocate integration with a Microsoft-friendly solution to take advantage of features such as conditional access, security functionality, and data governance.

Insight Summary

Insight 1

Google Admin Console is necessary to manage Chromebooks, but it can be paired with other tools. Implementation partnerships provide solutions to track the device lifecycle, track the repair lifecycle, sync with Google Admin Console as well as PowerSchool to provide a more complete picture of the user and device, and facilitate reminders to return the device, pay fees if necessary, pick up a device when a repair is complete, and more.

Insight 2

The Google Admin Console allows admins to follow an organizational unit (OU) structure very similar to what they may have used in Microsoft's Active Directory environment. This familiarity makes the task of administering Chromebooks easier for admins.

Insight 3

Chromebook management goes beyond securing and manipulating the device. Controls to protect the students while online, such as Safe Search and Safe Browsing, should also be implemented.

Insight 4

Most companies choose to use a dedicated MacBook management tool. Many unified endpoint management (UEM) tools can manage MacBooks to some extent, but admins tend to agree that a MacBook-focused endpoint management tool is best for MacBooks while a Windows-based endpoint management tool is best for Windows devices.

Insight 5

Some MacBook management solutions advocate integration with Windows UEM solutions to take advantage of Microsoft features such as conditional access, security functionality, and data governance. This approach can also be applied to Chromebooks.

Chromebooks

Chromebooks had a respectable share of the education market before 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic turbocharged the penetration of Chromebooks in the education industry.

Chromebooks are also catching the attention of some decision makers in the enterprise environment.

"In 2018, Chromebooks represented an incredible 60 percent of all laptop or tablet devices in K-12 -- up from zero percent when the first Chromebook launched during the summer break in 2011."
– "Will Chromebooks Rule the Enterprise?" Computerworld

"Chromebooks were the best performing PC products in Q3 2020, with shipment volume increasing to a record-high 9.4 million units, up a whopping 122% year-on-year."
– Android Police

"Until the pandemic, Chrome OS' success was largely limited to U.S. schools. Demand in 2020 appears to have expanded beyond that small but critical part of the U.S. PC market."
– Geekwire

"In addition to running a huge number of Chrome Extensions and Apps at once, Chromebooks also run Android, Linux and Windows apps."
– "Will Chromebooks Rule the Enterprise?" Computerworld

Managing Chromebooks

Start with the Google Admin Console (GAC)

GAC is necessary to initially manage Chrome OS devices.

GAC gives you a centralized console that will allow you to:

• Create organizational units
• Add your Chromebook devices
• Add users
• Assign users to devices
• Create groups
• Create and assign policies
• Plus more

GAC can facilitate device management with features such as:

• Control admin permissions
• Encryption and update settings
• App deployment, screen timeout settings
• Perform a device wipe if required
• Audit user activity on a device
• Plus more

Device and user addition, group and organizational unit creation and administration, applying policies to devices and users – does all this remind you of your Active Directory environment?

GAC lets you administer users and devices with a similar approach.

Managing Chromebooks

Use Active Directory to manage Chromebooks.

• Enable Active Directory (AD) management from within GAC and you will be able to integrate your Chromebook devices with your AD environment.
• Devices will be visible in both the GAC and AD environment.
• Use Windows Group Policy to manage devices and to push policies to users and devices.
• Users can use their AD username and password to sign into Chromebook devices.
• GAC can still be used for devices that are not synced with AD.

Chromebooks can also be managed through these approved partners:

• Cisco Meraki
• Citrix XenMobile
• IBM MaaS360
• ManageEngine Mobile Device Manager Plus
• VMware Workspace ONE

Source: Google

You must be running the Chrome Enterprise Upgrade and have any licenses required by the approved partner to take advantage of this management option. The partner admin policies supersede GAC.

If you stop using the approved partner admin console to manage your devices, the polices and settings in GAC will immediately take over the devices.

Microsoft still has the market share when it comes to device sales, and many administrators are already familiar with Microsoft's Active Directory. Google took advantage of that familiarity when it designed the Google Admin Console structure for users, groups, and organizational units.

Chromebook Deployment

Chromebook deployment becomes a challenge when device quantities grow. The enrollment process can be time consuming, and every device must be enrolled before it can be used by an employee or a student. Many admins enlist their full IT teams to assist in the short term. Some vendor partners may assist with distribution options if staffing levels permit. Recent developments from Google have opened additional options for device enrollment beyond the manual enrollment approach.

Enrolling Chromebooks comes down to one of two approaches:

1. Manually enrolling one device at a time
   • Users can assist by entering some identifying details during the enrollment if permitted.
   • Some third-party solutions exist, such as USB drives to reduce repetitive keystrokes or hubs to facilitate manually enrolling multiple Chromebooks simultaneously.
2. Google's Chrome Enterprise Upgrade or the Chrome Education Upgrade
   • This allows you to let your users enroll devices after they accept the end-user license agreement.
   • You can take advantage of Google's vendor partner program and use a zero-touch deployment method where the Chromebook devices automatically receive the assigned policies, apps, and settings as soon as the device is powered on and an authorized user signs in.
   • The Enterprise Upgrade and the Education Upgrade do come with an annual cost per device, which is currently less than US$50.
   • The Enterprise and Education Upgrades come with other features as well, such as enhanced security.

Chromebooks are automatically assigned to the top-level organizational unit (OU) when enrolled. Devices can be manually moved to another OU, but admins can also create enrollment policies to place newly enrolled devices in a specific OU or have the device locate itself in the same OU as the user.

Chromebooks in Education

GAC is also used with Education-licensed devices

Most of the settings and features previously mentioned are also available for Education-licensed devices and users. Enterprise-specific features will not be available to Education licenses. (Active Directory integration with Education licenses, for example, is accomplished using a different approach)

• Groups, policies, administrative controls, app deployment and management, adding devices and users, creating organizational units, and more features are all available to Education Admins to use.

Education device policies and settings tend to focus more on protecting the students with controls such as:

• Disable incognito mode
• Disable location tracking
• Disable external storage devices
• Browser based protections such as Safe Search or Safe Browsing
• URL blocking
• Video input disable for websites
• App installation prevention, auto re-install, and app blocking
• Forced re-enrollment to your domain after a device is wiped
• Disable Guest Mode
• Restrict who can sign in
• Audit user activity on a device

When a student takes home a Chromebook assigned to them, that Chromebook may be the only computer in the household. Administrative polices and settings must take into account the fact that the device may have multiple users accessing many different sites and applications when the device is outside of the school environment.

Chromebook Management Extended

An online search for Chromebook management solutions will reveal several software solutions that augment the capabilities of the Google Admin Console. Many of these solutions are focused on the education sector and classroom and student options, although the features would be beneficial to enterprises and educational organizations alike.

These solutions assist or augment Chromebook management with features such as:

• Ability to sync with Google Admin Console
• Ability to sync with student information systems, such as PowerSchool
• Financial management, purchase details, and chargeback
• Asset lifecycle management
• 1:1 Chromebook distribution management
• Repair programs and repair process management
• Check-out/loan program management
• Device distribution/allocation management, including barcode reader integration
• Simple learning material distribution to the classroom for teachers
• Facilitate GAC bulk operations
• Manage inventory of non-IT assets such as projectors, TVs, and other educational assets
• Plus more

"There are many components to managing Chromebooks. Schools need to know which student has which device, which school has which device, and costs relating to repairs. Chromebook Management Software … facilitates these processes."
– VIZOR

MacBooks

• MacBooks are gaining popularity in the Enterprise world.
• Some admins claim MacBooks are less expensive in the long run over Windows-based PCs.
• Users claim less issues when using a MacBook, and overall, companies report increased retention rates when users are using MacBooks.

"Macs now make up 23% of endpoints in enterprises."
– ComputerWeekly.com

"When given the choice, no less than 72% of employees choose Macs over PCs."
– "5 Reasons Mac is a must," Jamf

"IBM says it is 3X more expensive to manage PCs than Macs."
– Computerworld

"74% of those who previously used a PC for work experienced fewer issues now that they use a Mac"
– "Global Survey: Mac in the Enterprise," Jamf

"When enterprise moves to Mac, staff retention rates improve by 20%. That's quite a boost! "
– "5 Reasons Mac is a must," Jamf

Managing MacBooks

Can your existing UEM keep up?

Many Windows unified endpoint management (UEM) tools can manage MacBooks, but most companies choose to use a dedicated MacBook management tool.

• UEM tools that are primarily Windows focused do not typically go deep enough into the management capabilities of non-Windows devices.
• Admins have noted limitations when it comes to using Windows UEM tools, and reasons they prefer a dedicated MacBook management solution include:
  • Easier to use
• Faster response times when deploying settings and policies
• Better control over notification settings and lock screen settings.
• Easier Apple Business Manager (ABM) integration and provisioning.
• Note that not every UEM will have the same limitations or advantages. Functionality is different between vendor products.