You've run the Enterprise Playbook for installing Agile Practices At Scale and here you are - Agile and Plateaued - and as the competition heats up, not getting to market fast enough is (or is about to be) a real problem for the Company.
You know you’ve hit a performance plateau when no matter what you do (better tools, more training, or even targeted coaching), the measures critical to the growth of the company (time to market, monthly active users, CLTV and COCA, defects in production, developer turn over) are just not moving in the right direction.
And in some cases if a pathway for getting to market fast enough isn’t found and isn’t found quickly, there is a real risk that customers will migrate to the competition, deadlines for channel partners will be missed and key developers will leave and then from there time to market, customer flight and defects in production will just get worse and worse.
The Effects are in Plain Sight
In the early stages of a breakdown in performance, people are busy and in action looking for answers and fixes to what’s not working and then, as time passes and the measures stay stuck, explanations get more complex and complaints begin to take the place of action.
Product Owners start to say things like “the developers won’t be accountable", and developers complain that "if [insert person/group to blame here] only knew what we were dealing with they wouldn’t be so unrealistic in their demands" and in larger enterprises Agile Coaches lament that "if we just had executive buy-in" and "if people would just do agile right” - or better yet "BE agile” - then "everything would just work!”.
Product Owners start to say things like “the developers won’t be accountable", and developers complain that "if [insert person/group to blame here] only knew what we were dealing with they wouldn’t be so unrealistic in their demands" and in larger enterprises Agile Coaches lament that "if we just had executive buy-in" and "if people would just do agile right” - or better yet "BE agile” - then "everything would just work!”.
So What’s Going on Really?
So what's really at play that means no matter what changes are made, the numbers you want to move are not moving?
Consider that wherever performance has plateaued, there are impediments to increased performance that are not visible to you, or those around you.
Paying attention to the environment in which performance is trying to happen is critical. A match in an environment of no oxygen will fail to light, no matter how many times it is struck. For human beings, paying attention to the environment in which performance is trying to happen goes way beyond the tools, the training and the physical spaces.
Consider that wherever performance has plateaued, there are impediments to increased performance that are not visible to you, or those around you.
Paying attention to the environment in which performance is trying to happen is critical. A match in an environment of no oxygen will fail to light, no matter how many times it is struck. For human beings, paying attention to the environment in which performance is trying to happen goes way beyond the tools, the training and the physical spaces.
Pathways that have Playbooks Work
For human beings paying attention to the environment includes paying attention to what gets in the way of doing what we say we are going to do by when we said we would do it, it includes paying attention to what gets in the way of straight communication within and between teams and it includes paying attention to what gets in the way of staying true to what really matters to people about the work they do together.
Dealing with these aspects of the environment for human beings is the pathway for creating bullet proof kickass teams that are ready & willing to take on missions critical to the future of the company.
And how we know we got the job done is measures critical to the future of the company (monthly active users, CLTV and COCA, time to market, defects in production, developer turn over) are now moving in the right direction.
Dealing with these aspects of the environment for human beings is the pathway for creating bullet proof kickass teams that are ready & willing to take on missions critical to the future of the company.
And how we know we got the job done is measures critical to the future of the company (monthly active users, CLTV and COCA, time to market, defects in production, developer turn over) are now moving in the right direction.
How We Work
Minimum Viable Games
At the heart of how we work is a backlog of Minimum Viable Games.
The design of each Minimum Viable Game is one where the team gets to take on moving a measure that correlates to what’s currently constraining Time to Market.