Agile Operations
The digital workplace can help optimise current ways of working and make them more efficient. But how can we go beyond this to transform process-driven operations into services that encourage continuous improvement and greater integration?
How can we transform day-to-day operations?
Agile improvement principles can help all teams and functions improve their results. We need an operating model that is not about just following processes, but about taking ownership of services and continuously improving them based on feedback and data.
This ‘quantified org’ approach tries to do for organisational health what the quantified self movement has done for personal health.
But agile operations is not just about small teams using new ways of working. There are also other core processes like decision escalation, planning, and budgeting, that can stand in the way of agility. We need to also provide alternative solutions for these without creating risk.
Just as Toyota once documented a new, lean way to run a production facility, we think organisations need to create their own Agile Operations System to help everybody understand how to run the day-to-day work using more agile, adaptive methods.
Service elements
- Bring agile teams and central functions together to agree modus operandi
- Reporting interfaces to enable traditional functions to process agile team outputs
- Internal service transformation for central functions
- An operating manual for agile and adaptive working across the organisation
- Customised models for scaling agile in s specific organisational context
Challenges we address
- Need to support and protect agile teams in a traditional context
- Disconnects between agile teams and central functions in reporting and project management
- Need to speed up decision making, planning, budgeting and other functions
- No clear guidelines on when to use agile, lean or traditional management methods
- Scaling agile not working or taking practice back towards central planning
Typical Benefits
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Agile team spaces better protected from the main organisation
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More fluent co-ordination across agile and traditional functions
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Clear guidelines on which techniques to use in different contexts
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A commitment to agility across the organisation, not just in islands of good practice
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