One can think of a transformation to agility as of a challenge of maximizing the throughput of Agile Values across organization structure. The goal of striving to maximize the Agile Value throughput is to ensure that every staff member is fully productive and produces as much business value as possible. In a long term, a maximized Agile Value throughput should result in an organization being capable of producing better and cheaper software than others.
To maximize to Agile Value throughput, the whole suite of Agile Values must travel smoothly in both directions: up and down the organization layers. Empowerment, Freedom and Responsibility travel down in the direction of level of Individuals. Visibility, Products, Solutions, Know-How and Best Practices travel up in the direction of an Organization level.
In a truly agile organization both arrows extend across all the levels in the organization structure. This ideal case maximizes throughput of Agile Values across the Organization and leads to ideal implementation of agility. Any limitations of the Agile Values throughput through the organization structure, either in terms of limiting some layers from participating in the Value flow or in terms of limiting suite of agile values travelling through the organization constitutes a limiting factor for a transition to agility.
Without a proper Agile Value Flow down the structure organizations suffer from low morale and frustrated staff. On the other hand without a proper emergence of value produced by Teams onto Organization level, organizations suffer from a product stream being of comparatively low value. For example, not emerging value properly means that an organization approaches a new project like they never did a project before and as a result software production is too slow and turns out to be too expensive.
Staff on all the layers is ultimately responsible for both participating in the flow and facilitating the flow in both directions in order to maximize the throughput of the flow. If on any level of organization structure a bottleneck arises, the organization’s implementation of agility may be suboptimal.
An organization is ultimately responsible for supporting staff by clearly communicating its strategy and promoted values, removing limitations and pumping energy to encourage valued behaviors.
By the way, if you think your boss is reluctant to give you more responsibility and support your empowerment, you are most probably right. As Tim Creasey and Jeff Hiatt describe in their Best practices in change management, 2007, Prosci, the managers’ biggest resistance to change comes from the fact that they fear to lose control and authority. It is understandable that after long years of building their position managers are reluctant to simply give up the insignia of their position without understanding the post-abdication reality.
On the other hand bosses may encounter resistance of individuals. For instance some individuals are reluctant to accepting any more responsibility than just doing what they are told. Again, it is understandable that some people prefer not to come out of their comfort zone.
How comfortable do you feel about the Agile Value throughput being maximized in your organization? Do you participate in pumping vital assets through the organization layers? Do you feel responsible for the Agile Value Flow being in your position? Do you know who you pump the substrates down to and who you pump the products up to? Is the suite of Agile Values complete? Is there a space for improvement?
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