Agilitywith a fresh perspective!

Jennifer Heckler

About Me:• Recent graduate, MS CMIS in May

• Programmer Analyst at Edward Jones (since 2013)

• PMP certified

• Enjoys learning where tech will take us next

• And finding ways to organize chaos

• Also an avid violinist, movie soundtrack fanatic, and NCIS addict

• Wedding – Nov 2016!

• @JMHeckler (Twitter)

Purpose

To boldly Go…

• Why are we here?

• Benefits for business and tech

Business is business

Rule #16: If someone thinks they have the upper hand, break it.

• Improve market position

• Better business

• Personal growth and career development

Think of the companies that rule the world right now

• Amazon?

• Apple?

• Others?

What Is It?

Organizational agility: improving the speed and flexibility of the overarching processes, decisions, and concerns at the company level.

Key: efficiency, effectiveness

Agile Manifesto:

• Individuals/interactions over tools/processes

• Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Responding to change over following a plan

How Do We Achieve It?

Varies based on industry and business

Certain elements non-negotiable, but others can be customized

Goals = core values and results

All aspects of business reviewed and improved

Business needs to be flexible to allow change, yet governed (standards) to achieve speed

Overview

Workforce aspect

Organizational aspect

IT aspect

Workforce Agility

Employees and their interaction with tech

How employees can improve a firm's ability to provide

products or solutions to customers faster or better

Accomplished through…

1. Physical elements – tools and training

2. Cultural elements – PEOU, PU, management

Interaction with it

Physical

• Tools =

productivity, speed, decision-

making

• Employee training =

knowledge, empowerment

Cultural• Perceived ease-of-use

• Perceived usefulness

• Rule #38: Your case, your lead

• Encouragement = Intrinsic motivation

Change

• How does change affect us (as developers)?

• What about our business area?

• Our users?

• Old habits die hard

Challenges

Change can be threatening

• Why?

Wrong changes

Competitors

Risk

Size/logistics

Impact

Little/no stability

Training nightmare

Procedure/documentation

(you get the picture)

Characteristics

• Rule #15: Always work as a team

• Business/IT alignment --> simplicity in decision-making

• Encouragement-driven culture

• Extreme flexibility

• Location independence

• Virtual teams/collaborations

• Collaborative tools to easily

communicate and accomplish

tasks

Organizational Agility

Transformation vs. Evolution

Need to balance…

1. Agility

2. Reliability

KEY: modular and collaborative structure impacts

agility!

IT Agility

• Ok, so IT changes rapidly…..

• “Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be” – John Wooden

• Why is IT so important?• Besides for supporting our livelihoods, of course

• And because every other business uses it

Why IT? IT permeates all areas of the business.

Tools and information used in all departments

Increase speed for

Human communication

Information/data-sharing

Data analysis

Decision-making

End-to-end process (reduce human intervention for repetitive

tasks)

Not Accounting Agility or Manager Agility or HR Agility – but

IT Agility!

By affecting area that supports all others, can increase

overall org agility

Changes at the

speed of light

“The requirements change so quickly that if IT’s pace is in weeks and months, you end up not delivering anything, because the problem changed by the time you deployed your solution.” – Ken Venner (CIO of SpaceX)

So how do we keep up?

Well….how are others keeping up?

• DevOps

• Business/IT alignment

• Light, widespread governance

• Modular architectures

• Technologies

• Cultural changes

DevOPsWhy DevOps?

• Rule #1: Never mess over your partner

• Faster, higher quality solutions

• Traditional approach tends to build walls between ops and

dev

Mentality of "those who build also support" tends to increase

accountability

Words of Wisdom

“Giving developers operational responsibilities has greatly

enhanced the quality of the services, both from a

customer and a technology point of view. The traditional

model is that you take your software to the wall that

separates development and operations, and throw it over

and then forget about it. Not at Amazon. You build it, you

run it. This brings developers into contact with the day-to-

day operation of their software. It also brings them into day-

to-day contact with the customer. This customer feedback

loop is essential to improving the quality of the service.” –Werner Vogels, Amazon 2006

IT and agility

• Business/IT alignment• Reduces layers of barriers for changes

• Minimize misunderstandings for strategy

• Simplify decision-making for changes

• Modular architecture• Lighter, smaller components

• Flexibility, speed, adaptability

• Cultural changes• Innovation, experimentation

• Pair programming, collaboration

• Light governance structure

Nuts and bolts

• Governance

• Key: low ceremony

• Guidelines in place to structure responses and

decisions

• Lightweight, widespread, flexible

• Technologies!!!!!

Technologies

People:

• Knowledge-sharing

• Assist with tacit knowledge capture and dissemination

• Integral to on-boarding and up-skilling

• Mobile technologies

• Apps and connectivity

• Employees can do work anywhere and anytime

• Usually means more work accomplished

Things:

• RFID – Radio Frequency Identification

• Inventory management

• Logistics tracking and efficiency

More tech• Data analytics tools

• So much data

• What is important?

• Tools/people to consolidate and highlight

• Faster data analysis = faster, more accurate decisions

• Cloud

• IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, oh my!

• CapEx vs. OpEx

• Pay what you use, no purchase overages

• Dynamic provisioning, scaling

• Responsive architectures

• Microservices vs. monoliths

• With long release cycles, failure is eminent

My background

• Financial investments firm = rigid, sluggish, and traditional, and it can be.

• But, we also realize the importance of agility.

• Adoption of "the sprint"

• “For IS, our working group has established a structure that will segment the work into 30-day sprint. At the end of each sprint, we will review our accomplishments against the plan and then prepare for the next sprint. This method allows us to timebox the work, aligning efforts toward closure and maintaining our focus on a common goal.”

Customization

• 1-size-fits-all doesn’t work with various metro

markets across US and Canada.

• Tailored solutions/strategies

• It’s important when the financial firms are starting to

adopt something!

Agile in action!

Agile Manifesto

1. Satisfy customer through early and continuous

delivery

2. Welcome changing requirements late in

development

3. Deliver working software frequently

Agile manifesto cont.

4. Business people and developers work together

5. Build projects around motivated individuals

6. Communication most efficient/effective face-to-face

Agile Manifesto cont.

7. Working software primary measure of progress

8. Agile processes promote sustainable development

9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and

good design enhances agility

Agile Manifesto cont.

10.Simplicity is essential

11.Best architectures, designs, and requirements built by self-organizing teams

12.Team regularly reflects on how to become more effective, then adjusts accordingly

Future Developments

• Security: if we're constantly changing and adapting,

maybe criminals might have a harder time breaking

defenses that morph

• New/better tools for collaboration, automation,

communication, and data sharing/reporting that

increase agility

• Role of management in workforce training and

technology adoption/acceptance

• Types of training that provide most impact to agility

And more!

• Untapped capabilities remain in workforce

• Capture and transfer of tacit knowledge

• As environments and people change, need

improvements to exploiting workforce agility

• Solutions for global economies (countries, time

zones, languages)

• Logistics and communication

• Change creates continuous cycle to learn and

improve businesses

QUESTIONS?