Using Path to Agility to Facilitate Transformations

From the initial Path to Agility Team Assessment, teams, and team-of-teams (systems) now have action items to focus on. Change Agents such as Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters should encourage discussion of these improvement items at multiple events: Daily Standups, Scrum of Scrums, and especially as part of Retrospectives to ensure that they are actively being worked. 

Make Progress Visible

A key objective is to be able to see progress from using Path to Agility. As a team or team-of-teams works through their improvement actions, it is important to have review and replenishment sessions as needed. The outcome of these sessions should be to identify new improvement areas to work on next, as well as updates to the percentage rating for their Agile Capabilities.

See Working with the Capabilities View, Working with Actions and Metrics

System and Organization Issues

Teams are the heart of an organization, but their ability to grow is limited by the systems and organization around them. Identify any organizational and/or system blockers that may prevent the teams from operating effectively and/or may inhibit them from continuous improvement activities.

At any point in the team journey, from an initial Path to Agility workshop onward, a team may identify system and/or organizational issues that are limiting the team’s ability to continuously improve and deliver business value into production.

The first thing the Change Agent should try is to encourage the team to self-organize around dealing with the impediments. (e.g., move a fence, join forces with another team)

In the event a team cannot resolve the impediment themselves, the Change Agent should then help the team to surface the issue to make it visible to the Agile Leadership Team (ALT). The team should clearly identify the impact the system/organization impediment has on their delivery of value to support the ALT’s prioritization of the issue. See Working with Actions for details.