Getability AB Getability AB Getability AB Getability AB

  • Home
  • Services
  • About
  • Contact
  •  Svenska
  • Home
  • Services
  • About
  • Contact
  •  Svenska

Get ability to turn quickly, together

Our vision is far ahead, but our senses are in full contact with the environment around us. As obstacles suddenly appear, we adjust the course quickly and naturally. We discover new roads, better than those we planned. Roads that take us where we want to be. The organization has become agile. We have gained the ability to turn quickly, together, and the journey is our destination. Read more We need guidance

DO YOU RECOGNIZE THE SYMPTOMS?

The ultimate consequence of our organization’s inability to turn quickly is that we eventually ride off the road; we no longer fulfill the needs of those that we exist for. Maybe a new player will emerge that has better abilities, can use those to their advantage and take over our position. Most often, we have seen the symptoms of lacking ability to turn quickly much earlier than that.

Missed Goals

We rarely meet the goals set, despite careful planning. Unexpected problems constantly appear along the way, which means that deliveries of projects, new services and products are delayed and/or fail to meet expectations.

Long Lead Times

Our ideas are many and the flow is slow. Before we have implemented an idea, months or years have passed. We could usually spend a lot of time and resources on an idea before we eventually realize that it was a bad economic decision.

Everything is High Priority

New important things to do constantly emerge, at a faster pace than we can finish what we are already working on. Since everything we do is important, we have to multitask and the only solution seems to be more people or to work harder.

Difficult Dependencies

To get anything done, everyone need to talk to everyone. Dependencies across teams and departments leads to bottlenecks and waiting. It’s hard to plan because no one sees the whole picture and coordination takes time with a lot of meetings.

Quality Problems

We are in a situation where we can’t handle the workload and quality suffers. The long lead times leads to late discovery of problems and they become costly to fix. We never seem to have time to prevent new problems from occuring.

People Suffer

People feel insufficient as they are constantly needed everywhere at the same time. They become bottlenecks and rarely get to feel the joy of achieving good results together. When people’s needs are not met, the organization gets dysfunctional.

  • Eric Ries

    The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.

    Eric Ries The Lean Startup

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO TURN QUICKLY?

Our organizations are often optimized to solve the simple or complicated problems, those that are routine or that can be solved by first analyzing and then making a plan that just needs to be followed. When studying the root causes of our inability to turn quickly, we usually find more complex problems. When dealing with complex problems, we need to work in a different way. We need to work in short cycles where we make small experiments to test hypotheses and then adjust according to what we learn. This is called the scientific method and the basis of agile thinking.

Aren’t you already agile?

Many companies today use agile ways of working in their development teams, but complex problems do usually not stop for team- or departmental boundaries. They have their branches in all parts of the organization needed to deliver value.

This often become evident when studying the challenges encountered by organizations that introduced agile ways of working. The challenges have been there before, but agile ways of working at the team level have helped to make them more visible. Common challenges that these companies bring up in surveys are conflicts with existing corporate culture, lack of experience of agile ways of working and lack of support from management and the business.

Organizational culture at odds with agile values 52%
General organization resistance to change 48%
Inadequate management support and sponsorship 44%
Lack of skills/experience with agile methods 40%
Insufficient training and education 36%
Inconsistent processes and practices across teams 35%

Source: “13th Annual State of Agile Report”, 2019

  • W. Edwards Deming

    People are already doing their best; the problems are with the system. Only management can change 
the system.

    W. Edwards Deming

HOW DO YOU LEARN TO TURN QUICKLY?

An organization’s ability to turn quickly is not only about teams or individuals becoming agile. It is about working together across organizational silos and hierarchies to eliminate the impediments to the flow of value. To make that possible, the organization’s leaders play a crucial role. It’s not the results of the change initiative in itself that is the goal, but to start a continuous journey of improvements.

  • 1

    What is your purpose?

    Understand your motives for change. Are there any major impediments in the way for a change? How will you know if you are going in the right direction. Select a change model that fits the purpose and the organization. Train those who will lead the change so that they understand Lean-Agile thinking from a leadership perspective.

  • 2

    Environment for improvement

    Identify your most important value streams, the flows from ideas to delivered value, and involve those people. Communicate vision and purpose of the change initiative. Give people the knowledge and safety to improve and create the environment and conditions for them to succeed.

  • 3

    Start improving

    Visualise the value streams and let the people working in them take ownership of and do the improvements, but give them the coaching and support they need. If a disruptive change model is chosen, a new way of working and organization will now be implemented in one or more value streams.

  • 4+

    Continuous improvement

    Continue improving together along the value streams and eliminate impediments. Reflect regularly (at all levels of the organization) on things to improve and do small experiments that provide learning. Engage additional value streams in the improvements. The journey has started.

HOW CAN YOU GET HELP?

In organizations that are on an agile journey, assistance from outside is often needed, especially in the beginning before Lean-Agile mindsets has become an intrinsic part of the culture. This is where Getability comes in. We start the journey together and create the conditions for it to succeed. Eventually you get self-going and continue to improve on your own.

  • GUIDING & COACHING
  • TRAINING
  • INTERNAL ROLES

GUIDING & COACHING

Guiding & Coaching

Getability helps you with Lean-Agile guiding and coaching, whether it’s an agile transformation initiative or more targeted needs, such as helping specific teams and roles to improve. We explore opportunities for improvement together, sometimes based on agile frameworks, but always with a Lean-Agile mindset. The chosen approach is always based on the actual situation and needs of the organization.

The guiding and coaching perspectives complement each other and both are needed. However, the actual blend may vary, depending, among other things, on where you are on your agile journey. It is important to understand the difference since it will help us discuss what kind of of help you need.

Show more about the two perspectives…

The Guiding Perspective

The guiding perspective will get you up to speed on your agile journey, by helping you build structure and processes to see early results and and understand how and why Lean-Agile works. It’s like a guide showing you the way through the jungle, what paths you should take and how to avoid the dangers. You will learn Lean-Agile mindsets, methods and frameworks and how to make them work in practice. This will help build a foundation of knowledge and safety to be able to find your own routes of Lean-Agile later on.

The Coaching Perspective

The coaching perspective will help you make the change of mindsets persistent so that the organization continues to develop on its own. It’s like a coach that is on your side when you practice quick turns, challenging and motivating you to explore new ways and to help you back up again as you fall. When you encounter problems, the coach will not give you the solution right away, but helps you explore Lean-Agile ways of thinking to find the solution yourself. The goal is for you to build your own deep understanding and abilities in order to become independent.

TRAINING

Training & Workshops

Getability can provide customized training and workshops where you can learn Lean-Agile ways of working and how to apply them in practice. An important part of all training is that you understand the underlying values and principles. Theory is therefore combined with various games/exercises and group discussions. Examples of common themes for training and workshops are:

  • Agile introduction for teams
  • Continuous Improvement, using Kanban and Kata
  • Scrum
  • Product Ownership
  • Lean-Agile for Leaders

INTERNAL ROLES

Internal Lean-Agile Roles

Sometimes you might not yet have all the Lean-Agile competencies you need in your organization. If you have a vacancy, Getability can temporarily take an active Lean-Agile role in your organization, such as:

  • Lean-Agile Change Leader
  • Release Train Engineer (RTE)
  • Team Coach / Scrum Master
  • Product Owner
  • Interim manager within a development organization

ABOUT ME

My name is Christian Fredriksson and I am the owner of Getability AB. I help companies build new organizational abilities to be able to adapt more quickly to changing conditions, to create more value for customers and society and to become learning organizations.

Together we explore ways of improving the organization’s ability to change and learn, by using a variety of complementary bodies of knowledge, frameworks and methods related to the domains of Lean and Agile.

My experience comes from almost twenty years of practicing lean and agile ways of working in different roles, where the last nine years have been focused mostly on creating agility from an organizational point of view. During this journey, I have worked with companies from different industries, such as banking, retail, travel, public sector and product developing companies building not only software, but also large solutions including hardware, mechatronical systems and services.

My motivation comes from endless curiosity and an analytical mindset combined with frustration over the failures I have seen and sometimes been part of. A frustration over how the more deep understanding of the ideas I started to explore as a researcher almost twenty years ago still seem to be mostly missing and how companies still tries to apply thinking and methods that might have served them well in a stable and predictable environment, to solve problems in an increasingly complex and changing environment. This leads to loss of value, inability to meet customer needs and to innovate and ultimately failure of businesses.

My strong focus on business outcome and my experience within lean and agile from contexts beyond software development (such as hardware and automotive) as well as my experience as a project manager (a role that is often challenged in agile transformations) usually help me connect with people and together with them build an understanding of how agility can be achieved in their situation, beyond blind following of processes and methods.

 I Believe in Agnostic Agile

GET IN TOUCH

Do you need help to use Lean and Agile to get ability to turn quickly in your organization? I look forward to hear from you to have a discussion about your need.

    info(at)getability.se

    Getability AB
    Based in Gothenburg region, but available for remote assignments in Europe.

    Getability AB
    Orgnr. 559122-9371  |  Registrerad för F-skatt

    Getability AB