Courtesy of AgileCXO, Jeff Dalton wrote a synopsis of his speaking session discussing 'Great Big Agile: Leading Agile at Scale'. Click here to download the full presentation.
Big Agile is Coming
Since 2016, General Motors, the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services, Fiat Chrysler, and other large companies have begun to adopt agile within their software organizations. Along with their combined $100 billion IT budgets, they are bringing their biases, bureaucracies, documentation, and leadership infrastructure with them. What will be the effect on the agile community?
“Big Agile” requires leadership at all levels, just not the kind we are used to. Simply working with an agile coach to implement well-known ceremonies is not enough. Metaphorically, the leadership “operating system” needs an upgrade.
In today’s corporate hierarchies where command-and-control structures, low trust, long-term planning, and risk management reign supreme, the skills required to thrive and survive are anything but agile. This leaves agile teams to push the culture uphill, leading to unpredictable results once business operations expand beyond the boundaries of the core agile team. This creates a “cultural type-mismatch” due to information technology, operations, marketing, infrastructure, business development, sales, and end-users not being on the same cultural page.
Performing agile ceremonies and techniques without self-organization isn’t agile at all. There is nothing inherently wrong with adopting ceremonies and techniques identified as being agile, and many companies have found some success with that, but the power of agile values and their associated frameworks grows exponentially once self-organization is perfected.
An “Agile Transformation” where the scope is hiring an agile coach, and the adoption of basic ceremonies or techniques, is doomed to failure. Agile isn’t a process or a framework like scrum, XP, or SAFe. It’s a collaborative, transparent, and self-organizing culture where the operational model is high-trust, empirical, and calibrated for relentless improvement in the pursuit of high quality and increased speed to value. Jim Bouchard, author of The Sensei Leader, sums it up for leaders: “Don’t even attempt to transform your organization until you can transform yourself.”
Chief Evangelist,
AgileCxO
BTOES is the industry’s biggest and best, senior-level, cross-industry gathering of Business Transformation & Operational Excellence industry leaders and senior executives.
It also hosts the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards, which showcase globally the most outstanding organizational achievements through the application of Operational Excellence programs.
The summits hosts a number of private forums for C-Level & Global corporate-level leaders as well as business unit heads.
With over 150 speakers, over 100 sessions, 12 Keynotes, 9 Track Themes, 5 parallel tracks, 60+ track sessions, 50 roundtable discussions, 20 Interactive Workshops, 6 Thought Leader Panels, 5 Leaders Boardrooms, 5 co-located events, the Industry Awards Program, Site Visits, 20+ hours of social networking including 2 gala cocktail parties, dinners, numerous group activities, this is the ultimate event to benchmark, network and drive Operational Excellence to the next level.
Quick Links
There is a strong focus on Cultural Transformation, Customer Delight, Sustaining an Operational Excellence program, Need for end-to-end Business Transformation, Keeping up with new technologies/impact of digitalization and Leadership Buy-in & Understanding. We dedicated two tracks to advanced technologies, such as AI, Machine Learning, RPA, Predictive Analytics, Blockchain, Cloud infrastructure etc.
The agenda is designed to encourage active meaningful conversations though all day enhanced networking and interaction opportunities, including
All-day Refreshment & Themed Breaks
1¼ Hour Hot Breakfast Networking Sessions
1½ Hour Hot Plated Networking Lunches with Topic & Industry Sector focussed tables
1½ Hour Roundtable Sessions by Topic & Industry Sector.
Keynote & Themes Panel Sessions
Hosted Welcome Receptions from 5.30pm
Expanded more lavish Awards Program
Newly launched Night Summit for attendees to meet after dinner
For more information or to discuss the summit in more detail please schedule a call below,