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Extend Agile Practices Beyond IT

Further the benefits of Agile by extending a scaled Agile framework to the business.

  • Your organization has started to realize benefits from adopting Agile principles and practices. However, these advances are contained within your IT organization.
  • You are seeking to extend Agile development beyond IT into other areas of the organization. You are looking for a coordinated approach aligned to business priorities.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • Not all lessons from scaling Agile to IT are transferable. IT Agile scaling processes are tailored to IT’s scope, team, and tools, which may not account for diverse attributes within your organization.
  • Control may be necessary for coordination. With increased time-to-value, enforcing consistent cadences, reporting, and communication is a must if teams are not disciplined or lack good governance.
  • Extend Agile in departments tolerant to change. Incrementally roll out Agile in departments where its principles are accepted (e.g. a culture that embraces failures as lessons).

Impact and Result

  • Complete an assessment of your prior efforts to scale Agile across IT to gauge successful, consistent adoption. Identify the business objectives and the group drivers that are motivating the extension of Agile to the business.
  • Understand the challenges that you may face when extending Agile to business partners. Investigate the root causes of existing issues that can derail your efforts.
  • Ideate solutions to your scaling challenges and envision a target state for your growing Agile environment. Your target state should realize new opportunities to drive more business value and eliminate current activities driving down productivity.
  • Coordinate the implementation and execution of your scaling Agile initiatives with an implementation action plan. This collaborative document will lay out the process, roles, goals, and objectives needed to successfully manage your Agile environment.

Extend Agile Practices Beyond IT Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should extend Agile practices to improve product delivery, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the ways we can support you in completing this project.

1. Assess your readiness to scale agile vertically

Assess your readiness to scale Agile vertically by identifying and mitigating potential Agile maturity gaps remaining after scaling Agile across your IT organization.

2. Establish an enterprise scaled agile framework

Complete an overview of various scaled Agile models to help you develop your own customized delivery framework.

3. Create your implementation action plan

Determine the effort and steps required to implement your extended delivery framework.


Workshop: Extend Agile Practices Beyond IT

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Assess Current State of Agile Maturity

The Purpose

  • Assess your readiness to scale Agile vertically.
  • Identify and mitigate potential Agile maturity gaps remaining after scaling Agile across your IT organization.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • IT Agile maturity gaps identified and mitigated to ensure successful extension of Agile to the business

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Characterize your Agile implementation using the CLAIM model.

1.2

Assess the maturity of your Agile teams and organization.

  • Maturity gaps identified with mitigation requirements

Module 2: Establish an Enterprise Scaled Agile Framework

The Purpose

  • Complete a review of scaled Agile models to help you develop your own customized delivery framework.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • A customized Agile delivery framework

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Explore various scaled frameworks.

2.2

Select an appropriate scaled framework for your enterprise.

  • Blended framework delivery model
2.3

Define the future state of your team and the communication structure of your functional business group.

  • Identification of team and communication structure impacts resulting from the new framework

Module 3: Create Your Implementation Action Plan

The Purpose

  • Create your implementation action plan for the new Agile delivery framework.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • A clearly defined action plan

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Define your value drivers.

3.2

Brainstorm the initiatives that must be completed to achieve your target state.

  • List of target state initiatives
3.3

Estimate the effort of your Agile initiatives.

  • Estimation of effort to achieve target state
3.4

Define your Agile implementation action plan.

  • An implementation action plan

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 5 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Assess your readiness to scale vertically
  • Call 1: Review key areas of measurement to determine Agile maturity.
  • Call 2: Discuss your assessment of current-state Agile maturity and identify gaps to be addressed prior to extending Agile.

Guided Implementation 2: Establish your enterprise scaled framework
  • Call 1: Discuss the various approaches to scaling within your organization.
  • Call 2: Establish an appropriate scaled Agile framework that will fit your enterprise.

Guided Implementation 3: Create your implementation action plan
  • Call 1: Review your scaling Agile implementation plan and metrics to gauge success.

Author

Gerry Gionet

Contributors

  • Danielle Whelan, Director, Agile, BMO Financial Group
  • Jeff Watkins, Technical Architect & Agile Consultant, Glasgow, United Kingdom
  • Ron Healy, Senior Agile Business Analyst, Ireland
  • Kurt Bittner, VP Enterprise Solutions, Scrum.org
  • Scott Ambler, Founder and Chief Scientist, Disciplined Agile, Inc., Toronto, Canada
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