The job of chapter 3 of the forthcoming book Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile is to introduce a number of important Agile, Lean-Agile, and associated frameworks. I have taken care to describe them not as alternative solutions that must be chosen between, but as patterns to be combined in interesting ways. That’s not a new idea, but what does seem remarkable is how helpful a right-to-left perspective is in explaining how they work together and complement each other. When I say right-to-left, we’re talking not just collaborative, continuous, pull-based, and so on (concepts conventionally associated with Lean-Agile) but something very explicitly outcome-oriented.

Almost verbatim from the manuscript:

1. Scrum (and Scrum-based scaling frameworks, if that’s your bag): continuously iterating on and self-organising around goals (short term outcomes) in the pursuit of longer term outcomes – product vision, the team’s mission, broader organisational objectives, and so on
2. Kanban, making progress on outcomes visible, concentrating effort on the ones that matter most, fostering a focus on completion
3. XP and DevOps, right across development and production, providing the infrastructure of process, practice, and technology necessary to accelerate feedback on the delivery of outcomes
4. Service Design Thinking (along with user research, user experience and so on), continuously discovering which outcomes are important
5. Lean Startup, pursuing business viability through continuous deliberate experimentation, managing for impact (outcomes again), finding and continuously refining a business model that enables customer outcomes to be sustained

Here it really is outcomes that holds everything together, not (as you might expect) flow, collaboration, or some other shared value or technical principle. This way, we avoid saying “if you dig deep enough, they’re the same” (which I hear from time to time and strongly reject, believing that it does each framework’s creators and communities a huge disservice).

Neither are we saying “don’t use frameworks”, if (and it’s quite a big if) this means that you must always start from first principles. A sensible way to start is again outcome-oriented and has a measured and pragmatic attitude towards frameworks (quoting this time from chapter 4, Viable scaling):

• Identify needs – looking at what kind of organisation you’re trying to be and at what you’re trying to achieve  – and the obstacles that currently prevent those needs from being met
• Agree on outcomes, not just goals plucked out of the air, but the kind of outcomes that might be achieved when these obstacles are removed, overcome, or bypassed
• On a just-in-time basis, prioritise outcomes and generate a range of options to realise them, using your favourite frameworks as sources of ideas (not excluding other sources, but valuing coherence nevertheless)
• In manageably small chunks of change and through a combination of direct action and experimentation (choosing between those approaches on a case-by-case basis according to the level of uncertainty and risk involved), begin to treat change as real work: tracking it, validating its impact, and reflecting on it just as we would for product work

In a nutshell, I’ve described Agendashift, which is of course a right-to-left approach to change and transformation. Other engagement models exist – see OpenSpace Agility (OSA) for another excellent, well-documented, and highly complementary example. Whichever approach you choose, take care to choose one that models Lean and Agile values, lest the dissonance proves too great and you fatally undermine your work, a very real risk. To sow disengagement would be a truly bad outcome!

Related:

• My kind of Agile
• ‘Right to Left’ works for Scrum too
• ‘Right to Left’ is Agendashift for delivery
• Engagement: more than a two-way street

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Upcoming public Agendashift workshops (India*2, US*2, UK, Netherlands):

• 16-17 Jan 2019, Gurugram, India:
  Coaching and Leading Continuous Transformation with Agendashift
  (Advanced, 2-day workshop, Mike Burrows)
• 20 Jan 2019, Mumbai, India:
  Facilitating Outcome-Oriented Change with Agendashift
  (Core, 1-day workshop, Mike Burrows)
• 01 March 2019, Tampa, FL, USA:
  Facilitating Outcome-Oriented Change with Agendashift
  (Core, 1-day workshop, Julia Wester)
• 20 March 2019, London, England,
  Facilitating Outcome-Oriented Change with Agendashift
  (Core, 1-day workshop, Mike Burrows; booking page coming soon – register interest here)
• 29 March 2019, Seattle, WA, USA:
  Facilitating Outcome-Oriented Change with Agendashift
  (Core, 1-day workshop, Julia Wester)
• 4-5 Apr 2019, Utrecht, Netherlands,
  Coaching and Leading Continuous Transformation with Agendashift
  Advanced, 2-day workshop (booking page coming soon; Mike Burrows – register interest here)

Also: Channel #agendashift-studio in the Agendashift Slack if interested in a cozy workshop with me at Agendashift HQ (Derbyshire, England).

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