So here it is, slowly revealing itself online over the past few weeks, and now ready for the formal announcement and some background. It’s the biggest update to Agendashift since the 2018 book and it prepares the ground for a second edition.

New &/or updated:

• Agendashift as framework (new)
  • Agendashift’s five principles (updated, principles 1 & 5 reworded)
  • Agendashift’s generative patterns (new)
  • Agendashift’s five core activities (updated to reference the patterns)
  • Models, sources, and inspirations (new)

Previously announced, and updated again in line with the above:

• Agendashift Home
• About Agendashift
• Our mission: Wholehearted

The last of those is of course the basis of Agendashift’s recent rebranding:

• Making it official: Agendashift, the wholehearted engagement model (January)

Agendashift as framework

From the framework page:

These pages describe Agendashift – the wholehearted engagement model – as an open framework for continuous, outcome-oriented transformation.

Agendashift is primarily for use by agents of strategic change, with or without an explicit Lean-Agile agenda. It is not intended as a replacement for the likes of Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe; neither do we consider it a way to choose between them. Our clear opposition to the imposition of frameworks on the unwilling does not make us anti-framework; rather we’re pluralists, celebrating frameworks as exemplars and sources of patterns that combine in interesting ways.

We don’t however pretend to be neutral. Outcome-orientation is not a neutral stance. If these pages give you a fresh perspective on other frameworks and help you avoid yet another failed or mediocre implementation, that’s definitely for the better. Moreover, it’s not hard to see that whole system engagement and strategy deployment are useful models for delivery in complex environments.

In the past I’ve been a little reluctant to describe Agendashift as a framework, for reasons similar (I guess) to those of the Kanban community: compared to Scrum, SAFe etc, it’s not the same kind of thing at all! Then in Right to Left I made a point of always describing these as process frameworks, solving that problem. And from chapter 3, Frameworks and patterns:

 [The word ‘frameworks’] has multiple meanings. Some of them – Scrum and Lean Startup most especially – are frameworks in the sense that they provide some minimal structure into which specific practices can be introduced. Others – DevOps and Design Thinking for example – are frameworks in the different sense that they provide a particular perspective to an organisational problem and an array of techniques with which to approach it.

Within the context of change and transformation, both definitions apply to Agendashift. What makes the second one particularly interesting is that Agendashift’s needs-based and outcome-oriented perspective has an impact on how you think about and operate delivery too – certainly if you take it to the level of a resolute stance (which of course I do). You could say that this is how I went from Agendashift: Outcome-oriented change and continuous transformation (2018) to Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile (2019). Read that and you’ll never look at a process framework in quite the same way again.

Key changes

Principles

I’ve tweaked the wording of principles 1 & 5 (there’s a before & after comparison on the principles page):

This feels like a good place to start so I’ve made them a little more prominent.

Patterns

This is new. Agendashift can now be summarised as two generative patterns:

• Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes (IdOO)
• Just-in-time Strategy Deployment

Understand those, how they relate to each other, and how they challenge the status quo, and you’re a long way towards understanding both how Agendashift works and why it exists.

I’m presenting the patterns ahead of the five core activities – Discovery, Exploration, Mapping, Elaboration, and Operation – a demotion for those if you like. Certainly I see this as a significant change. Although the patterns are an addition, it’s one that seems to crystallise and simplify; one of the reassuring things about Agendashift is that the more it develops, the easier it becomes.

You may have noticed that I sneaked IdOO into Monday’s post Doing Agendashift online (4 of n): Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes (IdOO). Behind the scenes there was a flurry of activity making everything ready in time!

No doubt I’ll be referencing the second pattern – Just-in-time Strategy Deployment – in a later installment of the Doing Agendashift online series and I’ll keep my powder dry for now. Give it a read meanwhile!

A new overview picture

Bringing it all together:

Don’t worry: despite appearances my long-held caveats on the subject of cycles remain. I leave you with this post-workshop tweet from friend and workshop participant Allan Kelly:

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Upcoming online workshops

• 22-23 April – two 2-hour sessions on consecutive days (UK morning):
  Agendashift Online: Learning the language of outcomes
• 18-19 May – Kjell Tore Guttormsen & myself, two full days, Europe-friendly time
  Wholehearted:OKR: Bringing OKR to life with Agendashift
• 17-18-June, online – two 2-hour sessions on consecutive days (UK afternoon):
  Agendashift Online: Learning the language of outcomes

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