What is a reason for skipping Value Stream mapping?
“It is excruciating for people who haven’t faced excruciating circumstances for decades by the time an operational-Value-Stream-mapping exercise comes to their gigantic business. Maybe they attended a Fintech conference and everybody else was doing Agile, maybe they’re applying for a bigger role at a new company, maybe Agile was imposed on them from above or below by someone else looking to be posh or bid-out; however it happened, they didn’t expect the discomfort to come their ways.”
What makes it excruciating?
“You begin with the customer-facing products your business actually sells to actual customers. You must name them. They have to exist. Then you draw the entire stream, from the moment the customer engages till the moment the payment gets collected. A company that prides itself on hundreds of products may have done this in a functional way, whenever CEOs changed, but likely not an operational one.”
What’s painful about that?
“For two or three days you’ve got probably 100 of the company’s most important persons in a giant room – at least 100 if you were to do it right, with not just CIO but CFO and HR and COO and CMO – and many of them get pitted against one another by circumstance. The process is necessarily humbling and intensely political. And some of these high achievers aren’t going to get to keep their same roles when it is through.”
What happens?
“Everybody in the room has to map where her or his kingdom brings tangible value to actual customers. Folks who are used to being the top of the foodchain suddenly find themselves in supporting roles. They will resist that with an existential zeal, and you have to remember, these are some of the most successful people in the world at what they do.”
What else?
“We did a tiny, tiny, theoretical version of this exercise in a room of 20 strangers with nothing on the line whatever, and it was painful. Immediately, I realized why a gigantic corporation with hundreds of thousands of associates and contractors might forgo the ordeal.”
What happens if you forgo the ordeal?
“You doom your transformation. Worse yet, you doom it in a way that will not fully manifest the doom for years. Because you didn’t do the excruciating work at the beginning, you necessarily draw circles round existing org charts and call them Agile Release Trains (ARTs). They are grouped round the same functional roles y’all agreed on during the last big re-org five or ten years ago. That is lost on no one.”
What is the adaptation that causes?
“Maybe 30-percent of your organization embraces the transformation immediately. Remember, you didn’t launch the transformation with a burning platform or proactive leader; you did it because everyone else was doing it, and since you didn’t map Value Streams, the business side of the house isn’t invested in the transformation’s success. The business wants what it wants the way it wanted it yesterday.”
What happens?
“Thirty percent of the folks on your new ARTs buy all the way in, the natural change agents. Fifty percent of your teams’ members don’t buy-in at all. To them it’s new wax on the same shoes. And the longer they’ve been with the company the more of these shine jobs they’ve seen. They’ll attend your ceremonies and move their stories on your board, but they’re not retooling anything, and they’re not working towards cross-functionality because they’re intensely aware their actual roles and titles didn’t change at all with this ‘transformation’. Then you come to the saboteurs.”
Go on.
“Twenty-percent, usually the frozen middle, will actively sabotage your transformation. And they’ll know how. They’ll know the C-Suite threw money at the problem rather than make painful decisions. They’ll begin by noting, quietly then loudly, the funding model didn’t change; they’re still going hat-in-hand to the same business partners at what end-of-year-budgeting cosplays begin in June. Then they’ll say their direct reports are wondering why nobody’s HR job titles have changed. Finally, and most perniciously, if you try to push them, they’ll cut side deals with the business – all too willing to do so – for ‘whenever we move on to the next thing after Agile’.”
What happens to the 30-percent of true believers?
“Within nine months, the change agents are pushing on a string. They’re still getting certifications and embracing transparency and cross-functionality, but their teams are participating only in what is comfortable.”
What happens when it’s uncomfortable?
“The developers cut their own side deals with their HR managers, knowing those folks have already cut side deals with the business. The savvy ones will play along with their scrum masters and product owners and coaches, showing up at DSUs and talking about the invisible projects they’re doing that don’t fit in Agile. The rest will talk about ‘not drinking the Kool-Aid’ and drain their teams of enthusiasm, making the dedicated 30-percent feel like suckers.”
What can be done to fix this?
“You have to start over and draw operational Value Streams, followed by development Value Streams – these cannot be drawn around existing ARTs. Then you redo and relaunch brand new ARTs. It is a nightmare of sunken cost and wasted goodwill because you’ve still got your 20-percent saboteurs and your 50-percent uncommitted, but now you’ve decimated your 30-percent change agents.”
What could force this to happen?
“Burning platform a few years later. This time the business, irate at technology’s speed to market, leads the Agile transformation.”