6
ORGANIZATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR PROJECT AGILITY
Every project exists in an organizational context. Cultures, structures, and policies can influence both the direction and the outcome of any project. These dynamics can challenge project leaders.
While project leaders may not have the ability to change organizational dynamics as they see fit, they are expected to navigate those dynamics skillfully.
This section explores the way the organization and in some circumstances, the project context, influences projects. Leaders can explore options for change, to increase project success.
6.1 ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Organizational change management covers the skills and techniques for influencing changes that support agility.
The PMI publication, Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide [2], describes a comprehensive and holistic approach for successfully introducing meaningful change. The recommendations offered there include:
Sections 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 explore the considerations of change management specific to an agile context.
Figure 6-1 shows the relationship between these two topics.
6.1.1 DRIVERS FOR CHANGE MANAGEMENT
All projects are about change. However, there are two key factors that further motivate the use of change management practices in an agile context:
6.1.2 READINESS FOR CHANGE
Organizations beginning to use agile approaches should understand the relative compatibility of those methods with their current approaches. Some organizations will have characteristics that more easily support agile principles of cross-department collaboration, continuous learning, and evolving internal processes. Examples of these change-friendly characteristics include:
Conversely, there are other institutional characteristics that may be roadblocks to achieving the changes associated with organizational agility. Examples of these include:
The degree to which an organization is willing to review and modify these practices will determine how quickly and effectively agile approaches can be adopted. However, in response to these organizational impediments to agility, project leaders can try various approaches to accelerate a cultural compatibility for:
6.2 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
An organization's culture is its DNA—its core identity. Culture will always influence the use of agile approaches. Organizational culture runs along a continuum, from highly predictive plans to lean startup where everything is an experiment. Although agile approaches fit well with the lean startup culture, a highly predictive organization can encourage empirical measurements, small experiments, and learning so they can move toward agility.
6.2.1 CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT OF SAFETY
Organizational culture is difficult to change, but the most important cultural norm in an organization willing to try any new method or technique is enabling a safe work environment.
Only in a safe, honest, and transparent environment can team members and leaders truly reflect on their successes to ensure their projects continue to advance, or apply lessons learned on failed projects so they do not fall back into the same patterns.
6.2.2 ASSESSING CULTURE
Every project finds itself in tension with competing aspirations. How can the team go fast without compromising quality? How can the team preserve flexibility while also hitting a firm date? Most importantly, how does the team satisfy and meet the requirements of the customer?
Project leaders may feel their job is to meet every expectation of every stakeholder; but, when compelled to make a choice, there is often a priority depending on the culture and requirements of the organization's business environment. For example, a mobile telecom project has a greater bias for speed, where a government program may have a greater bias for generalization and stability.
To navigate these dynamics, project leaders should take the time to assess where emphasis is most often applied in the organization. Figure 6-2 illustrates what an assessment might look like. In this example, a project leader initiates a conversation about organizational priorities with stakeholders, team members, and senior management. Those priorities are then recorded as positions on a sliding scale between two extremes. The results are then used to find agile techniques that best fit with those priorities.
Several models exist for assessing such dynamics; however, the model or method used is not that important. It is more critical that project leaders invest the effort to understand the forces that shape their context. Understanding the organization and the industry requirements that an organization needs to satisfy allows for choosing the right conversations, the right tradeoffs, and, especially, the right techniques.
6.3 PROCUREMENT AND CONTRACTS
As mentioned earlier in this practice guide, the Agile Manifesto values “customer collaboration over contract negotiation.” Many project failures stem from breakdowns in the customer–supplier relationship. Projects incur more risk when those involved in the contract take the perspective of winners vs. losers. A collaborative approach is one that pursues a shared-risk-reward relationship, where all sides win. Some contracting techniques that can formalize this dynamic include the following:
TIP
Culture versus Structure
Some people insist new organizational structures be installed before any cultural shift can begin. Others maintain the opposite—those new organizational structures are only superficial adjustments until the collective culture moves in a meaningful direction. In reality, one cannot progress without the other. Project leaders wanting to achieve agility should consider the current and future states of both of these aspects in their organization.
It is possible to create agile contracts. Agile is built on a synergy of collaboration and trust. The supplier can help by delivering value early and often. The customer can help by providing timely feedback.
6.4 BUSINESS PRACTICES
The willingness and ability to create new competences within an organization when the need arises is a mark of organizational agility. These do not have to be earth-shattering changes and could be less disruptive in an organization that is focused on agility and the results it provides. Transparency and open collaboration are absolutely key.
As cross-functional teams deliver value, the teams and individuals might encounter problems with various support functions in the organization.
As team delivers value on a regular basis, finance departments may have the opportunity to capitalize the product differently. If the team has contracts with other organizations, procurement departments may need to change those contracts to help the other organizations deliver value frequently and synchronize with the team.
Once teams start to work in a cohesive and cooperative manner, they will challenge internal management policies. Human resources may notice individual incentives make less sense, and managers may struggle with the performance appraisals of self-organizing employees. In each case, these are opportunities to review the degree to which existing practices support agile ways of working.
As organizations progress to greater agility, there will be obvious needs for additional business units to change the way they interact and perform their responsibilities. The changes that have benefited other areas of the organization should now be embraced so the effectiveness of the entire organization can be realized.
6.5 MULTITEAM COORDINATION AND DEPENDENCIES (SCALING)
Many projects incur dependencies, even when they are not managed within a given program. For this reason, it is necessary to have an understanding of how agile works within an existing program and portfolio management context.
6.5.1 FRAMEWORKS
The guidance of the most widespread agile methods such as Scrum and eXtreme Programming focus on the activities of a single, small, usually colocated, cross-functional team. While this is very useful for efforts that require a single team, it may provide insufficient guidance for initiatives that require the collaboration of multiple agile teams in a program or portfolio.
A range of frameworks (such as the Scaled Agile Framework, Large Scale Scrum, and Disciplined Agile) and approaches (e.g., Scrum of Scrums) have emerged to cater to just such circumstances. More details on these can be found in Annex A3.
6.5.2 CONSIDERATIONS
There is more than one way to scale work. The team might need to scale the work of several agile projects into a single agile program. Alternatively, the organization can design a structure that supports agile approaches across the entire portfolio.
For example, it is helpful to start small and learn as rapidly as possible what works well in the organizational context. Teams can achieve successful outcomes even when everything is not completely transformed into an agile approach.
Regardless of the approach, a critical success factor is the healthy agile team. If using an agile approach for a single team is not successful, do not try to scale up to using it more broadly; instead, address the organizational impediments that prevent teams from working in an agile way.
The goal of large-scale agile projects is to coordinate the efforts of different teams to bring value to customers. There is more than one way to do that. Teams may use a formal framework or apply agile thinking to adjust existing program management practices.
6.6 AGILE AND THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT OFFICE (PMO)
The PMO exists to shepherd business value throughout the organization. It might do this by helping projects achieve their goals. Sometimes, the PMO educates teams (or arranges for training) and supports projects. Sometimes, the PMO advises management about the relative business value for a given project or set of projects.
Because agile creates cultural change, over time, the organization might need to change, including the PMO. For example, managers make decisions about which projects to fund and when, and teams decide what they need for training or advice.
6.6.1 AN AGILE PMO IS VALUE-DRIVEN
Any project should deliver the right value, to the right audience, at the right time. The PMO's objective is to facilitate and enable this goal. An agile-based PMO approach is based on a customer-collaboration mindset and is present in all PMO programs. In many cases, this means the PMO operates as if it were a consulting business, tailoring its efforts to meet specific needs requested by a given project. Some projects may need tools and templates, while others may benefit from executive coaching. The PMO should strive to deliver what is needed and keep the pulse on its customers to ensure that it knows and is able to adapt to their needs. This intrapreneur approach focuses on the PMO activities that are perceived as the most valuable to the projects it supports.
6.6.2 AN AGILE PMO IS INVITATION-ORIENTED
In order to accelerate progress on a value-based charter, a PMO may be tempted to mandate certain solutions or approaches, for example, to make everyone do it the same way to get some quick wins. However, a more deliberate perspective incorporates the desire for employee engagement. This is achieved by inviting only those interested to engage with PMO services. Higher engagement with PMO practices makes it easier for those practices to be “sticky.” If the PMO is delivering value to its clients, it is more likely that clients will request its services and adopt its practices.
6.6.3 AN AGILE PMO IS MULTIDISCIPLINARY
In order to support project-specific needs, the PMO needs to be conversant in several competencies beyond project management itself, because different projects require distinct capabilities. For instance, one project may need organizational design to address staffing challenges while another may require organizational change management techniques for stakeholder engagement or unique business models to support customer goals.
Some organizations have been transforming their PMOs into agile centers of excellence that provide such services as:
6.7 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
The structure of an organization strongly influences its ability to pivot to new information or shifting market needs. Here is a listing of key characteristics:
6.8 EVOLVING THE ORGANIZATION
When addressing an individual challenge area or implementing a new hybrid or agile approach, it is recommended to undertake the work incrementally. A common practice is to treat the change process as an agile project with its own backlog of changes that could be introduced and prioritized by the team, based on perceived value or other considerations. Each of the changes can be treated as an experiment, which is tested for a short period of time to determine suitability as-is or the need for further refinement/consideration.
Use kanban boards to track progress, showing the new approaches already in use as “done,” those being tried as “in progress,” and those still waiting to be introduced as “to do.” See Figure 6-3 for the initial board with a ranked backlog. Figure 6-4 shows an example of what a board might have as work progresses.
Using these tools to organize and manage the change implementation provides visibility into progress and also models the approaches being implemented. Rolling out changes in a transparent and appealing way improves the likelihood of their success.