Lessons for Agile Coaches, Agile outside the IT. This presentation is by Antony Marsh for the meetup held at Manulife Indonesia.

1. Agile in non-technical contexts:
Lessons for agile coaches
Antony Marsh
Agile Coach

2. Three Waves of Agile
Charlie Rudd, 2016
● Also “viral spread” of agile into other
disciplines and areas
● DevOps extending agile into production and
deployment

3. Why is Agile spreading to non-tech areas?
● Widespread adoption by IT, and hype and marketing efforts, LinkedIn,
promotion of certifications
● Other teams/areas exposed to agile through working with IT teams and
want to adopt agile
● Business Agility - senior managers and executives think “we must do/be
agile” (often without really knowing why)
● Synergies with other well-known approaches (6 Sigma, Lean, innovation,
lean startups)
● This “viral spread” of Agile is good for agile coaches looking for work but has
disadvantages - fragmentation of approach, adoption of agile for the wrong
reasons, poor understanding, lack of true cross-functionality

4. What non-tech areas are using agile?
● Marketing
● Sales
● Human Resources/People and Culture
● Construction
● Executives trying to implement change
● Call centres
● Risk management
● Strategy
● Change management

5. Most non-technical teams try Scrum first, but this
is sometimes wrong
● Scrum is widely known and (kind of) understood so often teams try this
first - also many consultants will sell Scrum as the “solution”
● Many people think Scrum = Agile
● Scrum is great for product development, but sometimes not so good for
other business contexts

6. Case Study - Marketing at National Australia Bank
● Already doing “Scrum”, but not really understanding why
● Agile broadly supported by teams and management
● Teams produce marketing campaigns ATL and BTL - could be brand or
product-focused
● Creative work outsourced to external agencies
● Work is then collated and moved through a (complex) approval process
● Output is “assets” - eg TVC, social media posts, billboards, Google Ads -
content is reused through these assets but there are no real
dependencies
● Very big budgets, but most money is spent on creative agencies and to
buy media time

7. Campaign life-cycle
Product
team
Segment
team
Program
s Team
Ideation/
brief
Creative
Agency
Program
s Team
ApprovalApprovals -
Marketing,
Legal, Risk,
Brand,
stakeholder
, Other
Creation
of assets
- digital
and
physical
Deploym
ent of
assets -
digital
and
physical
Analytics
/feedbac
k - make
changes
Decomm
ision

8. Tier 1 Brand Advertisment

9. Physical assets O.O.H. - “out
of home”

10. State of Agile at NAB (when I started)
• “Scrum” rituals but poor understanding
• Focus on tasks not deliverables
• Many tasks per worker in one day
• No/limited backlogs
• Long term planning disconnected from sprint
planning
• Specialised teams not cross-functional teams
• Desire to improve practices
• Open to change
• Ceremonies did help their productivity
• Visualisation of work (scrum boards, marketing
targets
• Daily scrums useful
10

11. State of Agile at NAB (when I started)
11

12. Seven Wastes of Software Development
(Poppendiek 2003)

13. State of Agile at NAB (continued)
• Agile coaches were also scrum masters for 2-4
teams at once
• Coaches placed into “Performance Units” and
reported to a mid/senior level manager
• Over time this led to overwork and a reduced
ability to change practices, process and culture
• Silo-ing of coaches led to fragmentation of
approach
• Culture of unhealthy competition between PUs
13

14. Teams
Handoffs,
waste,
waiting,
rework
V
a
l
u
e
s
t
r
e
a
m

16. Challenges
● Complex, non-linear value stream (therefore inefficient)
● Teams highly specialised, not cross-functional - therefore many handoffs
● Work is outsourced to creative agencies who work at a different cadence -
so waste, waiting, re-work
● Teams then manage work through a complex approval process - waste,
waiting, re-work
● Teams then pass on work to Analytics and Deployment teams - waste,
waiting, rework
● Poor/no backlogs exacerbate these problems
● Weak/no Product Owners

17. What we did
● 90 day plans to assist with product backlogs
● Kanban and scrumban boards to suit BAU type work
● Tribes and squads to break down silos and encourage cross functionality
● Portfolio views of work
● Scaled scrum (scrum of scrums) to encourage collaboration and better
handover
● MoSCoW prioritisation of work with campaigns

20. (Eduardo Nosfuentes, Agile Eleven,available on Slideshare
)
Seven Steps to
Coaching Agile in
Non-Software
Development
Teams

21. Lessons for Agile Coaches
“As experienced agile practitioners and as people
responsible for agile change and transformation,
we should recognise the importance of being
agnostic with agility at any level. This means one
size does not fit all, one framework is not the
answer, and the ‘what’ and ‘how’ should be suited
to customer context and to a wider strategic
vision.”
http://agnosticagile.org

22. Contact
Antony Marsh
antony.marsh@gmail.com
http://linkedin.com/in/antonymarsh/
Twitter @AgileAnt