Every organization has a design. As the organization evolves, the design may or may not evolve to support the needs of the organization’s stakeholders (including the agile teams, managers, executives, customers, etc.). Sometimes we may wish we had the opportunity to start again with our organization design, and may even have some solid ideas about what we would do differently. However, few of us have the luxury of actually starting again, unless perhaps we build a new company.
Motivation
Organizations that decide to ‘go agile’ or adopt ‘lean development’ are often not prepared for the sort of organizational issues that are implied by such a decision. Even those organizations that, with the greatest of intentions, tell their teams to “go, be agile”, do not set their teams up for success unless they provide the right organization support structures that create the right environment for their teams to be successful. Sometimes, fundamental is required.
For established companies with an established design, if we want to change something, then we need to refactor the design of the organization.
Managers, executives and other leaders have a crucial role to play as designers of the organization.
Open Jam at Agile2010
I’ll be speaking in greater detail on this topic later this year at LESS2010.
This Open Jam session at Agile 2010 will explore a number of questions, e.g.:
- What refactorings would you apply?
- What are we refactoring towards?
- What is our measure of success?
- How do we make sure we don’t break the organization while refactoring?
- Should we be refactoring towards yet another fixed structure, or should the new structure accomodate, expect, and support ongoing change?
- What structures do we need so that we build teams that are truly whole, cross-functional, and empowered to build the right thing?
- What tests can we apply to ensure the refactorings are successful?
- How do principles of coupling and cohesion apply to organization design?
- Who are the key stakeholders in the organization design?
- How does the current organization design serve it’s stakeholders, and how will the new organization design change that?
- Do we really need to change anything? Can’t we just patch the current organization design?
- What about skill specializations? Can communities of practice within our organizations replace functional silos?
- What about HR issues? Reward structures? Compensation?
- How can we build more autonomy into the organization?
- What’s the relationship between organization vision and organization structure?
- What are the implications for decision making?
- How can we apply the Type I Toolkit for Organizations, so that we create an environment where intrinsic motivation can thrive?
- Anything you want to talk about…
Format
Using whiteboard, flip chart paper, markers and stickies, we will work together to understand how we might go about refactoring an organization.
We can take an example of a typical, large matrix organization with functional silos and discuss what refactorings we would like to apply.
Where and when
Open Jam session at Agile 2010 on Thursday August 12th at 12:30 in the Genie Open Jam area.