On its move to more agile, SAP hired us to support the transformation as Scrum Master and Agile Coach.
Even though these roles are quite specific, the context was quite challenging for several reasons: misunderstanding of Scrum Master´s role: like in most German organisations, Scrum masters are an extended version of a project manager.
In that challenging context where core activity is related to the implementation of business processes, we used that opportunity to test our agile Organisation Model (AO) to measure that impact. This work has been presented in several conferences around the world like:
- Agile Tour (Montreal) here: https://www.slideshare.net/PierreNeis/an-introduction-to-agile-organisation
- Yunikon Academy Talks (Mexico) & Agile Impact (Jakarta) here: https://www.slideshare.net/PierreNeis/ao-the-sap-case
- Agile Tour (London) here: https://www.slideshare.net/PierreNeis/ao-the-future-of-agile-organisations-the-sap-case-3
- Requisite Agility Unsymposium (New York) here: https://www.slideshare.net/PierreNeis/introduction-to-agile-organisations-ao-nyc-requisite-agility-unsymposium
A part of the work has been documented on http://www.myao.blog and the first book will be published later this year.
The performance has been largely and rapidly improved while addressing “agility” through the organisational angle: building systems allowing agile behaviour.
The contract ended December 2018 after 2,5 years.
Unfortunately, we believe that most of the positive aspects won’t persist due to multiple organisational changes and the last of interest of the management.
A decision has been taken to initiate the implementation of LESS (a Lean-Agile Framework) that might correspond to management expectations.
Why is that decision wrong? The belief is to consider agile as a methodology that you can implement, control like a process. This belief is quite genuine and it is founded on the idea to create an organisation as a manufacturing process.
In the past, we also believed in that while implementing large Lean Thinking, PMI or Prince 2 with great results only when the implementing team was on-site. Unfortunately, this never worked. The game is fair, and failing, even if you know that will fail, is part of a larger learning process.
the agile agency 