Easy Agile Podcast Ep.31 The Release Train Engineer + SAFe Summit 23

"Lieschen's wealth of experience is absolutely incredible! Not only did she provide invaluable advice, but I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation."

In this episode Caitlin Mackie is joined by Lieschen Gargano Sr, Release Train Engineer at Scaled Agile. They delve into the role of the Release Train Engineer, sharing tips and tricks, FLOW activities, lessons learned and how to get started in the role. With SAFe Summit 2023 just around the corner, Lieschen also takes some time to talk about what she’s most excited about for the event and shared some advice for first time attendees.

If Lieschen's expertise and passion have piqued your interest, be sure to explore the Scaled Agile RTE course. It provides comprehensive training, equipping you with the necessary skills and knowledge to excel as an RTE.

Scaled Agile RTE course

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Transcript:

Caitlin Mackie:

Hi there. Welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast. I'm Caitlin, your host for today's episode. At Easy Agile we specialize in developing apps for Atlassian Jira that help your team move from simply doing agile to truly being agile. Our apps have gained recognition and trust from over 160,000 users across top companies worldwide. With our products, teams can transform their flat Jira backlogs into something visually meaningful and easy to understand. Whether it's sprint planning, retrospectives, or PI planning, our apps are designed to foster seamless team alignment.

Before we begin the episode, we would like to say an acknowledgement of country. This is part of our ongoing commitment towards reconciliation. Easy Agile would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we broadcast today. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that same respect to all Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander and First Nations people joining us today. Let's jump into today's episode. So today I'm joined by Lieschen Gargano, a senior release train engineer at Scaled Agile. Lieschen is a highly experienced professional when it comes to change management, system design and stakeholder engagement, and has a passion for developing teams and connecting strategy to execution. Lieschen welcome to the Easy Agile Podcast.

Lieschen Gargano:

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Caitlin Mackie:

So Lieschen, you are a release train engineer. For our listeners, can you explain a little bit about the role? For anyone that's not familiar, how would you describe a Release Train Engineer?

Lieschen Gargano:

Yeah. I think one of the easiest ways for people to think of a Release Train Engineer is kind of like a coach or scrum master for the art, for the Agile release train. A servant leader facilitating all of those art events, facilitating the processes and process improvements. And really measured in value delivery, and using flow metrics to measure those improvements and support of the arts.

Caitlin Mackie:

So you mentioned flow metrics there. I've heard a lot about this recently and optimizing flow. What are some of those flow activities that a RT is responsible for?

Lieschen Gargano:

I like to look at feature flow and cycle time. So really looking like are we bringing all of our features in progress at once or are we managing our WIP, not just at the team level but at the art level. Are we taking the whole PI to get a feature through the system, or are we able to finish something before we start the next thing? So I look at that a lot and also just are we making and meeting commitments. Those PI objectives that we set, are we in that 80-100% range? A lot of people want full credit, extra credit and to be in the 120, but for us, predictability really means you tried really hard and you stretched, but you also still made and met commitments. So I look at that really closely too.

Caitlin Mackie:

I love that. You mentioned just then quite a lot of different responsibilities that a RTE has. Do you think that there is one in particular that you really need to get right from the start?

Lieschen Gargano:

Oh, as an RTE, I think the biggest thing is building the relationships and intention. As a servant leader, we really are there to help make the art better, to make being on the art enjoyable and productive and flow. So building that trust and those relationships as a servant leader is the first thing. If you get that wrong, no one will help you do the rest.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah-

Lieschen Gargano:

And you need a lot of help. You're not doing anything alone as an RTE.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yes. Yeah, for sure. I can definitely imagine that. Let's go a little bit deeper on that servant leadership that you just mentioned. Can you share your approach and what servant leadership means to you?

Lieschen Gargano:

Servant leadership to me is helping people understand the direction, communicating early and often so that they know where you're going. And then not just saying, "how can I help you get there? What can I do?" But saying, "how can we go together?" A lot of coaching and understanding the problem to solve and connecting it to how it benefits the people. Just like we ask them to connect their work to how it benefits the customer. As the RT, they're my customer. How does what I'm asking you to change benefit you? Not changing is always easier than changing even if we don't like our current state. So why is it worth it?

Caitlin Mackie:

I love that. Yeah, always asking the why and being really clear on it. Yeah, I think that's great. I've done some LinkedIn digging of your profile, as you do, had a little bit of a stalk and noticed that you hosted a webinar recently on tips and tricks and lessons learned as an RTE. Can we start with maybe some tips and tricks? What can you share?

Lieschen Gargano:

The first thing I will say is lean on the Scrum master team, and if you're lucky enough to have an Agile coach or another RTE, lean on that team. Your lean Agile Center of Excellence, those people have the expertise. They're also building the relationships. They're there to help you. Don't try to just prove yourself or go it alone, it's not possible. That team is your team for success. So 100% go to them. They're a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of relationships, and the best support.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, I know it's so important to have that support network around you. You just mentioned the Agile Center of Excellence. Maybe for some of our listeners aren't familiar, could you explain what that is?

Lieschen Gargano:

Yeah, so the Lean Agile Center of Excellence can look a few different ways depending on your organization. At our organization, it is the coach, release managers, RTEs and Scrum masters or team coaches. And some larger organizations than ours might have that hub and spoke model of a centralized change leader. And then RTEs and Scrum masters that are in different arts and around the org. And some even have separate laces in different parts of the organization if it's really big. But really they are that community of practice that holds your lean Agile practices and the standards of those practices and talks to each other and debates and evolves them to make sure that it's consistent throughout the org. That the org is getting consistent coaching, consistent guidance, and they're not being told five different things about how to transform. Because again, change and being lean is so hard. If you add too many voices into that coaching, it gets really overwhelming for folks.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yes, 100%. And an Agile transformation is already overwhelming as it is, so you can imagine that laid on top. I suppose speaking, if we explore a little bit around those on an agile transformation journey, at what point would you say it's important that that lean Agile Center of Excellence is formed?

Lieschen Gargano:

Oh, I think it should be in place pretty quick. I mean, we talk about training your leaders, training your experts and then doing safer teams and launching trains. You need that Center of Excellence there from the start so that they can go out to the rest of the org that they can do all that training and they can be there to support people through title changes, role changes. Launching an art can feel very scary to folks. If you don't have that in place beforehand, you're going to have a lot to reel in after the fact.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, I really like that. It's almost having this really solid foundation and unified voice to sort of go forward and support the rest of the org.

Lieschen Gargano:

And it's so great to have consultants support, to have partners come in and help you and to have the right tools, but they need the help of people inside. They need that lean Agile Center of Excellence of employees inside the company to help you be successful. As an RTE, you need your team. Anybody, any tool, any people trying to do a change, a transformation are going to need that Center of Excellence because all those parts, that's what makes the whole.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So you mentioned as an RTE, a big tip or trick is to rely on that lean Agile Center of Excellence. What do you think has been your biggest lesson learned as an RT?

Lieschen Gargano:

There are a few things that have been particularly difficult for me. One of them is that I don't like to say no and not in that I take on too much or whatever, but more in that if someone has passion for something, I want them to be able to take it on. I want them to be able to move forward with it. And there are times where we really have to say it's too much change. It's too much for this group to manage. In particular, the Scrum Masters and RTEs people come to us for a lot of things and they need that consistency from us, and they need predictability in a change to feel like we know where they're going and if we introduce too many things or if we try to hold too many things at once, it's easy for us to forget about it later or drop something else. So learning when and how to say no, again not necessarily in that capacity way, but just in the width of change, if that makes sense.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, definitely. I think that what you just said there, learning how and when to say no. I think that's not even exclusive to the RTE role as well. I think that's an amazing piece of advice for anyone listening and to share across our audiences, because I know it's definitely something I struggle with as well. So that's my takeaway from this is to, okay, I'm going to constantly imagine like 'no Lieschen told me to when and how to say no', and just focus on that. So yeah, I think that's a great piece of advice. What was your journey like to an RTE? I know we caught up last week and I got a little sneak preview into this, and I know it wasn't straightforward, so if you can share a little bit about that, that would be great.

Lieschen Gargano:

Yeah. I actually started in conflict resolution. I worked in public private reconciliation doing a lot of natural resources facilitation, so hundreds of people, governments, companies, private landowners, residents, trying to bring all those people together to get to consensus or at least to build relationships that allow them to move forward. So really strong foundation and facilitation in particular, and just day-to-day conflict. When we say conflict, we get so worried, 'oh, I don't do conflict', well conflict's everything all the time. It's all the disagreements we need to succeed in life. So that gave me a great foundation when I became a scrum master, and I did that for a few years working with development teams. One of my favorite teams was our infrastructure team, 10 foot pole because no one wanted to touch their work or the 10 foot pole, and I learned so much there and eventually became a coach and started doing more strategic planning and coaching parts of the organization that weren't used to being on arts. Marketing and other groups, which helped me transition to Scaled Agile, where I started working with our CMO and as he grew the marketing team, helping coach that marketing group into an agile way of working, a safe way of working, before actually becoming a product owner, because I loved organizing around value, and I loved those different topics that we were working on internally.

And one of the people I work with at Scale Agile said, "well, help us develop the product then for everybody else". So I did that for a little while, which gave me so much power in that learning how to say no and prioritize and coaching people to decisions is one thing, but as the product owner, I had to practice being where the buck stopped. There are five right decisions, just make one so that people are unblocked, and that prepared me really well for transitioning into RT.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. You have such a wealth of experience there across so many different roles, and you can really see that each of those key roles have taught you something valuable that you can take into this RTE role. So I think that's amazing. It's so cool to see that even though it's not this straightforward linear journey, there's all these parts that there's traits within each that ladder up to helping you succeed as an RT. So I think that's really cool.

Lieschen Gargano:

And I know people are afraid to make some of those lateral moves sometimes, but the skills that you can build might just be that thing that gets you other open doors that you didn't even think about.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely love that. Yeah, just embrace every opportunity for what it may be, what it may not be. You don't know until you give it a shot. So I think, yeah, I love that. I think that's really great advice. So everything we've spoken about in regards to being a Release Train Engineer may have really hit the spot for some of our listeners. How does someone get there? Were there certifications, courses? What's the process that way?

Lieschen Gargano:

Another thing I probably did backwards. I started with a scrum master cert and then actually ended up getting a SPC certification through Scaled Agile when I was a coach. Because I was a coach before I was an RTE, and I learned about so many other parts of the business that way. But then to become an actual RTE, taking the safe RTE course, but then actually there's a community of RTEs... Which we didn't really talk about this, but being an RTE is a lonely thing. I said earlier, if you're lucky to have another RTE, this is a lonely role. You're really kind of on your own. So not just getting that cert, but being part of that community and being able to send people messages and ask them crazy questions was part of my certification process, but also just community building to where I could feel like I had the connections and competence. So yeah, I found all of them similar to holding each of the roles, also getting that certification, just another tool in the tool belt.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, for sure. I don't want to touch on something you said there about an RTE being sometimes quite a lonely role. What do you think makes it lonely?

Lieschen Gargano:

It's a role that a lot of people have strong opinions about what they need and what success looks like based on where they are in the organization. And there are usually few of you, and even if you're in a large organization with many, you're with your art, you're very focused on your section, and so having all of those pulls and expectations and not having anyone who understands what that feels like just makes it kind of lonely. Now that we have two RTEs and a coach at Scaled Agile, it makes a big difference for me because they are right there in it with me and it's very helpful.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. You can see in that scenario why that community of RTEs is like you said, so important to lean on them as well. Yeah.

Lieschen Gargano:

I find even just connecting to RT's outside our organization too. I grabbed beers with one a couple weeks ago. Those little things, even if you can find that person, meet them at a summit, meet them out in the wild, find them on LinkedIn and just say, "Hey, we live in the same area. We have the same role". It can go a long way because it may seem weird to reach out like that, but they probably are looking for that connection too.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thank you so much for sharing. And for any of our listeners, I might pop some links to any certifications and some scout Agile courses. I'll pop that in our episode notes, so feel free to check those out. You mentioned about connecting with other RTs and meeting at summits, which is a really nice segue to the next part of our conversation. Just around the corner is the 2023 Safe Summit and we're heading to Nashville Music City. What can we expect from Safe Summit? What are you looking forward to?

Lieschen Gargano:

Well, what I'm most looking forward to is that I am putting together an RTE breakfast. So all RTEs are welcome, or even if you're a solution train engineer or you do the role of an RTE with a different title. I'm really excited to meet with those folks over breakfast and just chat it out. And my goal with that really is to have people to connect with so that as we go through the rest of the summit, listening to the talks that we have people enroll, that we can check back in with over drinks and stuff on the later days and say, 'oh, what do you think? How might that work?' So that's what I'm most looking forward to.

Caitlin Mackie:

Amazing.

Lieschen Gargano:

But obviously there are going to be some great talks and the product labs are always really fun. We get to play with the product together.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, cool. Tell me a little bit about the product labs, what's involved in that?

Lieschen Gargano:

The product team puts it together and they have computers set up and you can bring your own and they talk through some of the new releases or things they're working on and help you log into it and use it in your context, but also try to get some feedback on how it works or how you might use it in your organization. So it's a nice two-way street. It's sort of, 'I need this, how might I do it?' And then them saying, 'well, why don't you try and let me see how it works and how we should change it based on how you interact with it'. So it's just really fun. It feels really practical because it's so hands on.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, amazing. I love that. I'm definitely going to have to try and come along and suss that out. It sounds really great. Where do you hope or where do you think we'll see a lot of conversations focused at this year's Safe Summit?

Lieschen Gargano:

At Safe Summit I think the conversations will be really focused on just the day-to-day of Safe. We have new topics that come up. We obviously have new ideas that are going to be presented. But every time I go to one of these, it really is the connecting one-on-one to say, here's where I'm stuck, here's what I'm trying to learn. So we'll hear a lot about Flow, we'll hear about Team Topologies, but we'll also hear those 'I'm just getting started and we're stuck, we have change fatigue. We don't know if our arts are set up correctly'. A lot of those classic conversations that are just really impactful and why people come together.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I love that. Creating these spaces for people to bond over shared experiences and problems they're facing or wins they're seeing and sharing them. I think that's where these events are amazing for creating that kind of environment. Lieschen, this is my very first Safe Summit. I haven't been to one before and I'm really excited. What advice would you have for first time attendees, returning attendees, what's the way to get the most out of Safe Summit?

Lieschen Gargano:

If you're attending with other people from your organization, the best thing is to split up so you can cover more ground and then come back together and share. The second advice is find people with a similar role as you, because again, you can do that same thing with those folks and split up and then meet up again and try to talk about it in your context. It's great to do that at the parties too, because we throw great parties, but that's the best because no matter what room you end up in, what talk you end up at, you're going to get a great nugget. But where it really sinks in for me is talking with someone else about what I heard and then thinking about, 'okay what does that mean?', when I go home.

Caitlin Mackie:

Amazing, great advice Lieschen. If anyone listening happens to also be attending Safe Summit and they see Lieschen on the floor or myself, make sure you say hello, and if you've got any questions for Lieschen about the podcast episode, I'm sure she'll be more than happy to answer and engage in a great conversation. And anyone looking to get advice around the RTE role, make sure you find her and have a chat. Lieschen I'm really excited to meet in person. We've done this podcast with yourself in the States, myself in Australia, so I'm excited to connect over in your world. And yeah, really thank you so much for your time. I hope you enjoyed the episode. I know, I sure did.

Lieschen Gargano:

I did. Thank you.

Caitlin Mackie:

Thanks, Lieschen.

Transcript:

Sean Blake:

Hello, everybody. I'm Sean Blake, the host of this episode of the Easy Agile podcast. I'm also Head of Marketing at Easy Agile, where our mission is to help teams around the world work better together. We have a fascinating guest with us today. It's John Turley from Adaptavist. John is a pragmatic Agile leader with 25 years experience working in companies at all levels, from teams to C suite, always bringing real value, adding change to the way organizations work. Dissatisfied with the standard discourse around transformation and agility, he is passionate about applying cutting edge knowledge from fields as diverse as sociology and psychology. We're really excited to have John on the podcast today. So John, thanks so much for being on the Easy Agile podcast.

John Turley:

You're welcome, Sean. Pleasure to be here.

Sean Blake:

Thank you so much. So John, you've got a lot of experience in the Agile space, in the tech space. And I'm not trying to call you old. But I'd love to get a sense of what's changed over 25 years. It must just be night and day from where you started to what you see now.

John Turley:

There's a lot of change. And I'm pretty comfortable with old. I'm 48 now, and it's closest to 30 years now. That tells you when I first wrote that bit in the bio. So the technology has changed. That's mind blowing. I started off in ops, and then infrastructure and project management and stuff and 1999, 2000, it would take us three months and 50,000 quid to build a couple of web servers with a pair of load balancers and firewalls and a database at the back. And now we spin them up in seconds.

John Turley:

This is profound. Platform technology is profound slack or I mean platform technologies, that makes a massive difference to the way we interact. Scale is a massive issue. I would say that the world is sort of dichotomized into very large and quite small organizations. There seem to be less in the middle. It's just a gut feeling. We see, I think trust is collapsed. We see that in Edelman Trust Barometer. We see the complexity has increased. That's deeply problematic for us. [inaudible 00:02:23] has been measuring that one.

John Turley:

And we see that workforce engagement is at all time lows through the Gallup World Poll. Those things are big, big changes. What's the same though is the people, the way the people think, the way we construct our reality, our mindset, if you like, the way we make sense of the world around us is very, very similar. So although we now talk a lot more about Agile, the waterfall and waterfall for many is a bit of a dirty word, not for me and same with command and control. People are taking the same mindsets. This is measurable and provable. People are taking the same mindset that they had around waterfall and command and control using different language of Agile and behaving in the same way. That hasn't changed.

Sean Blake:

Very interesting. So you touched on trust, and how basically we've seen this breakdown of trust across the board. And I've just watched a documentary that's come out on Netflix around the Social Dilemma, and how the trust that we have in these big social media platforms is eroding. And we're getting a little bit skeptical around what these big companies are doing to us as the customer. Do you find that that's a hard balance with the people that you work with around being customer focused, but still building a profitable and growing business?

John Turley:

Yeah, I do. Yes, and the way I think it manifests itself, which again maybe we'll get into the sort of the psychology and the sociology as well as the complexity science, I'm into it later. But there's a very clear way that that lack of trust manifests itself. I'm not sure it's the lack of trust that manifests itself. But there's a very clear thing that's happening is people, there's repeated patterns of behavior I see all over the place in a lot of the work I do, which is one on one and with groups, that people hold on to this idea that their view is right and anything that doesn't comply with that is wrong.

John Turley:

This is a view that comes from the predominant mindset from what [inaudible 00:04:33] call the sort of expert or the achiever mindset, and it becomes a barrier to us collaborating and learning together and innovating. If somebody with a different point of view is dismissed as wrong, then there's no common ground to start to build trust. Trust is eroded from the outset, and that means that we can't collaborate, and in a complex world where we need to collaborate ever more closely and learn together and innovate, that's a deep, deep problem.

John Turley:

And the response seems to be that people actually withdraw, they withdraw into groups, we might call them cliques or echo chambers. The sociologists call this process homophily. This is a function like many say of platforms like Twitter, we retreat into groups that echo the opinions that we already hold that then reinforce those opinions, and separate us from the opinions of others and reinforce the opinions we have. So the gaps between the cliques grow wider, and particularly in times of COVID and the lockdown that we've had here, and that we seem to be maybe heading back into the isolation perhaps adds to that, and we see it more and more. So at a time where we need to be getting our act cliques and talking with understanding with others with different views, we're actually psychologically in a difficult position to be able to do that. And so that's what we might generically call the lack of trust manifests itself in the work that I'm doing. And that's how I see it with almost everybody that I work with, including myself, by the way. It's not an easy thing to conquer.

Sean Blake:

So what does your day to day look like, John? I think your official job title is Digital Transformation Consultant. You work for Adaptivist as one of the most well known Agile consulting practices in the world, I would say. What does that mean for you day to day? What does your nine to five look like?

John Turley:

So we're really involved in three things. I'm really involved in three things. And it's all about learning, collective learning, organization learning. So we're involved in a lot of original research. We do that original research with a number of academic partners in a program that we're putting together. We've been doing a lot of the research on our own. But as it gets bigger and more credible, other partners are coming to join us and they're very credible partners.

John Turley:

And the research is uncovering new learning. And that new learning points us to new consulting practices where we can take that learning and embed it into a workshop, say or how we might use the research instruments that we've borrowed from academia in the real world to measure social networks or psychological complexity or the amount of autonomy in the environment. So we can then use that to work with teams to help them shift from a sort of functionally oriented way of working to a cross functional way of working, which whether we're talking about safe and Agile release chains, or whether we're talking about Lean software management and value streams, whether we're talking at a team level or an organizational level, the challenge is essentially the same. We need to orientate ourselves around the creation of customer value in cross functional teams that are focused on delivering that value, not just delivering on their function. And that switch brings with it some deep, complex, deep psychological challenges that we're just not really equipped to meet. So we bring sort of the people and culture element, the tools and the Agile methodology simultaneously to bear in teams to help them make that shift. So that's really what my day to day work looks like, so the research and the practice.

Sean Blake:

Okay, research and practice. And when it comes to the practice side and encouraging that cross functional collaboration, how hard is it for people to get on board with that recommendation or get on board with what the company is trying to do?

John Turley:

For most people, it's really hard. So my experience before doing the research that I guess we started a couple of years ago I was just referring to, was something like this recently. We'd often get, so I've worked in the Agile space for a long time, I don't quite know when I started working in that space, in other words, full space, but a decade or two, let's say, and now bumped into a repeated problem, we get our, let's say, thinking of a specific example with a specific client about three years ago, very functionally orientated, trying to make that shift into cross functional teams. So we got a group of five people together from different functions, so designers, testers, developers, a couple of ops people, and between them, they should be able to obviously, launch some working code within 10 days or whatever. We were probably trying to spring into the real world.

John Turley:

And they were all great people. I knew them all personally. I spent time working with them all. They were very sort of Agile in the way they approached the development of the software that they did, and we put them in a room virtually to begin with and we asked them to produce a piece of code that works across functions, produce a piece of code and release it at the end of the week. And they didn't. And we thought what on earth happened there? We didn't really understand this, so we tried it again. But we assumed that the problem is because we'd done it virtually.

John Turley:

So this time, we got everybody together in Poland, as it happened in a room, we set it all up, we talked to them at the beginning, then people like me sort of left the room and let them get on with it, got to the end of the week, same outcome, nothing has happened. And if you talk to them, while they say, "Yeah, my phone pinged and there was a support incident, and you just couldn't.", and they had lots of very plausible reasons why they couldn't come together as a cross functional team. But the fact remains twice in a row, the most capable people haven't done it.

John Turley:

So we had a really long think about it, one of the senior leader in the business and myself. And we realized that the only thing that could be happening, the only thing that could be going wrong here is that there must be some sort of breakdown in the dialogue between the group in the room. So we ran it, we ran the workshop, let's call it for a third time. And this time, we had somebody else in the room just watching what was going on.

John Turley:

And they spotted something happened really early on. One of the people from the UK said to one of the Polish developers, they said, "Look, think of us like consultants. We're here to help you, to transfer knowledge to you so that you develop a capability so that you can do this on your own." And at that moment, the person who was in the room said that the dynamic in the room seemed to change. People glazed over. And I think what it was is that that word consultant that the English person had used had a different meaning for a colleague in Krakow. I think that meaning, the meaning of consultant meant, we're just here to tell you what to do and not actually do anything and put ourselves on the hook for any work, just kind of watch you do it.

John Turley:

And I think at that point, they kind of went, "Okay, well, all right, I get it, same old, same old. We'll do the work you English guys talk about it, because it's an English company.", and that breakdown started to occur. So the question we started is, I've seen that all over the place. So the question we started to wrestle with in our research is what's happening in those moments when that dialogue breaks down what's happening?

John Turley:

And what we've discovered is that there is a number of research studies, the biggest is about 10,000 people, that shows that around about 50% of people are at a level, and this is 50% of leaders in a study of 10,000, so for middle management, senior management, so it's a skewed number. So in reality, in software teams, it's probably more than 50% of people have reached a level of psychological complexity that suits the environment as it was, but has some limitations in cross functional working.

John Turley:

So they have a mindset, a way of making their reality that works well in a functional environment, but it's challenged in a cross functional environment. And that mindset, this way of thinking, which is very prevalent, is a way of thinking where individuals draw their self esteem from their expertise, just to put it very short, simple as an oversimplification. And the thing is, if you're drawing your self esteem from your expertise, when your expertise is challenged, it feels personal.

John Turley:

If it feels personal, people are likely to get defensive. And it's not because they're stupid, or they're not interested or they don't want to, the psychologists can show it's a level of psychological complexity, where that's just how our minds work. That's just how our meaning making works. Now, if that's the stage you're at, if we imagine me as a developer sitting down with a tester, and the tester's saying to me, "Look, the way you've written the code isn't the best way to do it for me, because I can't test it."

John Turley:

If I'm drawing my self esteem from my expertise as a developer, I'm likely to reject that, and might even start to think thoughts like, "Well, I think what really needs to happen here is that you need to be a better tester." I think that's the problem. And then we get this separation. Now at the next stage is psychological complexity. And these stages are in a framework that we do move through these stages. Again, it's an oversimplification, but it's observable and measurable. At slightly later stage of psychological complexity, things start to change. People start to recognize that the world is much more complex, that it's not black and white. And actually, there are multiple ways of doing things.

John Turley:

So to go back to my example as a developer, the tester might say to me, "This isn't the best way to write the code as far as I'm concerned." And what I'll hear is the, "Oh, as far as I'm concerned." It might be as far as I'm concerned, it's not fair enough. How can we change the way I'm writing the code to make it easier to test? But I can't do that if I respond like it's a personal criticism, you know what I mean? So what we started to uncover in the research is a correlation between how successful cross functional teams can be, and the level of psychological complexity in the leaders and the individuals in that team.

Sean Blake:

Interesting. So there's a book that we've been reading at Easy Agile recently called Radical Candor. And really, it comes down to giving constructive feedback to each other, not in a way where you're attacking them personally but you're trying to be honest around how we can work more collaboratively. And like you said with that example, how can a developer write code in a way that the QA tester can actually perform the tests on it? For someone who's new to cross functional ways of working, what advice does the research have around preparing that mindset to receive some of that radical candor, to receive that feedback in a way that you don't take it personally?

John Turley:

Well, so it's a great question, you put it really well, because radical candor is fine. We have, I work in a team that is very candid. We have some difficult conversations, and we don't even really dress our words up. And nobody gets offended. We just know that it's a shortcut. We might get our words wrong, but it's a shortcut to unlocking value to finding out how to work together. But it's not about the words that each of us picks to express. It's about how the other chooses to react to the words landing, as much as now that's a dialogue, it's a two way thing, it takes two to tango.

John Turley:

And the way we can develop a mindset that's more suitable to cross functional work is interesting. First of all, we've got to get out of comfort zone. We've got to be prepared to get out of our comfort zone, not far necessarily, and not for very long necessarily, and not without support and understanding from the colleagues around us. But we do need to get out our comfort zone. Otherwise, psychological growth can't occur. This is what I'm talking to about now is the work really of Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, who do a lot of work in dialogue on radical candor.

John Turley:

So we've got to get out of our comfort zone. But we've also got to be addressing a complex problem with a group of people when we're outside of our comfort zone. And that complex problem has to be meaningful, and it has to be salient, it has to be something that we care about, it has to be something relevant to our day to day work. And if we've got those characteristics in the environment that we working in, then there is an opportunity for individuals to choose to develop their own psychological complexity.

John Turley:

So that environment that has those characteristics, we would call in Kegan's word a deliberately developmental environment, because we can't separate the development of individual mindsets from the environment that that mindset functions in. The reason most of us have got the mindset that draws self esteem from expertise is because that's actually what most environments that we work in or not. That works in a functional environment. It's where you get promoted, it's where you get hired. It's where you get your Scrum Master badge and all that other stuff that gives you status and makes you feel good.

John Turley:

The world that we work in for many of us honors that expert way of making meaning. It doesn't honor learning and admission that yours might not be the best way to do things in the same way. So we have to shift the environment to support the individual to choose to take that developmental step because it can't be something that's done to them. You can't make people develop a more complex psychology. You can't train them to do it. You can only give them an environment that supports that step if they want to take it and if they don't, fair enough, that's okay. But maybe cross functional teams for them, if they don't want to because the hard place is to work.

Sean Blake:

Is it a problem that people find their expertise or find their self esteem from expertise? Is part of it encouraging men to find their confidence in things outside of their work or is expertise an honorable pursuit?

John Turley:

I wouldn't say it's a problem at all. Expertise, and the development of expertise is an honorable pursuit. Drawing your self esteem from your expertise is a very necessary part of our psychological development is a stage that can't be skipped really. I said to you before that I don't like to say things like that without the research base, but the psychology certainly imply that it's a stage that can't be skipped. So we've got to do it. We've got to go through this stage. The stage before we're drawing our self esteem from our expertise is where we draw our self esteem from our membership of the group.

John Turley:

And that's very important too, if you think of us as children or being part of a group is essential for our survival, so ingratiating yourself into that group, not rocking the boat, so we don't jeopardize our group membership is critical. But at some point, people start to realize, well, actually, I have to rock the boat a little bit if we want some direction. So separating your meaning making from drawing your self esteem from the group to drawing your self esteem from your expertise is a development in that sense. Drawing your self esteem from your expertise means the best way to write this code is let me train somebody to do it.

John Turley:

It's critical. But like all developmental stages, it has its limitations. So it's not problematic in any way, unless the individual is in a complex environment in which that expert way of making meaning isn't well suited. And then you got a mismatch between psychological complexity and environmental complexity. And when you've got a mismatch like that, the individual's anxiety will go up probably, employee engagement goes down, certainly wellbeing goes down, people revert to an earlier way of making their meaning that's more embedded in their expertise or the group, just to the point, they need to get more sophisticated.

John Turley:

So the problem is the mismatch between psychological complexity and environmental complexity. That's why we need to support, as the world gets more complex, that's why we need to get all get better at supporting the development of individuals into a level of psychological complexity that suits the more complex environment. That's kind of the nub of the problem. Nothing wrong with being an expert in drawing your self esteem from your expertise. People have done it forever, and will continue to do so. Every time you get in a flash car and you feel good, because you're in a car, you're drawing your self esteem from the status symbol, which is very similar to your expertise. As a young man, I put on my sharp suit and I feel a million dollars. Nothing wrong with that at all, but it's limited. That's the problem.

Sean Blake:

Understood, understood. So you've spoken about research and measurement and having an evidence based way of making decisions. When it comes to this cross functional way of working or digital transformation or teams moving from the old way of working to an Agile way of working, do we have evidence to say one way of working is superior to another way of working? And when you're talking to these clients or these customers, can you guarantee that if they work in this way, it's going to lead to better outcomes for the business? How do you approach that conversation?

John Turley:

No, I can't do either of those things. So I would never go anywhere near nor would I research saying that one way of working is better than another way of working or we can say like the mindset and the environment that there are ways of working that will work better depending on the problem that you're trying to solve. But it's very unlikely that one could be considered right and the other wrong in all sorts of circumstances, but more than that, I would say that doesn't matter what your way of working is or a team's way of working is. If the mindset is the way of making sense, if the reality doesn't also shift, then you're just following a new process, a new way of working with the old way of thinking, and you're going to get the same results just with different words.

John Turley:

So for me, that isn't entirely true, I'm quite biased. I guess in the work I do, I've got quite a perspective. If you shift mindset, then everything else will drop into place. If you change everything else, but don't shift mindset, nothing else will drop into place. What we can say however, is that there are three things, let's call them the three elements of a cross functional team that are hidden to people in organizations at the moment.

John Turley:

So generally, we think if we've got people with the right experience and skills working suitably hard, then they're going to work as a successful cross functional team. And if they're not, they're either not working hard, they're not the right type of person, or they haven't got the right set of skills, so fire them and hire somebody else or give them or put them on a training course, and that solves the problem, which of course it doesn't.

John Turley:

We would say that there are three other elements that remain hidden parts of the cross functional team that are more critical than that, and we're beginning to be able to demonstrate that there is a correlation between these three things that I'm going to tell you about on both employee engagement and team performance.

John Turley:

And these three hidden elements are the structure of the social networks that underpin the way people work. So if we think about how we as groups of human beings organize ourselves, we might think about hierarchies and hierarchy diagrams and old charts and bosses and stuff. That's not really very important for a cross functional team. What's much more important is the social network that develops across that team, who works with whom and when and how, right? Do the developers and the testers and the testers and the ops guys and the designers and the technical architects, do they all work together in a cross functional team?

John Turley:

Now that's a social network. That's a network that's formed through individual autonomy because they want to get the job done not because the boss says you've got to go and do it. In fact, it can't be done because the boss says go and do it. So we have worked with some friends in academia with actually an Australian company called Polinode to measure their various ways we can get the data, what those social networks look like. And the structure of those social networks is key.

John Turley:

As we look at the structure of social networks, we can see whether those teams look like their function, sorry, organized hierarchically, or were they organized for cross functional working because of the network structure. So network structure is one element. The other is psychological complexity. So we've worked with a gentleman called David Rook, who did the original research and developed a psychometric instrument that can measure an individual's stage of psychological complexity, both the structure and the substructure. And that mindset complexity is also linked along with network structure to where the teams can function cross functionally.

John Turley:

The third thing that was the hardest bit, the last bit of the jigsaw that we sort of put into our hypothesis is we need to have adequate degrees of autonomy. We needed to develop a much better understanding of what it means for teams to be autonomous than we had, and how that autonomy relates to control and how control undermines autonomy and how we all tend to be orientated, to taking the cues in the environment either as instructions, which we must comply with or invitations to be autonomous. And we now have another psychometric instrument. So the third instrument that we use, we call the motivation orientation scale, excuse me, that can measure an individual's likelihood to interpret inbound information as an instruction or an invitation to be autonomous.

John Turley:

And once we know that, we can start to challenge this common perception within product teams, software teams that the team is autonomous, because everybody thinks they are autonomous. And in fact, everybody is, research shows mostly autonomous, but we might be almost entirely autonomous, or we might be 60% autonomous. We can measure this. And then we can say to teams, "Look, you are autonomous as a bunch of individuals. But you also have this control thing going on where you're responding to inbound requests."

John Turley:

And we need to be more autonomous. So once we can start to measure it, we can start to challenge their ideas of how autonomous they are. And we can start to examine where the teams are choosing to respond from that control orientation or their autonomy. So they're the three things, autonomy and control, complexity of mindset and network structure, equal employee engagement and team performance. That's what our research says. So what we can say is, to your question in the beginning, there is a network structure, a level of psychological complexity and the amount of autonomy that correlates to successfully working as a cross functional team. And in that sense, we might think that those levels are right, in some sense.

Sean Blake:

Okay. So what does a 100% autonomous team look like? And do they still have interaction with, say the executive team on a day to day basis? Or are they at odds, those two concepts?

John Turley:

No, they're not at odds. They do have, they might have day to day, I suppose they would, they will have either directly or indirectly interactions with the executive team. So the first thing we need to bear in mind here is that the research that we're leaning on is something called self determination theory, which is a theory of motivation. And it has quite a specific definition of autonomy, which is not what we might normally think. Often autonomy is taken to mean as sort of the general use of independence. So if we buy a company, we might leave it to run autonomously, which would mean we just left it alone for a while. And autonomy in this context doesn't mean that. It means individuals acting of their own volition, individuals deciding how to act towards a common purpose. So the team has to have the vision which they can self organize around. You can't self organize without autonomy. If you don't got autonomy, you have to wait to be told what to do. And then it's not self organization.

John Turley:

So autonomy leads to self organization, and self organization can be around a common vision or a set of goals or an OKR is quite a sophisticated way to do instead of management by objective, then we can self organize in a way that sort of honors the need to be part of an organization, doing some coordinated work, but that doesn't rely on a manager telling the individual what to do.

John Turley:

That's what an autonomous team looks like. An autonomous team, you need the autonomy is really a self organizing team. And the self organizing team is deciding what the team ought to do in order to achieve a wider objective, which could be integrating with other self organizing teams. And obviously, the direction is set often by the executive. So all these things sort of come into play. It's not a question of control on the one hand or autonomy on the other or Agile on one hand or waterfall on the other.

John Turley:

So we're going to blend the two. We're going to balance them. And that balance needs to shift not only across teams, but also depending on the level that the organization is, that the team is working in the organization. And what I mean by that is the need for control and measurement increases in many ways as you go higher up the organization. So we want high degrees of autonomy at a team level where we're creating customer value. But we need to recognize that that self organizing team has a legitimate requirement to integrate with some elements of controlling the organization, because if we have some elements of control, then we can't do the accounting and be accountable for where we spend investors' or shareholders' money, you know what I mean? So it's much more complex in the sort of the dichotomized world that people tend to look at, which is very black and white. Is it Agile or is it waterfall? Are we autonomous or are we control orientated where you're both and the blend of which needs to shift depending on the environment here.

Sean Blake:

Okay, okay. So there's always a need for a bit of control on top of the autonomy.

John Turley:

It's a balance, right? We're all comfortable with control, aren't we? We all comply with speed limits, for example. We're perfectly okay with that. Control is not a dirty word. Some will do things that we're told to do sometimes, and we're happy to do it. Sometimes we do it begrudgingly. We're not happy to do it. Sometimes we reject it. There's nothing wrong with control in itself. It's the overuse of control to coerce people to do things that they don't want to do. That's when it becomes problematic because it undermines an individual's autonomy, which is a basic, universal psychological need. We all need to have a sufficient degree of autonomy to feel well.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Okay. So we know that Agile's had a good run, it's been decades now. So do you still find that you come across the same objections when you're speaking to these executive teams or these companies perhaps from more traditional industries? Do they still have the same objections to change as they did in the past? And how do you try and overcome them?

John Turley:

Yes, they do. So one of my strange experiences as a young project or program manager, whatever I was, is that when I would end up in a room full of software developers who were Agile, probably the language they would have used at the time and a bunch of infrastructure engineers who followed waterfall, and the distaste for one group for the other, it was almost visceral, and you could see it in them. There would be a bunch in, I don't know, Linux t-shirts and jeans, and then the infrastructure waterfall people would probably be wearing suits.

John Turley:

I mean, it was really obvious, and it was hard to bring these groups together. That was my experience in let's say, around about 2000, I sat with a client yesterday, who said exactly the same thing. They said that in their organization, which is going through a very large, Agile transformation at the moment, they said, "These are their ways. We kind of got people at the two extremes. We can sort of bookend it. We've got the waterfall people who think their way is best and we got the Agile people who are totally on board with Agile transformation."

John Turley:

And what I heard when the individual said that is quite senior leaders, the Agile people are on board with the Agile transformation brackets because they think their way of working is best. And what I tried to point out to that senior manager was that that was one group, there were perceptions anyway, that one group was into Agile and got cross functional working, all that got cross functional working and the other group didn't, actually the two groups were operating in the same way.

John Turley:

They both thought their way of working was right, and one was espousing the virtues of waterfall and the other Agile, but the fact was they both thought that they were right, and the other was wrong. And they were both wrong in that. Waterfall works really, really well in a lot of scenarios. And full on Agile works really, really well in some environments. In some environments, it's quite limited by the way, in my opinion.

John Turley:

My friend and colleague, John Kern, who was a co author of the Agile Manifesto in 2001 or 2004, whatever it was, I can't remember. He says, "I love waterfall. I do loads of waterfall, I just do it in very small chunks." And because the fact is we've got to do work sequentially in some manner. I can't work on an infinite number of things in parallel. There has to be a sequence.

John Turley:

And that really, when I heard him say that, it sort of filled my heart with joy in a way because for somebody with a waterfall background, I used to say, "Look, I don't get this. In waterfall project management, we're talking about stages. And in Agile, we're talking about sprints." And they've both got an end. One's got a definition of done. And one's got some acceptance criteria, and they both got a beginning. The only difference is the language and the duration.

John Turley:

So what if we make sprints, sorry, stages 10 days long? What's the difference now? And yet people would say, "Well, we're Agile, and we do sprints, and that would still be a stage." Come on, we've got to find some common ground right to build a common meaning making between large groups of people. Otherwise, only the Agile listeners amongst us can work for Agile organizations, and everybody else is doomed. And that's not true, is it? That's nonsense, right? So we've got to come together and find these ways of working as my friend John Kern points out so eloquently.

Sean Blake:

Okay, that's good advice. So for these, some people that you meet, there's still this resistance that has been around for many years. How do you go about encouraging people to get out of their comfort zone to try this cross functional way of working and be more transparent, I guess with contributing to the team and not necessarily pushing towards being just an individual contributor?

John Turley:

Another great question, Sean. So there are a couple of ways we can do it. The psychometric instrument that I mentioned earlier, that can sort of measure I kind of always put that in inverted commas, because it doesn't really measure anything, it assesses, I suppose, is a really, really powerful tool. Off the back of that measurement, the psychologists that we work with can create a report that explains lots of this sort of meaning making stuff, adult developmental psychology to the individual. And it tends to be mind blowing. It really shifts people's perspective about what they are and how they're operating in the world.

John Turley:

Once people start to understand that there are these developmental stages, and we all move through them potentially to the last days of our life, we can start to see the disagreements. They just start to fall away. Disagreements start to fall away, because they cease to be seen as opposing views that can't be reconciled, because I'm this type of person and they're that type of person.

John Turley:

And they start to be seen as incompatibilities in meaning making. So people start to go, "Okay, well, I think this and you think that. How are we both making our meaning around this, that means we can see other's perspective?" And immediately, then you've started to find a mechanism to find some common ground.

John Turley:

So the leadership development profile report, which is the report that comes from the psychometric instrument really sheds a lot of light on for the individual, both on how they're working and what development looks like, what psychological development looks like for them. So that's a powerful tool. We have another service that we call dialogue partnering, which we're piloting, which is sort of what over an eight or 10 week program, it's a one on one collaborative inquiry into how an individual is making their meaning, and what the strengths of their meaning making and the limitations of their meaning making are.

John Turley:

And once people start to realize that the way, the reason they feel defensive because the way they code has just been criticized is because they're drawing their meaning from being the best coder on the planet. But there is a development path that leaves that behind, which is where many, many people get to. It's kind of like an a-ha moment, people just realize that reality is different to what they thought and it can be adjusted.

John Turley:

So the LDP, the Leadership Development Profile reports, dialogue partnering, and working with senior management to create a deliberately developmental environment, which does those things I mentioned before, they're the critical tools that we use to help individuals unlock their own psychological development. And the question is, of course, why would they be motivated to do this? Why would they care? And they care, because 80% of people have got a very low level of engagement in their work. Most people are treading water, killing time. It's not a joyous place to be. Once people start to work in cross functional teams and get involved in joyous work with their colleagues to create things they couldn't, which is a basic human instinct, that's a buzz, then you come into work and enjoying yourself.

John Turley:

That's what I said to you at the beginning of that call, right? I'm having a great time, I'm working with some brilliant people unlocking new knowledge that we believe humankind doesn't have. That's a buzz. I'm not treading water in my role, you know what I mean? And this isn't unique to me. In my view, the whole world could be like that. We could all work in roles like that, maybe that's got a bit far. But certainly, many more of this could then currently do to get on board with the psychological development and enjoy your role more, enjoy your work. There's a lot of time.

Sean Blake:

Yeah, I really resonate with what you said about the buzz. And I've seen that happen when the light bulb comes on in people, and it's no longer this factory line of work getting passed down to you. But you realize you're now part of a team, everyone's there to support you, you're working towards a common goal. And it's transparent, you can see what other people are working on, and you're helping each other build something together. It's actually fun. For the first time in a lot of people's careers, it's a fun and enjoyable experience to come to work. So that must make you feel really good about doing what you do.

John Turley:

Yeah, it does. It's why I get out of bed, and it's what I've been about for 20 years trying to unlock this, really help other people unlock this. I got a phone call from a colleague the other day who said they were doing some exercise, and they were thinking about their new role. And they thought to themselves, this is what it feels like to do joyous work.

John Turley:

I mean, that [inaudible 00:42:51] job done, because this is a very capable individual. Once they're feeling like that, you know that they're going to do great things. When they're feeling like they're other people feeling, that people are clot watching, or there's this culture of busyness, where we can't admit that we don't know things. And then we've got to be in a meeting doing something, in the transparent world that you're just talking about, if I've got any work to do, I can just sit and say, "I'm going to work today, I'm waiting for more stuff to write." And it's not a bad thing. It's like, great, you're working at a sustainable pace. That's a good thing. I worked for a Swiss bank for years and years, working at a sustainable pace but nobody was interested, you need to work at a full on flat out unsustainable pace. And when you're burned out, you can go and we'll get somebody else to come in and do it. That's how it works. That's miserable.

Sean Blake:

It's not what we want, Sean, is it? It's not what we want. And unfortunately, a lot of people have been there before and they've experienced it. And once they see the light, they never want to go back to it, which I guess is a good thing once you recognize that there's a better way.

John Turley:

Yeah, agreed.

Sean Blake:

Yeah. Okay, well, I think we're going to wrap up shortly. I do have two more questions for you before we call an end.

John Turley:

I'll try and keep the answers brief.

Sean Blake:

No, that's fine. I'm really enjoying it. I could probably go for another hour but I know we've got other things to do. So in the research, I've read some of your blog posts, and I watched some of the talks that you've done and events in the past, and you speak about this concept of hidden commitments. And I just like to learn a bit more, what is a hidden commitment? And what's the implication?

John Turley:

Great question. So Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, developmental psychologists, wrote a book called Immunity to Change. This is a book that I read here a few years ago. And in there, Bob and Lisa talk about hidden commitments. And so they start by pointing out that we all make New Year's resolutions and they all fail. We really mean them when we make them. And when I was in my late teens, maybe I really did mean them when I made them. But I could never keep them.

John Turley:

In another book, Kegan points out, I think it's in the book called The Evolving Self. He points out that a large majority of men, after they've had heart attacks, I think it's a study in America. But it's been a while since I read it, I think it's six out of seven, don't change either their diet or their exercise regime after they've had a heart attack. And the reason he uses that as a case study in the book, because he's pointing out that it's not that these people don't know what to do, you need less calories in, more out. And it's not that they're not motivated to do it. They've had a near death experience. They'd like to stay alive, we presume.

John Turley:

Yet still, they don't make any meaningful change to their diet, their exercise regime, why not? And what Bob and Lisa say in the book from their research is that it's down to hidden commitments. We all have our way of making meaning. We have our values and our assumptions that we absorb from society as if by osmosis. And we don't question them. We can't question all of the assumptions that we absorb as we grow up. It's just not possible. So we have these hidden assumptions that we're committed to hidden commitments. And sometimes, these hidden commitments conflict with our stated objectives. And when the hidden commitment conflicts with our stated objective, the result is that we get very confused about the fact that the stated objective sort of falls by the wayside, and we don't really understand why. We might think, I would think a common out, because I just need to try harder, I just need more willpower. I just need to stay the course. And it's not true very often. There is something else in your meaning making this conflicted with our stated objective. And once you can surface it, then you can start to examine that hidden commitment, and you can play around with it.

John Turley:

And when you can play around with it, then you're adjusting your meaning making. And the technique that we use in dialogue partnering comes from Bob and Lisa's book, where we're essentially uncovering those hidden commitments and seeing how they conflict with commitment. So that's sort of, and then once you can see it, and you can experiment with it, you can start to unlock change in yourself. Peter Senge, I think he's director of innovation. He's very famous, director of innovation for MIT. And he has a beautiful little quote, something like, "What folly it is to think of transforming our organizations without transforming ourselves?"

John Turley:

We need to change our relationship with power in order to change the way power is distributed across our organizations. And that's an example of a hidden commitment that we don't normally think about. We just think we can empower people magically, whilst retaining all the power for the senior manager. And that just doesn't work. There's a hidden commitment, conflicting with the idea that we want to empower our teams, which is a quite flawed idea.

Sean Blake:

Wow. Okay. Well, I really like the approach to work and looking at the social structure, the social networks, and the psychology behind it all. It's really fascinating and it's not something I've really come across before, especially in the Agile space. So that's really unique. Thanks for sharing that, John. Last question for you. 2020 has been interesting to say the least. We've talked about some things that have stayed the same over your career, some things that have change. What do you think is going to come next, looking forward to the next five, 10 years? What are some of those trends that you think are really going to stand out and maybe change the way that your work, it changes the way that that your nine to five looks or changes the way that you interact with your clients?

John Turley:

I think that this won't just change the way my nine to five looks. It will change like everybody's nine to five looks. I think that the world is in a difficult place. A lot of us are upset, and it looks like a bit of a mess, and we're all anxious, I think. A lot of us are anxious. But as a friend said to me, he was quoting somebody else, never let a good crisis go to waste. The amount of changes, a lot of energy in the system, the amount of changes in the system is palpably changing things.

John Turley:

Many of us recognize there must be a better way of doing things because our ways of organizing ourselves as society, including our organizations is collapsing. It doesn't work anymore. People are realizing through work that people like the names I've mentioned, and through our original research, I hope will sort of contribute in an original way to this, that there is a better way of organizing ourselves that humankind does have the knowledge and the experience to do what we need to do.

John Turley:

It just isn't in IT. We need to look outside of it to what the psychologists say about mindset, not what the Agile people say about mindset. That's a radical idea. And as we import this learning and this knowledge, we have a framework that helps us understand to a much greater degree what's really going on, and how we can unlock real change. So everything that I talked about today, very little of it is original. We have some original work I can't really talk about. Does it matter? The knowledge is out there. If we do the people and culture bit and the tools and the methodology together, then it scales, then we change the way organizations work, which is going to change everybody's nine to five.

Sean Blake:

That's great. It's bringing it back to basics, isn't it? What we know about human beings, and now let's apply that to what we know about work. So that's really eye opening. And I've learned a lot from our conversation, John. I've got a few books and a few research papers to go and look at after this. So thank you so much for appearing on the Easy Agile podcast, and we really appreciate your time.

John Turley:

Sure, my pleasure. I mean, I love and we love at Adaptavist to sharing what we're doing. So we can all engage in more joyous work, man. So thanks for helping us get the message out there.

‍

"Rebecca is an absolute gold mine of knowledge when it comes to SAFe, can't wait to continue the conversation at SAFe Summit 2022!"" - Tenille Hoppo

In this episode, Rebecca and Jasmin are talking:

📌 The value of the Scaled Agile Framework, who it’s for & who would benefit

📌 The Importance of having a common language for organizations to scale effectively

📌 When to connect the Scaled Agile Framework with your agile transformation

📌 Is there ever really an end state?

+ more!

📲 Subscribe/Listen on your favourite podcasting app.

Thanks, Jasmin and Rebecca!

Transcript

Jasmin Iordandis:

Hello, and welcome to the Easy Agile podcast, where today we're chatting all things Scaled Agile with Rebecca Davis, SAFe Fellow, SPCT, principle consultant and member of the SAFe framework team. Rebecca is passionate about teamwork, integrity, communication, and dedication to quality. And she's coached organizations on building competitive market-changing products at scale while also bringing joy to the work, for what is work without joy. Today, we've chatted all things Scaled Agile implementations, challenges, opportunities, and also the idea around optimizing flow, which Rebecca is hosting a workshop at the SAFe Summit in Denver in August this year. Hope you enjoy the podcast.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Easy Agile podcast. I'm your host Jasmin Lordandis, product marketing manager here at Easy Agile. And today, we are delighted to welcome Rebecca Davis from the Scaled Agile framework. Welcome, Rebecca, and thanks for joining us.

Rebecca Davis:

Thanks. I appreciate being here. I'm excited.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Me too, especially because we are counting down the days before we get to meet you face to face, in person, at the SAFe Summit over in Denver, Colorado. And before we kick off our conversation, I just want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we broadcast our podcast today. The people of the Djadjawurrung speaking country. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging, and extend that same respect to all Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders and First Nations' people joining us today. So before we kick off, Rebecca, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role within Scaled Agile?

Rebecca Davis:

Sure. I'm actually relatively new to working for Scaled Agile. So I've been there a little over 90 days now, and I'm a member of the framework team, which means I help actually create the Scaled Agile framework and future versions of it. Prior to that, I led LACE at a company called CVS Health, and I've worked at a bunch of different kind of healthcare organizations across my years implementing or organizing agile transformation and digital transformation. And I think one of the reasons that Scaled Agile was interested in me joining the team is just a lot of different experiences across business agility as a whole outside of technology, in addition to within technology. So marketing transformations and HR transformations, legal transformations. But I love being at Scaled Agile and being part of the framework team. It's really exciting to help more organizations, and just the one I'm at, really understand how to bring joy to their workplace and bring value out to the world.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah, cool. And you've given a little bit of information there around why Scaled Agile was interested in you. What attracted you to Scaled Agile, and did you use the Scaled Agile framework in these previous roles that you've just described?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. Those are great questions. I think I'm going to try to answer both of them together. But the reason I have always been drawn to the Scaled Agile framework is I ran a few different organizations, both as owning my own company and then also working in startups and working with larger organizations, where I knew that agility was important. But I was struggling as a change leader to find a way to really bring connectedness across large amounts of people. And to me, that's what Scaled Agile does for us, is after a certain size, it's a lot easier to create this common language and this common way to move forward and produce value with the framework. I also really enjoy it because there's a lot of thought that's already kind of done for you.

Rebecca Davis:

So if you're in an organization and you're trying to create change or change leadership, I'd much rather be leading the conversations and my context and making sure that I have a pulse on my particular cultural environment and pull from all these pieces, from the framework, where the thought's already been done about what are the right words and what do we do next, and what's the next step. So I've just found it an invaluable toolkit as a change leader.

Rebecca Davis:

I joined the framework team for a few reasons. One, I'd led so much change in so many different areas that, it's not that I wasn't challenged anymore, but I was really looking for something larger and different, and I've always had a belief that I really want to be the change that I want to see in the world. And I think being part of the framework team gives me access to things like this and all over the world to really help connect the humanness of people alongside with all the great techniques that we've learned, and hopefully expand it and just create a better place to be in.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. Cool. And you kind of touched on that in your response, but if we had to say, who is the Scaled Agile framework for and who would it most benefit, what would you say to that?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. I guess my opinion on that is I believe the Scaled Agile framework is for people who believe that their organizations have it in them to be better, both internally inside of themselves, as well as have this gigantic potential to go help the customers they serve and may be struggling right now, to really realize that potential. So I don't really see the framework as it's for a specific role necessarily. I think it's for people who believe in betterness. And those people, I found, live across an organization and across multiple different roles, and the framework just really helps you align that.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. And I think one thing that's evident from SAFe, once you learn how all the different practices and ceremonies work together, is exactly as you've said around connectiveness. And you also touched on having a common language. How important is that, when we're talking really large organizations with multiple different functions who, let's be honest, it's quite common for different functions to fall into different silos and things to break down. So how important is that connectivity and that common language, so that an organization as a whole can scale together?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. I don't even know how to state the amount of importance that is. I guess, specifically the organization I just came from, had over 400,000 people that worked there. And the last thing I want to is to debate what the word feature means, because that doesn't actually end up within a conversation where we have an understanding of why we want to feature or why we want this particular outcome, or how this outcome relates to this other outcome, if we're spending so much time just choosing word choice and having a conversation instead about what does the word even mean.

Rebecca Davis:

So I like it mostly because it gives us all this common framework to debate, and we need to be able to do that in really transparent and open ways across all of our different layers. So I don't even know how to quantify how much value it brings just to have this ability to bring stability, and the same language across the board, same word choice, same meaning behind those word choice, so that we can have all those debates that we need to have about what's the best possible thing we could be doing, since everything that we can do is valuable, but some things we have to decide are more valuable than others.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. And I think that really talks to what you were saying about helping an organization to reach its potential. It sounds like getting bogged down in what you call things or how you discuss things. And to be able to align on a common meaning in the end, you kind of need that common structure or that common language. And you're only going to get in your own way if you don't have it. So it makes total sense that the framework could really enable organizations on that journey. And in your experience, because it's implied in the name, it's about scaling agile. And I guess when we think of the Scaled Agile framework, we think of all those organizations of such a large size as the one you just mentioned, 400,000 employees. In your experience, what's a good time to introduce the Scaled Agile framework? Does it need to be right from the beginning? Does it need to be those organizations that are 400,000 people strong? Where is the right time to intersect the framework with an agile transformation?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. I think that's a really fascinating question, and my answer has changed over the years. I originally started researching Scaled Agile, because it was my first big transformation alongside of a large organization, and I knew there had to be some solutions out there to the problems I was seeing, and I discovered SAFe. But thinking back, I started my own startup company right out of high school actually. And I really wish that I would've had something to pull from, that gave me information about lean business cases, and speaking with my customer and getting tests and getting feedback. So I feel like the principles and the practices and the values are something that could be used at any size.

Rebecca Davis:

I think the part about scaling, the part about deciding like, "Hey, I'm going to do PI planning," I don't personally feel like you need to do PI planning if you have four people at your organization, because the point is to get teams across different groups to talk. You should definitely plan things 100%. So I think part of the idea is like, "When do I implement a train," or, "When do I have a solution train," or, "When do I officially call something LPM," versus just having discussions because my company is so small that we can all have discussions about things. I think those are a different part of implementing the Scaled Agile framework than just living and believing in the principles and the values and the mindset from whatever size or get-go you're at. Does that make sense at all?

Jasmin Iordandis:

That does make sense. And I guess then the question becomes, where do you begin and what would the first step be in implementing SAFe? And taking from your own experience, where do you start with this framework?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. I love that you asked that, as I've honestly seen this happen to me as well as some other change agents, where Scaled Agile gives us this thing called the implementation roadmap, and it has all the steps that you can start with. And it's proven, and companies use it and it works. And what I've found in my own change leadership is when I skip a step or I don't follow that because I get pressure to launch a train, instead of starting with getting my leaders at the right tipping point or having that executive buy in, it causes me so much pain downstream.

Rebecca Davis:

So if I were to give advice to somebody, it's, "Look, pull that map down the implementation roadmap from the SAFe site and follow it. And keep following it. And if you find that you..." I think that, back when I look back and do my own retrospective, the moments where I've decided to launch a train without training my people or launch or start doing more product management practices without actually training my people, it causes me a world to hurt later on with coaching and with communication, with feedback. So it's there for that reason. Just follow it. It's proven.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. And that's really good advice. And I think when people look at the roadmap for SAFe, there's a lot on there. But when we are talking agile transformations, necessarily there is going to be a lot that could get you there. So it kind of makes sense when all the thinking is been done for you and all those steps have been done. Just trust the process, I guess, is the message there, and following through on all of that. And I think it's really interesting, because the first step with SAFe is, as you say, getting your leaders on board. And often, we might be attracted to doing the work better. So let's start with those ceremonies. Let's start with all those things that make the day to day work better. How important it starting with the leaders of an organization?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. I've run the grassroots SAFe implementations where you start with the bottom and then you kind of move up. And personally, and this is a personal opinion, I'd much rather take the time and the efforts to get the communication right with the leaders and get the full leadership buy-in than be in that place again, where I'm trying to grassroot to move up and I hit the ceiling. The one thing I used to kind of tell the coaches that reported to me, and something I believe in deeply, is what we're trying to do with transformation is a journey. It's not a destination. So because we want to start that journey healthy and with a full pack of food and all those things, we need to take the time to really go and be bold and have conversations with our leaders, get their buy-in to go to Leading SAFe.

Rebecca Davis:

If they're not bought in to coming to a two-day course, then why would we believe that they're going to come to PI plannings and speak the way that we hope they will and create the change that they need to really lead? So I think that's one of the most important things, if not the most important thing from the very beginning, is be bold as that first change leader in your organization, go make those connections.

Rebecca Davis:

It may take a while. I've been in implementations or transformations where it started with just me discovering issues that senior leaders or executives were having, and going and solving some of those, so that there was trust built that I was a problem solver. So I could ask for the one hour executive workshop, which really should be a four to six-hour executive workshop, to get to the point where I could do the four to six-hour executive workshop, to get to the point where I could do PI Leading SAFe. And if that's what it takes to gain you that street cred to go do it, then, man, go do it, because that's where you get full business agility, I think, is getting that really senior buy-in and getting that excitement.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. That's really interesting. And I think building that level of understanding and building that foundation, we can't go past that. And I guess on that as well, from your experience, you've kind of hinted at one there, but what have been some of the challenges that you've experienced in implementing SAFe or even just in agile transformations more broadly, and as well as some of those opportunities that the framework has helped to unlock? So let's start with the challenges. What's some of the hard things you've experienced about an agile transformation and even implementing the framework?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah, I'll give some real examples, and this first thing is going to sound a little wishy washy, but I also believe it, is the biggest challenge to transformation is you. So what I've discovered over the years, is I needed to step up. I needed to change. I think it's really easy to be in an organization and say, "My leaders don't get it," or, "Some won't understand," or, "It's been this way and I can't change it." And I think that the first thing you have to decide is that that's not actually acceptable to you as a person. And so you as a person are going to go fight. Not you're going to go try to convince somebody else to fight, but you are going to go fight. So I think that personal accountability is probably the biggest challenge to wake up every single day and say, "I'm going to get back in there."

Rebecca Davis:

I think from an example point of view, I've definitely seen huge challenges when the executive team shifts. So when we've got a set of leaders that we did the tipping point, we've gone through Leading SAFe, we've launched our trains. And then the organization, because every organization is going through a lot of change right now, and people are finding new roles and retiring and all that, there's a whole new set of executive leaders. And I think one of the things to discover there is there are going to be moments where it sucks, but you have to go and restart that implementation roadmap again, and reach that tipping point again, because there are new leaders. And that's hard. It really is, and it drains you a little bit, but you've just got to do it.

Rebecca Davis:

I think other challenges I've run into is there's a point after you've launched the trains and after you have been running for a while, where if you don't pay attention, people will stop learning, because you're not actively saying like, "Here's the next thing to learn. Here's the next new thing to try." So I do think it's the responsibility of a change leader, no matter if you're a LACE leader or not, to pay attention to maintaining excitement, pay attention to the continuous learning culture and really motivate people to get excited about learning and trialing and trying.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. That's an interesting point. How have you done that?

Rebecca Davis:

Hmm. So I think a few things. One, I had big lessons learned that there's a point inside of a transformation where, as an SPBC or as a change leader, that transformation is not yours anymore. So I had kind of a painful realization at one point that I had in my head the best next thing for the organization, and I was losing pulse of the people who are actually doing the work. So I think what I've discovered after that is, to me, there's a point where your LACE members and your change leaders and your SPCs need to start coming from a lot more areas. And honestly start to be made up of people who are not, at the moment, excited about the SAFe implementation, so you can hear from the pulse of the people.

Rebecca Davis:

And then I think if you can get those people and invite in and say like, "I'm inviting you to share it with me what's frustrating, what's good, what's bad, what's great, as well as I'm inviting you to tell me all the things that you're discovering out there in webcasts or videos that seem you'd like to try them, but we're not trying yet, and start giving back the ability to try new things and try things that you feel are probably going to be anti-patterns, but they need to try them anyway." So kind of a scrum master would do with a team of like, "Yeah, go try and then we'll retrospect." I think you have to do that at scale and let people get excited about owning their own transformation.

Jasmin Iordandis:

And what's the balance there between implementing the framework and taking all the good stuff that the framework says is good to do, and then letting people experiment and try those things, as you say, that may be anti-patents? Where's that sweet spot to allow that autonomy and that flexibility and that experimentation with still maintaining the integrity of the framework?

Rebecca Davis:

So I think the interesting thing is they are not actually different. So in the framework, we say hypothesis first, test first. So what I found is a layered kind of brain path where there're the steps in the framework and make sure we have teams and balance trains and all the principles and the values, and if you can live those principles and values all the time, while you're testing new things. So you test first like, "Hey, I want to try having my train off cadence from the other trains. I think it would be helpful for us." "Cool. Test that." And what we have to test it against is are we still living our principles? Are we still applying our values? Are we still applying the core fundamentals of agility and lean throughout that test and also as proof points?

Rebecca Davis:

So do we have an outcome where," Hey, I just made my train into a silo," or do we have an outcome where, "Well, now we have two different PI plannings within the overall PI cadence that one of them we merge with all the other trains and the other one is shorter because our market cadence is faster." Well, that's a beautiful win. So I think the key is it's not different, but one of the test points is make sure to check in on those principles and values.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. Have you ever seen that work well? The example that you just provided with the PI cadence, that makes complete sense, and it doesn't seem like it's going against the grain with anything that SAFe is there to help you achieve.

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah, I think that. This was kind of a little bit of what my summit talk was on last year, is during COVID, there were some trains. We had, I don't know, 30 trains. Two of them were having daily new requirements emerging from all the different states across the United States and emerging from the government and emerging from everything. Those trains were making sure everybody could get vaccinated across the United States. That's really darn important. And they needed to re-plan sometimes daily. It just didn't make sense to say, "Now we're just going to stop and go into PI planning for three days," when there wasn't any way that they could even think about what the next day's requirements could be. Since then, they still have a faster market rhythm. Then there are other trains that are working on, have a set unknown. There are trains that know that these holidays are when we need to release something or end of year is when we need to make sure that we've got something ready.

Rebecca Davis:

COVID is still in a reactive state. So what they've emerged into this year is those trains are still doing PI planning from my knowledge, I'm not there anymore, but from my knowledge. But they do eight a year instead of four a year. And four a year are on the same cadence and the other four are not, and it meets both needs. So I do think that key is test, and don't test just for the sake of it just because something feels dry or you get a new leader, and they haven't gone through Leading SAFe, but test because something actually doesn't feel right about, "We're not meeting our principles or values right now. We think that we could meet them better in this way. We think we could accelerate the flow of value in this way. Let's try it."

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah, cool. And on that, what are some of the red flags that you've seen in practice where those values aren't being met to be able to say, "Hang on a sec. This isn't working. We need to switch course"?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. Some of the things I've seen are the whole fun around when people are prioritizing their hierarchy or their piece of the organization over the enterprise value. So I've definitely seen people come to me and say, "Hey, I'd like to do his test." And when I ask the reasons why, a lot of the reasons are like a thinly veiled, "Because I would like more control."

Rebecca Davis:

So I think back to the values piece is that, "Okay, what's your why? Let's start with why. Why would you like to try something? What does that trial outcome achieve?" And, A, if it's really hard to articulate, probably there might be a bad thing going on, or if it is articulated and it actually goes against agility or lean practice and or diminishes flow or creates a silo, that's an initial gut. I think throughout testing, it's important to, the same way that we would do with iterations, have check-ins and demos, not just of what's the product being produced, but what is the change producing? So figuring out what those leading indicators would be and treat it the same way as we would treat a feature hypothesis or an epic hypothesis. We have some outcome we believe we could achieve. We're 100% open to being proven wrong. These are the things that we want to see as leading indicators as success and be really open with each other.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah, cool. And it sounds like what's key to that though is having some concept of what that intended outcome is as a result of that experiment. It's not just going in for, as you say, the sake of doing an experiment. You want to have an idea of where you want to end up, so you can see if we're actually getting there or not.

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah.

Jasmin Iordandis:

That's really fascinating. And I think experimentation and iterative improvement, it kind of goes together. It's not just blindly following something because that's what you are supposed to do. It's preserving the values. That's a really interesting concept. And I think in that, would also come enormous opportunity. So in your experience as well, going back to the times where you've brought SAFe to an organization, or you've been going through an agile transformation, what are some of those opportunities that you've seen the framework unlock for enterprises or organizations that you've been leading those transformations within?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. I always was drawn to this idea of true value flow and business agility. So for me, what Scaled Agile helped unlock in a few of my organizations is, I always targeted that, like I'm not trying to make my thing better, I'm trying to make everything better. And with that mindset, really pushing for anybody should be able to take a class. Anybody should be able to take any of the classes. And these days, the enterprise subscription helps with that a lot. When I first started, we didn't have that. So it was also like anybody can take a class, and there should be creative ways of getting it paid for it.

Rebecca Davis:

But through that kind of invite model of really anybody, I had a nurse come take one of my SAFer teams classes, just because she was curious and she saw something about it on my blog, which ended up with her being more excited and getting to do agile team coaching for a set of nurses who were highly frustrated because their work on an individual basis was ebbing and flowing so much, and they felt like they weren't giving good patient care to coaching them on Kanban and having them all get really excited because they got to nurse as a team and whoever was available took the next patient case, and the patients were happier, and just being able to invite in and then say yes to coaching all of these roles that are so meaningful and they're so excited and they're something different.

Rebecca Davis:

And that same model ended up going from nothing to having a marketing person randomly take one of my Leading SAFe classes, which then turned into them talking to the VPs of marketing, which then turned into an 800-person marketing implementation. So I think the key is be open and spend time with the curious. And it doesn't matter if they're in your org. It's not like that's what I was paid to do, it's just really fun. So why not? If somebody wants to talk to you about agile, talk to them about agile. It's really cool.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah, cool. And I think what I love about that is often agile may be associated just as software development teams. But as someone who's in marketing myself, I love the benefit and the way of thinking that it can provide to very traditional challenges, but the way that it can unlock those challenges in ways that not have not been approached before. And I think that there's something to be said in that too, around what you were saying earlier around maintaining excitement. And I feel like this question's already been answered, because often it's discussed, "Okay, we are scaling agile, we're going through a transformation." And it implies that there's this end state where it's done. It's transformed or we've scaled agile, but it doesn't sound like that's the case at all.

Rebecca Davis:

No, I don't think at all. I think mostly the opposite of... If you look at even yourself as a human, your whole life, you're transforming in different ways. Everything's impacting you. The environment's impacting you, whatever happens in your life is just this whole backpack that you carry around and you're transforming all the time. And the exact same thing, I think, for an organization and company. Today's age is nuts. There're updates all the time, there's new technology all the time. You and I are doing a talk from completely different countries, and there's change literally everywhere.

Rebecca Davis:

So yeah, I think part of transformation is helping your organization feel comfortable or as comfortable as possible with the rate of change happening and all the people within it, and not see change as a bad word, but as a positive thing where we can make betterness out there. And it's forever. It's a journey. It's not done. I really like Simon Sinek when he talks about that infinite game. I just feel really close to that of, we're not in it to win this moment or this year, we're in it to make a better future for ourselves and our children, and that's going to take forever. The people are in it right now and they've got to be excited about that.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. And I think that's that balance of delayed gratification, but constant improvement. So you'll feel and experience the improvement along the way. It's not like it'll be way out in the future where you won't feel the benefit of what you're doing, but it's something that's going to be built up and happen over time.

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. And I think you reminded me just from saying that. I did that marketing transformation, and I just deeply remember a call with one of the marketing VPs who, after four or five iterations, I did a check in with her. And she's like, "My team is so happy. Is this because of agile? Is this what agile is, is happy with [inaudible 00:32:17]?" "Yes."

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah, joy at work, right?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Isn't that what it's all about? That is so cool. And yet the goal initially is never to go out and make people happy. It's just one of those bonus kind of side effects, a happy side effect.

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Awesome. And I think I really want to talk about this idea, because you've mentioned it a couple times, you've even just mentioned then marketing, nursing. But then when you're in these larger organizations, you've got all these different functions. And I think it raises this idea around organizing around value. So I want to make sure we talk a bit about that, because value doesn't just happen from one function, or it's not delivered from just one function or one team. It's something that many people across an organization may have a hand in delivering. But I really want to get your take around this concept of organizing around value. What does that mean and what does that look like?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. I think there's a base concept that is also in that implementation roadmap around what happens first. So how do we first organize around value, because organizations tend to be organized around hierarchy. I am a VP of marketing and I have marketing all the way down. And so there's that first step of identifying what the value is that you produce as an organization. So being able to articulate it to begin with, which is not always an easy conversation. Sometimes it takes a bit of time, and then organizing all the different types of roles around what that value is. So I think that's your first thing in what most organizations implementing scaled agile start with, is just identifying it, forming around it, which ends up being what your trains end up being.

Rebecca Davis:

My experience is, because of that same rapid market change, the world changing so far, it's really important to re-evaluate how you've organized around value over time. So in my experience, one of the really healthy things that we used to do is, at the end of each year, give a chance to look at the different train structures and look at how we've organized and say, "Is this still right? And what's our strategy for next year? Where are we trying to head for our consumers and our users? And is there a different way to organize, that helps us with that?" And I say give a chance because in some years, we'd be like, "No. 80% of our portfolio is actually good to go. Things are flowing. We're doing okay." 20% of it has an entirely new strategic shift that's going to hit them, or, "Last year felt not good. We had too many dependencies. We didn't have the right people on the right trains," all those things.

Rebecca Davis:

And so at least take a pause and look at it, and see if our value still mean the same thing as it did a year ago or two years ago. Do we need to reorganize? What does that mean? What does the change leadership around it if we do need to, so that we're always focused on value, and it's not a definition that we gave ourselves five years ago and just stopped realizing that the world has changed.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. A living definition because it changes depending on what's going on in the world, but also what's going on within the organization and coming back to that idea of experimenting as well, like if you've tried out a new way of working, and that's gotten in the way. But even something that you said there really stood out is, "Okay, it didn't feel good. We might have had too many dependencies." And that brings up the idea of, "Well, how does that flow of value happen?" Oh, that sounds like there's a stifle to the delivery of value. So how do you optimize that flow particularly when there may be multiple people delivering that value?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. And I think Scaled Agile gives us some tools for that. So I think one of them is that first session I talked about, value stream and down vacation, so that you can really do a process for talking and discussing with the right blend of people. What is the value and how can we organize around that? I think past that point, there's another tool that I see used far less than I would think it would be, which is value stream mapping. So after we've identified it, now can we actually map what's happening? From concept to cash, which teams are doing pass offs? How long does it take to get an answer on an email? How long is it taking from testing to all the way to release?

Rebecca Davis:

So doing a lot of intentional measurement. Not measurement because we're judging people, but intentional measurement of, we organize this way, this is where all the pieces are connecting, and how long things are taking, as well as how people feel inside of their steps, like does it feel silo? Does it have an outcome? Did we put all of the designers and HR people and engineers on a train, but we made them separate teams, and so it still doesn't feel connected? That's what mapping's for. And those maps and also the program boards that actually visualize like, "Here's the dependencies," versus, "At the end of the PI, this is what those dependencies actually ended up being."

Rebecca Davis:

It's not that dependencies are bad, but they should be adding value, not restricting flow. So I think those connected stories as well as things like employee survey scores and just employee happiness are really good inputs, to, are we delivering flow. And it is a blended view. Some of it's qualitative and some of it's quantitative. But are our own internal things showing us good, bad and different, as well as how are our customers. So do they feel like they're receiving value or that they're receiving bits and pieces and they're unsure about the connected value? I think all of those are indicators.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. And would you say you'd need to have an idea of what those indicators are beforehand, so you can keep an eye on them as the PI progresses? So for example, you've done your value stream mapping, you've built your art. At that point, do you identify what those measurements of flow ought to be and keep an eye on them, or is it more retrospectively where you see these kind of things getting a little bit stuck?

Rebecca Davis:

I think there's both. So definitely those metrics that we indicate inside of the framework are healthy, good for teams and trains and solution trains and portfolio. So I think there is a set of metrics that you should and can utilize. Retrospectives are key, because retrospectives create action. So while we measure, then what's the conversation we have about them? Because what we don't want is vanity metrics. And my personal way of defining vanity metrics is any metric that you do nothing with.

Rebecca Davis:

So I think a key is use them to hold conversations and create outcomes, and create actions and make sure that you're prioritizing those actions. I think there's another piece of just understanding that this is not just about team and train. So teams and trains definitely do need to improve and measure themselves, but so does the portfolio, so does the enterprise, so do the pieces that connect to each other across different trains. So I do think if you over focus on, "Let's just make our teams go faster," you may be missing the whole point of how do we make our organization flow better, which may or may not equate to moving faster right away.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. Yeah. And team and train don't exist in a vacuuming within that organization like whole bunch of-

Rebecca Davis:

No, [inaudible 00:40:43].

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. Well, I think we've touched on some really, really interesting concepts, and just I can't wait to hit the SAFe Summit, which is a really good segue to the fact that the next time we meet, Rebecca, it will be in person. And you're hosting a workshop at SAFe. Can you give us any sneak peek of what we can expect to be excited about at the summit?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. First of all, when we meet each other in person, I'm very short. So I think I'm maybe five foot. So that'll be exciting. So Harry, on the framework team and I, are running a workshop about flow. So we'll be doing a flow workshop. I can't talk about all of it yet, because some of it we're going to announce inside the summit, but I'm really excited. So I think if you do sign up for our workshop, you're going to get active advice, and be able to work also alongside other organizations and other people, really understanding flow, and how to apply improvements to flow and how to identify blockers to flow and what to do about it. So we're really focusing on why do certain things matter and what can you specifically do about it, whether you're at the team level or the train level or solution level or the portfolio level.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Cool. That sounds exciting.

Rebecca Davis:

And we [inaudible 00:42:08] a lot of other workshops, but definitely come to ours.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Well, we've just spoken about the importance of flow, so it makes sense. Right?

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Awesome. Well, I personally am really looking forward to coming to SAFe and coming to Colorado and to get to chat with you a little bit more. But thank you so much for your time and joining us and sharing your expertise and experience on agile transformations, scaling agile and the SAFe framework itself. Thank you so much for your time, Rebecca.

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah, I appreciate it. And I look forward to maybe one day being able to do this in person with you in your own country. So that'll be really awesome.

Jasmin Iordandis:

Yeah. Cool. That would definitely be awesome. Thanks a lot.

Rebecca Davis:

Yeah. Thanks.