Month: August 2024

Great podcast with Sean Davis Chief Transformation Evangelist at Equifax explaining why Agile, DevOps, Digital and Lean practitioners need to move towards a model like ADOPT©.

Excerpt of the podcast from Agile Thought:

I think we’ve gotta be really, really careful about building silos in our own communities. So many times I get into these conversations about Agile and DevOps, right? ITIL and DevOps or lean and DevOps or whatever. And I think we’re all trying to do the same thing. We all have different approaches and we all deal with different parts of the business. So when I take a step back and I look and I think about that DevOps 2.0 um, I had actually done some research for the last few months and I came across a guy named Tom Gilmore and he created this open source model called ADOPT© and it actually ties together Transformation, Agile DevOps and Product all into one executable transformation. And he breaks it down by every piece supporting every challenge that organizations have had and how they want to move forward. And it was so compelling to me that, you know, I’ve been a huge proponent of trying to spread the word about this because it’s just insane how well thought out it is. How rooted in its history that it is. When you talk about it, you can see where he goes all the way back with Lean tactics. You can see how deep he goes with Agile and not just with team building, but all of the components that make organizations Agile. Um, and I think that’s where we need to move as a, as a community, right? Is it not just the DevOps, not just Agile, not just Lean, but they were all moving together.

If you’re an Agile, DevOps or Digital practitioner or an organization thinking about or undertaking one of these transformations you may ask yourself why do I need to do an organizational learning assessment or even care about that. The answer is that it’s the key to succeeding with Agile, DevOps or Digital. The truth is that if your attempting one of these transformations and the organization does not have a learning culture in place (sorry, most companies don’t), then attempting Agile, DevOps or Digital is going to be like pushing a large boulder up a mountain. The result will be that you’ll push the boulder up a portion of the mountain, but at some point, you will tire, and boulder will roll back down the mountain. Unfortunately, many organizations and practitioners will continue to repeat this exercise in futility.

One of the steps anyone attempting Agile, DevOps or Digital should do is try and determine to what extent does the organization have a learning culture? We need to understand that before the organization undertakes their their Agile, DevOps or Digital journey, you need to know where you are starting in terms of the organizational learning culture. Yes, most management teams in organizations believe they have a learning culture, they’ll tell you about how they have programs to reimburse tuition, have training available and encourage employees to attend learning opportunities. Guess what, this does not mean you have a learning culture in place.