Optimus Prime for Transformers: aligning leaders on capabilities using cards

Agile is not the goal. We've heard that many times, yet how effective are we at bringing leaders into alignment on the specific performance characteristics needed to excel at implementing the business strategy?

A skilful way to align on organisational change is to use a systems thinking approach with leaders. Choice of the primary "optimisation goal" may just be the most important decision in your Agile transformation as it shapes every other change decision.

For example: should we optimise for efficient use of resources or product adaptiveness? For faster flow or highest known customer value? Depending on the answer, the appropriate method could vary from waterfall to Kanban, LeSS or Lean Startup.

Having run optimising goal workshops with many leaders over several years, we share tips on explaining the concepts, facilitating interactions and examples of contexts and what goals may be appropriate.

You will leave with access to a set of cards that you can use in your own workshops. Also pointers on where you can learn more about implementing these optimisations.

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This version was presented at the Agile Prague Conference on 16th September 2024.

1. Optimus Prime for Transformers:
Rowan Bunning CST
16 September 2024 -Agile Prague
aligning leaders on capabilities using cards

2. © 2024 Rowan Bunning . All rig hts reserved.
About the title:
“Optimus Prime for
Transformers”
This is about:
Which capabilities should we
primarily optimise our organisation
for?
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Where is our true north for all improvement
decisions?
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Business success
this way

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About Rowan Bunning CST
•Organisational agility consultant.
•26+ years in software and tech. product development.
•First 10 years: technical software dev. roles on government projects,
enterprise software and co-founding a start-up.
•16 years: consulting in industries from video games to financial services inc.
$250B/day critical infrastructure.
•Started Agile journey in 2001 with eXtreme Programming.
•Australia’s first Scrum Master in 2003.
•Agile Coach at Ken Schwaber’s European partner (U.K.)
•Have delivered >500 Agile certification courses.
•Organiser of Sydney Scrum User Group.
•Have a toddler and spoodle.
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2005
2006
2008
2018
2017
2015
2010
2023

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Scrum WithStyle → Adapt WithStyle
•Leading with: Scrum training
•Since 2008
•>500 Scrum Alliance accredited courses
•Leading with: management consulting
•Own your own organisational choices
•All training still available
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Workshop overview
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Poll: What shaped our Way of Working
What are Optimisation Goals (OGs) and why are they
important?
How to run an OG workshop
Example Aspirations translated to Optimiation Goals
How this guides Agile adoption
Q&A

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Which most shaped our Way of Working?
A.The model that a consultancy sold to our management.
B.The framework/approach that the most influential person involved was
most familiar with.
C.What other organisations in our space are implementing.
D.What the most influential Agile Coaches were familiar with/keen on.
E.What was most popular at the time.
F.What seemed easiest to implement.
G.A structured and holistic redesign of organisational systems specific to our
business strategy.
H.Each team made their own choices based on their local situation.
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What are Optimising Goals
(OGs) and why are they
important?

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We can only do “better” if we know what “better” is
What exactly is “better”
in our context?

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How best to achieve business results?
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“All organisations are perfectly designed to get
the results they get!”
– Paul Batalden’s adaption of quote by Arthur Jones,
often attributed to W. Edwards Deming

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Management systems are first order levers
"A bad system will beat a good person every time.”
– W. Edwards Deming.

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Every system has a purpose
•Understanding its purpose allows us
to design the system to have the
capabilities to achieve it.
•Also to pursue optimisation of the
system. This gives direction and
energy to continuous improvement.
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What is this mining truck optimised for?
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What is this F1 car optimised for?
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How to run an OG workshop

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About the Optimisation Goal cards
•Constrained choices
•Encourages consideration of a wide set of options
•Level suitable for deciding between popular options
•The wording is chosen to strike a balance between:
•Avoiding bias related to buzzwords, often misinterpreted concepts
•Overly generic concepts and difficult to understand
•These have been through multiple rounds of review
•Creative Commons ShareAlike 4.0 license
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Optimisation Goal cards (1 of 3)
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Output Predictability
Maximising the occurrence of
specific outputs being delivered
when expected by stakeholders.
Working to Priority
Maximising the occurrence of
everyone working on the highest
priority items for the product or
service at all times.
Releasability
Maximising the ability to release
for use sustainably at target
quality level at the timing
preferred by stakeholders.
Utilisation
Maximising the proportion of
available time that people are
occupied by tasks, thus pre-
emptively minimising idle time.
Throughput
Maximising the output that our
organisation delivers within a
specified period.
Responsiveness
Minimising the time taken to
respond to stakeholder requests.
Customer Value
Maximising the benefit that the
customer can realise from the
product or service relative to
what they give up in order to
receive it.

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Optimisation Goal cards (2 of 3)
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Adaptiveness of the
Product / Service
Maximising the capability to nimbly
adjust the content of the product or
service.
Adaptiveness of the Org.
Maximising the capability to quickly
and efficiently change all org. elements
(structures, processes, rewards, people
practices) to align with the business
strategy.
Innovation
Maximising the probability of
discovering novel opportunities or
solutions to create value beyond what
was previously expected.
Engagement
Maximising employee involvement
in, enthusiasm about and
commitment to their work and
workplace.
Internal Stakeholder
Satisfaction
Maximisation of positivity from people
inside our organisation with significant
interests in our endeavour, relative to
what they give up in order to receive it.
Organisational Learning
Maximising generation and
dissemination of new and better
knowledge and understanding in order
to improve actions.
Role & Career Path
Security
Maximising how secure people feel
about the opportunity to continue in
their role and career path.

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Optimisation Goal cards (3of 3)
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Compliance
Maximising the obedience of people
in following policies, procedures and
directives from those in authority.
Confidentiality
Minimising the risk of sensitive
information being disclosed in a way
that can damage our business and/or
reputation.
Quality for the Customer
Minimising customer detected defects
and other quality deviations below
expected.
Operational Reliability
Maximising the consistency of
operational service provision to external
customers at the expected service level,
even when there is variability in demand
and other factors.
Operational Cost
Minimising the cost of ongoing business
operations without sacrificing quality of
the product or service.
Specialist Expertise
Maximising the depth of expertise that
individual specialists hold.

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Examples from real workshops
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Workshop overview
1.Frame business strategy as input to choice of capabilities to achieve
it
2.Provide leaders with a full set of cards each
3.Invite leaders to make a private selection
4.Invite each leader to speak to their thinking behind their choice
5.Assemble into an ordered list
6.Review coherence of choices
7.Optionally do tie breaker proposal and voting to refine to agreed top
3 or less
8.Assess level of alignment and need to follow-up clarification to
illustrate potential implications etc.
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Example Aspirations
translated to Optimiation
Goals

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Chief Technology Officer
“My aspiration is for shorter lead time from starting work to production
release with less exposure to blockers and changes of direction
impacting work in progress.”
Which of the following optimisation goals does this suggest?
A.Output Predictability
B.Throughput
C.Adaptiveness of the Product/Service
D.Customer Value
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Head of Wealth Management
“Your aspiration is to be able to out-manoeuvre competitors around
digital wealth management features that support the business strategy.”
Which of the following optimisation goals does this suggest?
A.Output Predictability
B.Throughput
C.Adaptiveness of the Product/Service
D.Customer Value
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Head of Product
“Have frequent customer feedback improving prioritisation sufficiently
to only have features in the product that pay off sufficiently to justify
their cost of development and maintenance.”
Which of the following optimisation goals does this suggest?
A.Output Predictability
B.Throughput
C.Adaptiveness of the Product/Service
D.Customer Value
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Hand up if you…
have done something like this at work?
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How this guides Agile
adoption
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Business Strategy drives
Optimisation Goals STRATEGY
Performance characteristics
What performance characteristics do
we need to succeed?
CAPABILITIES
/ OPTIMISING
GOALS
Direction
Focus of this
workshop
See: The Star Model by Jay R. Galbraith

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Optimisation Goals
drive everything else
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Performance characteristics
What performance characteristics do
we need to succeed?
STRATEGY
CAPABILITIES
/ OPTIMISING
GOALS
STRUCTUREPEOPLE
PRACTICES
METRICS /
REWARDS
PROCESSES
Power
What should the formal structure be?
What are the key roles?
How should power be distributed?
Information
How are decisions made?
How does work flow?
What management processes?
Motivation
What incentives will drive the right
behaviour?
What measures should we focus on?
Skills and mindsets
What talent is needed?
What people practices are
key to our capabilities?
Alignment = effectiveness
Culture, Performance, Results
Direction
Scope of most Agile
frameworks is only
partial – teams, product

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Framing question
Performance characteristics
What performance characteristics do
we need to succeed?
STRATEGY
CUSTOMER
VALUE
STRUCTUREPEOPLE
PRACTICES
METRICS /
REWARDS
PROCESSES
Power
What should the formal structure be?
What are the key roles?
How should power be distributed?
Information
How are decisions made?
How does work flow?
What management processes?
Motivation
What incentives will drive the right
behaviour?
What measures should we focus on?
Skills and mindsets
What talent is needed?
What people practices are
key to our capabilities?
Culture, Performance, Results
Direction
“We’ve agreed that we want
to optimise for maximising
Customer Value overall.
Which of the following options
will allow us to optimise for
that?”
Option X
Option Y
Option Z

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Once you know your Optimisation Goals, you
can choose approaches to achieve them
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?
Holistic custom
approach
with strong ownership per team

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Example OptimisationGoal Relationships
BusinessSuccess
high order capability
low order capability
Discovery and delivery of highest
CustomerValuee.g. Broad Product Definition, Single Product
Backlog, Single Product Owner
Working to Priority
e.g. Feature Teams
Adaptiveness of product
(whole product Agility)
contributes to
Assumption: we are in a complex
environment. Therefore, highest
value is not knowable up-front.
e.g. cross-functional teams
Releasability
(↓transaction cost)
e.g. Continuous Delivery
Cost of Change
(↓switching cost)
e.g. XP technical
practices, strong DoD
↓ Lead Time
Throughput
(↓ cycletime)
e.g. limiting WiP
↑ Learning

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Example A
OptimisationGoals chosen:
1.
2.
3.Adaptivenessofthe
Product/Service
Maximisingthecapabilityto
nimblyadjustthecontentof
theproductorservice.
OptimisingGoalCardsby©2024RowanBunningislicensedunderCCBY-SA4.0 Partialsetof10 CustomerValue
Maximisingthebenefitthatthe
customercanrealisefromthe
productorservicerelativeto
whattheygiveupinorderto
receiveit.
OptimisingGoalCardsby©2024RowanBunningislicensedunderCCBY-SA4.0 Partialsetof10 OutputPredictability
Maximisingtheoccurrenceof
specificoutputsbeing
deliveredwhenexpectedby
stakeholders.
OptimisingGoalCardsby©2024RowanBunningislicensedunderCCBY-SA4.0 Partialsetof10
•Adopt
•Broad product definition
•Cross-functional and cross-
component Feature Teams
•Remote self-design of 5
teams
•Executive playing Product
Owner
Led to choices:

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Example B
OptimisationGoals chosen:
1.
2.
3.Throughput
Maximisingtheoutputthat
ourorganisationdelivers
withinaspecifiedperiod.
OptimisingGoalCardsby©2024RowanBunningislicensedunderCCBY-SA4.0 Partialsetof10 Adaptivenessofthe
Product/Service
Maximisingthecapabilityto
nimblyadjustthecontentof
theproductorservice.
OptimisingGoalCardsby©2024RowanBunningislicensedunderCCBY-SA4.0 Partialsetof10 Releasability
Maximisingtheabilityto
releaseforusesustainablyat
targetqualitylevelatthe
timingpreferredby
stakeholders.
OptimisingGoalCardsby©2024RowanBunningislicensedunderCCBY-SA4.0 Partialsetof10
•Adopt Kanban
•Form stable cross-functional
teams
•Reduce work item size
•Iterate on deliverable
artefacts
•Use blocker data to guide
improvement
•Forecast using Flow Metrics
Led to choices:

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Example C
1.
2.
3.Adaptivenessofthe
Product/Service
Maximisingthecapabilityto
nimblyadjustthecontentof
theproductorservice.
OptimisingGoalCardsby©2024RowanBunningislicensedunderCCBY-SA4.0 Partialsetof10 Releasability
Maximisingtheabilityto
releaseforusesustainablyat
targetqualitylevelatthe
timingpreferredby
stakeholders.
OptimisingGoalCardsby©2024RowanBunningislicensedunderCCBY-SA4.0 Partialsetof10 CustomerValue
Maximisingthebenefitthatthe
customercanrealisefromthe
productorservicerelativeto
whattheygiveupinorderto
receiveit.
OptimisingGoalCardsby©2024RowanBunningislicensedunderCCBY-SA4.0 Partialsetof10
Agility
Highest Business
Value
Speed and
Releasability
Optimisation Goals chosen: Simplified wording:

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Which approach should we be using?
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Designed to
optimising for:
Choose:
Output
Predictability
Working to
Priority
Customer
Value
Adaptiveness
of Product /
Service
Throughput ReleasabilityAdaptiveness
of the Org.
SAFe
Spotify Model
Squad level
Team
Topologies
with strong
component ownership
Limited by non-
stream aligned
team handoff
LeSS
In tension with
learning and
adaptiveness
When technical
excellence
guides followed
> than most
other codified
approaches
Designing Agile
Organisations
If appropriateIf appropriateIf appropriateIf appropriateIf appropriateIf appropriateIf appropriate
Note: this requires explanation. Let’s talk!
Optimisation Goals can provide a basis of making this decision. Beware local optimisation!

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Insights
•Assess current (implicit) optimization goals before doing this.
•Ask leaders to look forward, not backward.
•Expect that leaders underestimate the implications of their choices.
•Expect to be surprised.
•This can bring tensions out into the open.
•There plenty more to defining a capability vision…
…and building awareness and desire.
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Body of knowledge on Agile
Organisational Design
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creatingagileorganizations.com

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Download the cards and more
Includes:
•OptimisationGoal cards
•These Slides
•Facilitation notes (conference format)
linkedin.com/in/rowanbunning/
[email protected]
bit.ly/op-ap24
Let’s collaborate on the cards:
bit.ly/ogcards
Let’s connect: