 How are you guys doing good, right almost to the end almost to the end So thank you for attending and I'm gonna go ahead and introduce myself real quickly. My name is Ahmed sitki my background I come I Started my career as a developer and then For a bunch of years did a lot of leading teams and then decided for some odd reason to do my master in requirements engineering some steak and then sort of pivoted and did my PhD in Agile adoption and transformation From Virginia Tech. I co-authored a book called becoming agile in an imperfect world and co-founded the International Consortium for Agile and really a big bulk of my career has been training and helping with large-scale transformations within Large corporations, and I'm currently the director of development management at riot games in Los Angeles All right, so I'm gonna get right to it and I want you guys to meet Jack Say hi to Jack Really you're gonna do anything. I tell you you're gonna say hi to a power plant. Okay. It's gonna get fun today so Jack is a CIO of a typical corporation and that corporation has Let's say 10,000 or 100,000 doesn't make a difference people and Jack wants to transform his organization to Agile as soon as possible Okay, but Jack has a plan so don't worry and here's Jack's plan and I promise I did not copy this from anyone. So if it looks familiar Well, it is familiar So Jack's plan looks something like this start cross start training people across IT on Agile and that means scrum to him And then he picked Stacy who's a star in that Organization and told her congratulations Stacy in addition to your day job. You are now in charge of the agile transformation Stacy cried, but it was all internal, but that's okay They launched two pilot projects. They were doing scrum. It was very successful So he sent out a memo to all of IT and said by the end of the year We're gonna all be agile Any questions? No one asked questions. So the memo Went through and the plan is to launch five new pilot teams or five new teams every quarter And by the way, the CIO is very committed so he's meeting with Stacy once a month to make sure that teams are actually adopting agile and they Are getting an agile tool To make sure that things are good and consistent any questions Does this look familiar to anyone? Yep, do you know Jack? Are you Stacy? Maybe okay, so so the question we're gonna talk about in this session basically is is Jack's plan sustainable Is it organizational level and will it really yield agility or not? Now does anyone remember the title of this talk does anyone remember the title of any talks they attended today? So the title of this talk is the secret yet obvious ingredient to achieving sustainable organizational agility So my question to you guys I don't like to keep secrets to the end So what is the secret? What do you guys think the secret ingredient is? What do you think this is an interactive keynote? What do you think the secret ingredient is what else trust mindset iterations I Have a whole hour by the way to do this any other thoughts what the secret ingredient could be common sense yes Open culture all these are great So do you want me to tell you the secret ingredient or wait till the end? Tell you no one's patient anymore. It's a culture thing. All right, so the secret ingredient Basically is changing the way people think about work and their understanding of what it means to be agile any questions a Lot So let's think about this more I'll tell you a lot more about this throughout the rest of the session so What I want to do is also not just tell us tell you sort of empty PowerPoints, but I'm going to use stories from these four companies Sort of to weave in how they're using this ingredient how they're changing the way people think to achieve the sustainable Organizational agility and whether your story is similar to Jack's or to one of these that's totally fine You'll have a different story, but you'll see how all of this can mesh together and how you can achieve sustainable organizational agility The flow for today will be basically number one what needs to change about the way people think So if I'm coming out here and saying the secret ingredient is changing the way people think what about it needs to actually change The second is our understanding of agility The third is why Education is the key or this secret ingredient and then I'm going to pull stories from these four companies and Give you examples good guys ready Yes is the answer to that question are you guys ready? awesome All right first thing Changing the way people think so here's a Common mental model on how people think about building things just in general right? This is if we were to survey most of humanity This is how people would think you get an idea right and then you go through this phase of Designing and exploring the idea more to at the end, you know decide on what you're going to actually produce Okay, once you've decided on what you're going to produce you start to plan if you need to buy stuff for it If you need to you know hire people for it, then you execute it and you get it Pretty simple mental model no scientific research was behind this model right, but that's how people typically think now While this is fine There's really two different worlds of work and it's a spectrum. This isn't anything absolute Right, but work is on this spectrum one side of the spectrum I'll call task work and the other side of the spectrum. I'll call knowledge work So task work is work that pretty much doesn't require a lot of human Intellect or intelligence as you're executing it and knowledge work would be the opposite where a lot of it is dependent on thinking For example task work is building a building But the design of that building the blueprints are actually knowledge work Right, so coming up with the design of that building you go through a lot of you know Innovation and you throw out ideas and all that kind of stuff But once you decide on something the actual building is more or less task work All right, the key word here is more or less because again a lot of work sort of lands somewhere in the middle of that spectrum Right, but is it more towards this way or more towards that way? Teaching is a good form of knowledge work. I have no idea the exact words I'm going to say today and if you tell me I don't understand I'm not just going to repeat the same words again, right? I have to find a different way of explaining something Writing the book all those now the mental models that come with that are also sort of interesting The mental model for task work. It's more of a linear way of working Right, so I'm going to build a building. I understand the design. I get the material I start building it in a certain way. It's sort of like an assembly line Okay, and then knowledge work. No, it's a more of a non-linear way of thinking about work and technically you should have Points in the middle where it's good enough. You could ship it or you keep going more similar to how you write something Now without going into too much detail here because this is a we can we can take a much deeper dive in this But that's not the purpose here But there are these three aspects of how we work One is really understanding is the outcome even knowable in advance or not people that attended my Session earlier. I gave the example of writing right and if you're if you're writing something It's you really don't know what the outcome is exactly, right? You don't know the exact words before you start writing You have an idea of where you want to go and then when you actually start writing You learn more about what you want to say as you see the words and you read the words in front of you and so forth, okay? and For some things the outcome is not knowable in advance and for some things the outcome is knowable in advance like that I can do a lot of design Modeling simulation till I figure it out and then I go build it The second aspect is is our work based on tangible things things I can actually buy and sell and go get or is it more based on ideas and thoughts and the third is to the Execution of the work is it based on inspection and adaption which is basically as you're working You're gonna figure things out or is it based on this? Coordination and control that can be done up front, right? And then there's this spectrum right from an assembly mentality to a knowledge work mentality again We can talk a lot more about this But I just want you to get the gist of this spectrum the reason this is important is When we look at the work of Carol Dweck in her book mindset There's basically to she identifies two types of mindset Okay, and I'll give you a quick example because again I don't want to dive too much into this, but I want to give you the essence of what she's saying if You ask me Ahmed, can you sing and I tell you Actually, I have a horrible voice I can't sing at all. I have just demonstrated a fixed mindset to my ability to sing I believe that my ability to sing so you can fill in the gap there, right is inherently static Right, it was locked down were fixed. I can't sing it was determined at birth and I can't do anything about it Okay, versus if you asked me Ahmed, can you sing and I said well, I've never taken lessons I'm sure if I actually try I I can you know get better at it Do you want to help me out? That actually demonstrates that I believe that my ability to sing can be continuously developed My true potential is unknown and unknowable Now why are these mindsets important because actually when you look at how they affect? Not just how we think about singing or our personality, but how we work as well, right? They actually have a massive impact now if you take a look at the the left-hand side This is what Carol Dweck talks about the fixed mindset So the fixed mindset are those who believe that certain things can't change and The interesting thing is it leads them to a certain set of behaviors one is Avoiding to even try Okay, if I believe I can't sing Right, then I won't even try to sing I won't put effort into it and I'm gonna avoid any sort of failure It it has this inherent desire for them to look good Okay, and by the way, it's interesting. I'm giving you a bad example about You know, I can't sing but imagine if I actually had a nice voice. I don't but imagine Imagine if I had a nice voice and you asked me Okay, I may say yes, I can sing but I actually still could have a fixed mindset I believe that my potential which is high Was determined at birth it can't change Versus let's say someone else who starts at a different level but keep practicing Who's gonna get better over time? See my point. I believe I'm fixed, but I start I'm compared to everyone else I have the best voice right, but you're all in the growth mindset And so you keep practicing and working on it and then slowly I find myself was like wait a minute. What just happened now? What happens is if you believe that you're fixed Even though you believe you're here, you're going to avoid challenging yourself to any other realm because you have an Inherent desire inside of you to look good always Why because you believe you can't change it so you have to demonstrate it. I Can't develop it so I have to demonstrate it right and so they stick to what they know. Do you think they like feedback? Why don't they like feedback? mm-hmm and It gets really personal Right because I don't believe I can change it So you're telling you're giving me feedback about something. I don't believe I can change Right and I'm linking it to me versus a growth mindset that have this continuous desire to learn and develop Right. They're not afraid of putting effort into learning something new. They're Very okay with Embracing challenges and uncertainty and they love feedback because they believe feedback is a form of learning and It's not about them. It's about their current capability, which they know they're always working on Do you see the two mindsets? Yes, no Do you know people with a fixed mindset and people may have fixed mindset about stuff and a growth mindset about other stuff? So it's not like sorry. You're fixed. There's no hope for you Everything you're done, right? No, and and again, you're not born with one of these mindsets. It's the Conditioning that happens around you. So when I first read this book Mindset by Carol Dweck. I was actually terrified because everything it was saying don't do to your kids I was actually doing right. I was building the best fixed mindset kids ever and then I Tweaked my language and and worked on this now the reason I bring this up is Think about the mindset when it comes to managing uncertainty So when we're on this side of the spectrum, so when we're knowledge work area Let's take a look at how these mindsets respond to uncertainty So a fixed mindset approach to managing uncertainty looks something like this. I don't want to fail Right. I don't want to look bad. I know that if you tell me what to do, I can do it So I am going to put all the effort I have to have you Fix the requirements up front. I Don't care if they're called user stories sticky notes, whatever, right? But I have an inherent desire for you to tell me what to do and please do not change your mind Because the moment you change your mind You're actually putting me at risk of looking bad because There's a fear of failure The other mindset the agile mindset looks at managing uncertainty differently both want to reduce uncertainty But one is going to reduce it by fixing it. The other is going to reduce it by learning quickly So if you don't know, let's go and learn quickly together Now I'm going to show you and Jeff Patton uses this picture a lot But I'm going to take it in a different context Which is how to manage uncertainty and sorry how these mindsets Actually have an impact on such a basic agile practice like iterations So if we look at iterations basic agile practice Here's how a fixed mindset team could look at iterations They say hey tell me what you want to build and I'm going to build it in iterations Which is the top row but look at what that is their Intention as they build is not to learn and discover. It's to validate what you told them So I'm going to build the first iteration show it to you and say hey, is this what you want? Right, but the way they pick how to build things is not based on let's maximize learning and discovery Look at the bottom row. Can you see it? that first picture is It that's designed to maximize learning and discovery now. I want you to notice something Let's look at the bottom row for a second So the bottom row started with a state of more ambiguity which said I want a woman sitting in a pastoral position Right, and I said wait. Let me check. Is this what you want and The client said what yes or no. What do you guys think? They said no They actually said that's horrible Would you and your management consider that first iteration a success or a failure? Yeah, sure. We're not an agile conference. It has to the right answer is success But in reality I have seen so many teams that would look at that and say product owner Analyst Project manager team guys. We got to get it right the next time All right, this is this is a wasted iteration So they don't look at it as learning. They actually look at it as failure Right, and they look at it as like now we look bad in front of our client True or false So when we look at this mindset aspect this these are this is a basic agile practice Yet the mindset can have a huge impact on how it's executed And I have seen most teams Execute iterations as the top row not the bottom. Would you guys agree? so and the big difference again between the two is Do you want to help? Are you coming from a mindset of learning and discovery? Are you coming from a mindset of delivering and finishing? Okay now When we look at the agile manifesto, I just want to paint it in a slightly different light than maybe what you've commonly seen it as I Call the agile manifesto an answer to this how to manage uncertainty Using a learning and discovery mindset in the software domain So when we read the items of the manifesto Individuals and interactions over processes and tools the question is which of these two sides will actually help you learn and discover quicker talking to people or Using processes and tools which of these two sides will actually help you learn quicker working software or comprehensive documentation Which of the two sides will help you learn and discover quicker right? It's that growth agile mindset in the software domain Is this making sense? So the way I like to define agile is that agile is a mindset. I Hope I've substantiated that to this point This mindset can be applied to many different disciplines So far we've really cracked it on the software discipline or the software domain But what does it look like in marketing? What are the values and principles to help learn and discover quicker in marketing in operations and finance in education? That's the next one. I'm interested in right Education, how do you actually help kids learn and discover quicker instead of more of an assembly line manner? But that's a dinner topic. We can talk about So this agile mindset in the software industry is established through the set of four values We know as the manifesto grounded by 12 principles manifested through an unlimited number of practices all these methodologies we talk about are basically a bundle of these Practices together and that agile is really the mindset values and principles and The big question is are you doing agile or being agile? Are you approaching agile from a practices standpoint similar? To how an assembly line mentality person would say hey tell me what I need to do to be agile Do you see it? I've got that question so many times makes me sad people after a like big presentation of this So what do I need to do? Can you please give me the checklist? Because that's gonna reduce my uncertainty Okay Versus saying let me understand the mindset the values the principles and create something that works for me Right and being agile is being able to navigate Unknown constraints to help you deliver value at the end I created this picture because I really wanted to help people visualize the difference between being agile and doing Gadget so I took a typical two-week iteration put the typical scrum sort of ceremonies on it So you have your iteration plan your daily stand-ups your release plan right retrospective And I want to actually help you see this like the doing agile Is this much? The being agile is all the other empty space So when we talk about Changing the way people think we are not talking only about the doing Because after this daily stand-up what changes in the way a person works on a day-to-day basis in the way they Approach every little piece of work. They do that's what we're talking about here That's the being agile part Is this making sense now? okay, and To do that we really need to understand that this is not a journey to be taken by the developers right or the Scrum masters, but it's a journey to be taken by The organization because in that being agile everyone is working Right, it's not just let me change your behavior during the 15 minutes stand-up at the beginning of the day And then we're done and then please go back to your old way of working. That was great No, it's not that So let's go back to Jack for a second question is Jack is Jack's plan Helping people do agile or be agile do this is very much a do kind of plan Now here's my definition of organizational agility Organizational agility is a culture similar to how agile is not a process but mindset Organizational agility is not a process at scale. It's a mindset at scale It's a culture This culture is based on the values of principles of agile Supported by an organizational ecosystem, which I'll explain in a second and then manifested through personal and organizational habits It's how people work Not how they fake to work Not the temporary process that God help us will go away in six months Right. It's not that It's not you procure a tool. I have heard this many times people said by the way I just bought fill-in-the-blanks JIRA rally version one in a target whatever it is I am now agile Okay, keep telling yourself that All right, so this is my definition of what organizational agility is now When we understand this it's really a culture transformation not a process transformation I'm gonna hide the slide for a second. So don't think the the presentation went bad. All right, but who here in the room has been part of a Transformation before an IT transformation in your career pre-agile Right, so when we say this term I have been part of a transformation or we're having a transformation We're going through a transformation. I have seen it most of the time beyond the left-hand side We're rolling out a new ERP. We're rolling out a new workflow We're rolling out something big and hairy and gnarly and so we need to focus on Process technology new structures. It's about training cascading decisions. It's about a good communication plan and at the end of the day there is a notion of compliance Right, are you on this new thing that we just decreed that every one of you will be on? Now when we talk about a culture transformation, it's actually very different It's about the focus needs to be about people and culture the difference between training and education is massive Right, I went through four years of college to learn essentially how to program computer science, right? I can take people through a five-day course and they will learn how to program What is the difference? Did I waste four years of my life? Don't say yes, please. I'm assuming I didn't the difference is one of us Hopefully the person that went to the four years right was educated learn the underlying values concepts principle behind things and then they learned the tools and by the way day one on the job both people may be equal But one has a potential to accelerate much more than the other It's about creating a shared vision. It's about commitment to a new way of working I can't go around as like, okay guys, we're gonna do a quick audit on the agile mindset today So please everyone open your mind. Let me check your mindset It doesn't work like that Right. It really is a shared commitment with the organization. So again keep in mind Where in this spectrum your organization is is on now? I talked about this organizational ecosystem a few minutes ago This is how I like to view culture Does anyone I know this is a really weird request does anyone have a rubber band on them right now? a rubber band Yeah, I Actually can't see a thing with the lights. Oh Thank you So if you can see this Here's how I like to view culture Culture is this rubber band, right? That is formed by the elements inside of it Leadership their style their values their beliefs right this strategy. How do we set goals? How do we reward? How do we measure right? How do we make decisions this structure? How are roles and responsibilities defined right? How are? Organization structured siloed or overlapping or whatnot our processes when we look at the value chain end-to-end How do business processes work and then people? What are the fundamental beliefs of people right do they believe in collaboration or competition? Do they believe it and all these all these form the culture of the organization? So it's shaped by the elements inside, but at the same time that Membrane that rubber band that bungee cord also keeps the elements inside in sync So it's formed by the elements inside yet. It itself has a power to keep things aligned Now let me demonstrate to you What I think most organizations are doing with their transformation They take this wedge called process and they push it real hard Push it What do you think happens when that sponsor? removes is Removed or gets removed or changes or the coaches leave the organization whatever it is. What do you think happens? Right back. I don't call that a transformation I call that temporary pain and for the rest of the organization that don't believe in what we believe in it is temporary pain Thank God went away. Take your agile and leave Right because it wasn't a transformation It was actually a misalignment of culture your collaborative work approach was in total misalignment with everyone else The business people didn't care about collaboration really they cared about competition Right developers really could care like all these things and I'm not saying this is you know everywhere But I'm saying you have to be very aware of this Actually, I'm gonna hang on to it for yeah So when we look back at this triangle Okay Successful transformations from my point of view and from my experience move the entire triangle Because that alignment of culture is actually really important in the book good to great they were talking about one of the key successes of high-performing organizations is An alignment of culture and it's it doesn't matter what they're aligned on They could all be aligned on command and control, but as long as they're aligned Right, but it's not about an inconsistency. It's not about let's have a really collaborative process and a non collaborative structure Any form of resistance in your organization a lot of people come up to me this question the business people are Fill in the blanks the IT people are fill in the blanks leadership sucks right any form of resistance I want you to look at it like what's pulling in a direction that other things aren't pulling in There's a misalignment of direction So from my point of view you have to move these elements together You have to perform a common journey for these elements to move now We got to break them down because there's two distinct categories for these elements human elements and non human Strategy structure and process are non human elements leadership and people are human Where is the industry focused? Human or non human the first line in the manifesto says hmm Me confused you have to do both but in my opinion Which will give you sustainable Agility you don't change the way people think you put the most agile structures strategies and process in place There is a desire to break them There is a desire because you haven't changed the way people think or like worst-case scenario misused them Like I showed you with iterations sure. I'd love the idea of iterations, but I'm gonna use it with my fixed mindset I love the idea of stand-ups. That's a great status report. What did you do yesterday? What did you do yesterday? Yes, right? We're misusing these because we really haven't changed this the top part Now how do you change the top part and by the way, that's where I want to focus today Because I think there's a lot of great efforts being done on the non-human elements, right? A lot of new scaling frameworks coming out True great safe less dad, right? Actually, that's cool. Safeless dad, but anyway Or dad is safe less I don't know I'm not making fun of it, but I'm saying those are focused here on strategy structure and process By the way, which are essential elements in a transformation But what are we doing on our human elements? We're telling them Let's do it There's a lot of paradigm shifts that need to happen and that happens through learning Through deep learning and introspection and reflection There's coaching and I'm talking about professional coaching where people come to their own self-realizations And then there's mentoring which is applied application and advice of let me show you how to do this Right, that's how you start to transform the human elements now. Let me ask you something Which is easier to track the progress of? Non-human which is more tangible which is more and then go all back to our behaviors and as an assembly line worker This has a checklist Right, so the reason we're attracted to the non-human is because we ourselves haven't changed our mindset about the transformation We are still going up to people and say can you give me a plan for this transformation? Let's give me a step-by-step process to change my culture and quickly So the key question Was so what do people need to learn? What do people need to learn I taught them scrum? What else do they need to learn? All right, I'll give you another workshop on user stories. What else do you want from me? Estimation sure. Let's do another one on estimation All right But what else and that was the question we really were trying to answer with the International Consortium for Agile So I want to I want to introduce you to the work that's being done by I see Agile in this regard Take it use it. Don't use it totally up to you right and the reason I'm focusing on that because I think you guys all know the work that's happening on the Non-human elements, but I want to show you a little bit of the work that's happening over there And hopefully this could be of benefit to you So again what I see Agile does I see Agile is an accreditation and certification body They don't train But what they do is they gather experts from around the world to actually sit down and define what people need to learn and I'll show you that in a second then they accredit the learning they want to ensure that okay great We have this great set of people need to learn these things, but how do we ensure people are learning it? it's through accreditation and then When you see some of these learning tracks, they are long This is not a two-day class All right, and so you want to motivate people to pursue a journey and What we have found is sure for good or for bad for what it's worth certifications are a way for people to be recognized as pursuing a journey and I'll talk more about that and I'm gonna talk again. I haven't forgot our four stories will bring them into the mix as we talk Actually, I'm gonna talk first about sales force so Let's walk you through does everyone know who sales force is All right, so sales force is a pioneer in cloud computing CRM and it has expanded to take over a lot of that space It's the number one CRM tool and they now have a marketing platform and a support platform and Really, I think they were rated this year and probably consistently across several other years One of the best places to work for in the US now Sales force had an interesting challenge Sales force has their own agile methodology called adaptive delivery methodology Okay, now if you have your own methodology and that's what you want to teach And I think that's great that they have their own methodology. Why because they've customized it to what works for them Okay, so you want to teach it to all your employees Here's the challenge. What are you what are you going to do? You can't bring in external trainers They don't know the methodology you can't bring in some of the external certifications and Did certifications matter for them? Actually, yes, there are people right people at sales force said if we're gonna sit in a two-day class Give me something right. Give me something to show like when I leave that, you know There's some professional development in this and so they said okay We have an issue. We can't bring in like, you know scrum training or this or that training So what we're gonna do is we're gonna build our own certification And sales force has a very successful certification in the cloud and sales for space So they said hey, we have an experience doing that. So we're gonna build our own agile certification Make sense. Why not? It's an in-house methodology We can't bring anyone else to train on it. So we're gonna build our own internal certification. Do you think people like that? Do you think the sales force employees like that? Why not? Yeah, great idea doesn't achieve the purpose Right because the moment I leave sales force No one knows what the certification is And by the way, I've seen many corporations resort to creating their own certification program because nothing out there matches what they need Now That's where they that's when we met I see agile and sales force and I see agile Focuses on agile values principles mindset. So and it defines them through a set of learning objectives So when we showed them that listen, we have these eight learning tracks Now here's here's an important point If you're trying to build them a methodology less Education program, what are you gonna base it on? Like if you look at the scrum Alliance program, it's based on roles You have certified scrum master certified, you know product owners certified developer But it's based on the roles of that methodology But if we're not focusing on a methodology, what do you base the learning on? And so we decided to base it on a set of disciplines These are disciplines and crafts that are needed Within teams So you need coaching you need development you need testing you need leadership you need management You need value management need enterprise level coaching, right? You need these disciplines and then there's more disciplines coming out by the way, right? But each of these disciplines is defined through a set of learning objectives now Here's something really important. Why would sales force look at someone else's learning objectives and give them any weight? Because who developed the learning objectives So what I see Agile has done is it has gathered experts from around the world thought leaders and and real deep practitioners to develop learning objectives It takes around two to three years to develop the set of learning objectives for one of these tracks All right And so when you look at some of these names some of these names are well known in the industry And these are the people that have contributed to the creation of these learning objectives So if you want to look at it, it's sort of like when they created the agile manifesto and didn't focus on a methodology It was it's a continuation of not focusing on a methodology and deepening crafts right So each Track that you've seen like each one of these tracks has a set of learning objectives These are available for free to download like this isn't now you have to purchase each of these tracks for no Just go and learn about what these disciplines are Right and you can see here like this is one track You're talking about like 25 pages of learning objectives each of these is defined like Here's the purpose of this learning objective. Make sure you cover these topics like it's it's a great amount of detail And it's all methodology agnostic So you won't you won't find Terms like you know, you have to do a two-week sprint All right, or a four-week sprint you'll find time box iterations or any other form of limiting work in progress All right, so you can teach this using Kanban using scrum using whatever methodology But remember all these methodologies the purpose is to learn and be agile Okay so what Salesforce like was the fact that they could actually a Credit their material against the set of generic learning objectives Not breaking their idea of a methodology the other thing going back to the Salesforce was a really big challenge and had a scale How do they scale their training? They're a massive organization with hundreds of teams So if they brought in certain vendors then how can they actually scale that and so and again I quote one of the reasons they they used I see agile for this is because it was actually much more scalable than having in-house CSTs or in-house other kind of trainers Now basically through these stories. I'm introducing you to the work of I see agile But instead of showing it to you we're gonna talk about more stories now This story by agile X may be relevant for most of you or for some of you in the audience Agile X is a services company It is actually one of the leading providers of agile services to the US government and was recently acquired by Accenture Okay, now they have a really good agile practice, but here's their journey and how it looked like Basically as they were working with clients their coaches and their team members came back to them and said hey We need more knowledge on Estimation so the people at agile X created a workshop on agile estimation and gave it to them Hey, we need more knowledge about user stories. Sorry. Let me let me create something so this was this pull demand sort of manner of We we have these gaps in our knowledge help us right and it was all based on circumstantial situations now The other challenge is so why didn't they just send them to a training course? They couldn't take them off billable hours with their client for two to three days Right so this bite-size information giving actually worked perfectly for them the challenge. They had was inconsistency So the teams that asked about estimation knew how to estimate the teams that didn't We're doing their own thing right and there was Big holes and gaps in knowledge now again remember how we're framing this we're framing this in the light of Education and learning so what is the curriculum for them? Well, this is where again? they they they looked at what I see agile has to offer and They looked at a set of learning objectives and they said well wait a minute So we can actually use this as guidance on how to design courses Yes, so by the way, these are a set of learning objectives from one of the track again Each one of these has a whole you know paragraph a text behind it But the point is they could actually use this as guidance on design So they sat down their people and said wait as we give small modules to people make sure we're covering these topics Okay, but then they said wait a minute Do we have to teach them all together or can we separate them? We said at I see agile all we focus on is learning experiences not courses So they said great. So what they're actually doing today is they've broken down Right, they're learning experience into 15 modules Some modules are via video some modules are live, right? And they have a I think it's a three or four month program where people start They get these modules at a rate that doesn't break their work Okay, and then by the end of it and by the way the But so this is how the accreditation is done and what we do at I see agile is we we have a four-hour session with them Actually walking through the material and making sure it's covered. So what this does to the students is it's a guarantee that yes This material that I'm taking is actually covering the learning objectives Some other entity has validated that but the powerful thing for the student was tracking learning So they could actually get a transcript and see these are the topics I need to finish and these are the things I finished so far and either there's a things I haven't finished and that could give agile X and others a Really good progress status on what modules they finished what they didn't finish and what learning still needed to happen and when people finished all the learning they got the certification or the base level certification and They could actually track modular learning as well Through even community of practice events So they took the learning objectives and they sort of spread it out in a variety of different learning experiences So again some examples Let's move on to our third story just because of time and I know we have some intuit people in the audience So if I'm saying anything wrong you can correct me Anyone know who intuit is at least one person in the audience should know okay so Intuit builds accounting and financial software quick books turbo tax and again one of the I think in India. They're the eighth best place to work for and I know in the US They're like top 30 or something like that Intuit story was again different Intuit had a Journey like many organizations agile started organically so meaning a team Had an agile need they went and hired a vendor So one team hired you know scrum.org the other team hired lean Kanban instructors the third team hired CST The fourth team didn't hire anyone and open books and learn right and so they had many different ways of doing agile which actually they liked Okay, but the challenge was inconsistency of results and And lack of common terminology between the people doing agile now a couple of years back They shifted to a central model where there was an actual team Responsible for delivery across of agile adoption across Intuit globally and so that organization actually had a very clear goal of delivering world-class agility through enterprise-wide adoption of agile principles and So what they did was they actually built their own training program that focused on Agile principles and a common set of terminology and values and they started training this across 600 people initially And it was very successful the level of demand they had for this was as as you know was telling me like beyond their capacity Why because it actually gave people the gaps they needed and the common terminology that they could work with across teams Now the big challenge they had was what's next? What do we actually offer people now? We've we've done a great job aligning people on the fundamentals and filling in those gaps But what is the next part of the journey? I can't just give them fundamentals and stop And so that's where they started actually looking into what does an agile curriculum look like? Okay, and again, that's where we met with them Right as I see agile and they looked at this and they said actually this is the exact sort of curriculum We're looking for so we can and by the way, it was discipline based. It was value based So we can take people that are doing coaching through a coaching track We can take people doing development through a development track and so forth But they had a real issue that they had 600 people. They already trained What are we gonna do with them now? We're starting a new sort of quote-unquote certification program, but I Have already invested in 600 people. I'm not gonna reteach them that and that was totally fine Remember all the work done is based on did you achieve learning objectives or not? So we took a look at the 600 people that trained on their initial course what learning objectives They actually had finished and the learning objectives. They hadn't finished They created a little small Delta course for them that filled in those gaps and got them with the rest of the people on the journey Okay, now the key thing for them was their global operation. They had a big challenge with that because We like Flexibility, but we want consistency as well How can we achieve both and by the way, this is a problem? I've seen with many corporations like we don't want one flavor of agile But we want a certain level of consistency across our teams so that there's common expectations So what do we do and we have people in India? We have people in the US all over the US What are we going to do? We can't scale that much So what I say agile also gave them was a language to talk to vendors with Right, so they have their own internal in-house Fundamentals course, but when it came to all of these specialty courses They could actually talk to a provider in India and say listen We want you to design an agile project management course for us. Make sure it covers these learning objectives and Then a different provider back in the US and say hey listen design this course and make sure it covers the IC agile learning objectives So you can actually have customized courses for different whether it's global Reasons or or even variety reasons, but at the same time there's a certain level of Consistency Across that because all of them are sort of built around the same learning objectives I'll end with the story riot games Now riot games may be again similar to some of you. They don't care about certification They actually purely care about competency build So they have 60 internal agile coaches. By the way anyone heard of riot games All right, I didn't think so their target audience is much younger than the people in this room They have the largest played game in the world 90 million active players And the game is called League of Legends Now you've heard of it. Yes, okay So the target audience is still younger than the people in this room But I I play it every once in a while with my family as well the the point is They as a gaming company They could care less about Certifications and many corporations they don't care about certification But what they care about is competency building we want to have the best developers We want to have the best coaches. We want to have the best testers and so their relationship with I see agile Was for a different reason when you look at the I see agile learning roadmap what their target was is are these gold level? Certification these are what are called expert level certifications and those are competency based Let me explain what competency based means It means Let's take this coaching route, right? It means for someone to become a coach They actually need to learn about the fundamentals of agile They then need to learn about agile coaching agile facilitation and then they need to demonstrate competency Let me go back just so that you're you're following me it we're talking about this track So they take this knowledge based certification this one this one and then they can apply for this Competency based certification now the big question we had is how do you assess competency? How do you actually do that? Here's what we've developed We've developed a competency matrix Right that took the same learning objectives from a competency based perspective and said guess what? Here's what a beginner coach will demonstrate Here's what a developing coach will demonstrate what a competent coach and what a proficient coach will demonstrate and They give this rubric to let's say you're applying for the expert certification I see agile will give it to you and to the assessors. Who's the assessors? Three other agile experts that graduated before you Now the key is we call show don't tell We understand that people can talk about their work all day long as a coach. I do this and this and this and this Show don't tell So they actually have to submit videos of themselves facilitating agile team Right, they submit references of teams that they've worked with an icy agile contest them and then live on this video Panel they actually have to do Professional coaching 15 minutes of professional coaching 15 minutes of mentoring so the whole point and For the testing track They actually have to create a test plan and talk about in this case study which things will be automated So it's not a matter of filling out a questionnaire or answering an exam But it's really competency based demonstration now Why did this appeal to riot games because what they gave their coaches was this they gave them a goal? they said we want you by The end of the year will give you a year to get the expert certification That's it They created a pull system for mentoring the biggest challenge They had was they couldn't mentor all the people there because like what would the mentoring program look like and they believed in a Concept of well if I'm the director or whatnot like tell me what you need to grow I'm not going to keep knocking on your door and telling you would you like to learn this today Would you like to learn this today, right? So what they created was a pull system by giving people an objective that was far out and saying you got a year to do it and So they actually it was all self-propelled that they found the training for a facilitation They found the training for coaching and then based on this rubric they could read and say well wow I'm I'm really not there yet. I'm here right and I need to get to that competent level So to pass the IC agile certification you have to be competent in all these areas You have to demonstrate competency and so they would actually go back to their mentors and say I really don't know how to get from here to here. Can you show that and? That became a very different discussion than a push mentoring systems like let me teach you something new today Versus they are coming to them and saying how do I how do I actually teach someone something that you know blah blah blah Does that make sense? So anyway To to wrap up I'll and also sort of tell you a bonus story This is very dear to me to see University start to adopt the IC agile model and the University of Miami Miami University in the US is the one I want to highlight because it's a public university right It's a public university and they've integrated the learning objectives of the IC agile fundamentals into their core curriculum Meaning people graduating from computer science will actually have that base understanding of how to work as a knowledge work and Really for me, that's the future hope that you know in five years. None of us would be learning about the fundamentals Right students graduating would already have this and then depending on their craft and discipline They'll be learning what they need to learn So to summarize There's human elements non-human elements, right? I believe that the human elements will generate that sustainable organizational agility I think the coaching and mentoring is understood But again, I like it to happen from a pole system Hence the riot game story and the key thing here is the learning We're not investing that much in learning We're invested in basic training for people versus actual deep deep paradigm shift kind of learning and that's what I think I see agile presents so Secret ingredient. I hope we've came we've come sort of full circle changing the way people think about work and their understanding of what it means to be agile and With that Open the floor for we have two minutes of questions I know I'm over time, but they actually told me I get to 610 because we started No questions. Any questions one question You're welcome So The question is how do you measure the the and and this is why we've actually separated two types of certification One is the silver ones. We call those knowledge based certifications and Basically, what that is is you've acquired the knowledge So what? Right the goal has always been the competency based certification So that's really where the goal is. That's where you want to assess you want people to become experts, right? I don't want people. I mean, why are we even teaching one or two day courses, right? It's for people to develop competency. That's ultimately the goal and that's ultimately what we want to assess so The assessment is really built into this layer and the whole purpose of this is a journey We want to actually stop having people just take one course and stop Because that's what that's the behavior we've seen and that doesn't deepen people's agile knowledge in a certain discipline So they take a course they take an exam they get something is like yay. I'm done Like wait, where are you on this journey and have you achieved a level of competency that can actually be demonstrated to your peers One last question Todd I Think a mic is coming a lot of the that's a really good point So and and I haven't done that like research or dug deep into that touch point is well Couldn't all this need for certification basically be coming as a From people of a fixed mindset right and so this is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy because they want to look good I think I think that may be the case with some people and I don't think we're gonna change that right because that's that's where their their mindset is and Our hope is through this learning journey, right? They'll actually deepen a a set of understandings that it's not about that right? It's actually about something different but there are other people that I have personally met that I believe have a very growth mindset and They're looking for tokens of Recognition or appreciation along the way it doesn't that's not their focus. Let's put it that way right, but it's a nice to have and When it comes to two things that are nice to have like you know if it's if it's no extra effort I'll take it But it's not what they see so the example I gave you about riot games They could care less about the certification itself, but what they were actually seeking is the journey of knowledge right and so They saw value those people saw value in that in that expert level where it was peer based Right and a recognition of like yes I have demonstrated that competency and it's a token of of that achievement, but I think you may be right Yeah, go ahead follow up. I think there's a and and it's interesting because I Think a lot of people even go but even with growth mindsets They go back sometimes to the fixed mind. It's a constant struggle and I think it's a continuous level of awareness and education and if we're trying to Say that some people will have a fixed mindset and never change that I think that's a fixed mindset from our perspective. I think it's it's a It's a stance to help them see a different mindset I mean in the book Carol Dweck highlights and I'll end with this how to change people's mindset, right? That was the last chapter and the first thing is actually educating people that there is a different mindset and I believe Through educational journeys like this or others, right? I really doesn't matter But having people understand that there are different mindsets and then it's situational with everything that happens You may be sort of defaulting to a fixed mindset It's reminding you that there is a alternative way of looking at it and those reinforcement mechanisms So even even if you look at this journey Todd, it's based on a mentoring platform, right? So you actually help people get through to that and anyway with that I got the Nuresh Symbol of shut up because we're done. Thank you guys