Is Agile Business the New Normal

In this webinar Pieter van Schalkwyk, MD of XMPro, will look at how "Agile" business changed the way we work and changed our expectation of the tools that support the way we work. Join Pieter for a 30 minute webinar that will change the way you think about the erratic and unstructured way of work that you may find yourself and your organisation in.

For more information on XMPro please visit our website: www.xmpro.com or send us an email: [email protected]

Transcript

are you finding that your routine work

is replaced by knowledge style work is

your business and the process is more

complex than what they used to be are

exceptions becoming the norm now um

they're not the rule they're the norm uh

are the infrastructure or

the are the information management tools

that you use a lot more complex than

what they used to be and a lot more

sophis iated than what they used to be

and is it harder to manage all the

change in your organization as everyone

is stuck in this

analysis paralysis environment hi I'm

Peter F scalek I'm the chief agility

officer at XM Pro and I'd like to tell

you that agile business might be the new

normal for

you so if you look at this photo how

agile are you uh would you like to be

more

agile and probably not yourself if you

look at this photo but you can ask the

same question about your business would

you like your business to be um more

agile and would you so that you can bend

over backwards to accommodate changes in

business environment as you can see this

is pretty it looks pretty uncomfortable

but as soon as you've got the hang of it

it actually adds a lot of value um to

what you do so today we're going to talk

at we're going to have a look at how

agile business buiness change the way

that we work and also our expectations

of the tools that we use to manage that

work so essentially three things I'm

going to talk about today or that I'm

going to look at and the one is um how

did we change to Agile business now when

did this happen the second thing is uh

how did it change the way that we work

and then thirdly how do we change the

the tools that we use to

support uh this new way of work so let's

start with the first one is agile

business The New

Normal

so the first thing I'd like uh I'd like

to have a look is the change to Agile

you know the actual change that that

happens to Agile business and the um and

just looking at how did this

happen so uh and what do we mean by Adel

business so I'd like to approach this

once again from three different angles

and the first one is to look at the

dictionary definition of what agile

means and what I quite like is the fact

that it says it is a quick and

well-coordinated

uh um uh in movement sort of agile leap

and secondly the ability to think

quickly um and if you look at the

antonyms it's awkward sluggish and um

which of these describe your

business this might not be sort of quite

like what your business is right at the

moment or the the way that that you see

your uh the the current way that your

business work but

um is this the sort of way that your

business needs to go is uh from this

definition which you like to have a more

quick and responsive versus awkward and

sluggish type um business the challenge

is that that even though you may not be

making that change a lot of businesses

around you are doing that so for example

5 years ago the average product life

cycle was around 2 years and now it is

less than two months and in consumer

electronics it is even down to three

months for some products so I don't know

if you've noticed if you if you've gone

Buy Sony video camera or even just a d

notebook that three months after you

bought a specific model it's no longer

available the whole product life cycles

become so quick and everything around us

has become um has become active and

Lively rather than

sluggish software is gone the same way

how often do you find that your iPhone

has install app updates um mine does it

at least once a week on the software

itself and if you look at guys like

Microsoft which uh in the enterprise

software space you'll find that

Microsoft Office seem to have a new

version every year and I here with

Windows 8 they not um they're now

talking Windows 7 Windows 8 and I'm not

sure I know they've started working on

Windows 9 so they can't use Windows 2008

anymore because within 201 in 11 124 and

by the time we get to Windows 2016

they'll probably have um one every

quarter so uh they had to change the

numbering convention just to be able to

to uh accommodate the change that we see

um in in as everything accelerates and

and it goes forward so if we look at um

at agile from a from a software

perspective and most people know agile

as a software development methodology

this is not what this talk is around it

is not um but it really gives us a good

framework to understand how other

um areas of business have adopted an

agile approach in actual fact the agile

guys have come when I say agile guys

agile software development guys have

have come up with what they call the

agile

Manifesto and um because of this fast

changing Pace in software development um

and we can we can replace a lot of the

words in here with business words um but

what I'm going to do right now is just

very quickly um it's all around

interactions it's all around things that

work right now instead of spending your

life

designning it doesn't say that they

don't there's no documentation but it's

making sure that there's working

software working business processes

working uh in business intelligence or

whatever the case instead of spending so

much time if you look at um the bi tools

the whole uh um intelligent

experimentation um I love that term for

for BPM as well but the whole working

software concept so you get your bi

working quickly get your BPM working

quick get your strategies working

quickly instead of spending a lot of

time trying to document um that and then

also collaboration of uh contract

negotiation so there's a continuous

collaboration um in this whole agile

approach so if you look at s the

software

um uh world as a methodology um they

were the leading guys in this and and

and it's a great example of what I see

as agile as a methodology even for

businesses and business processes and

they've come up with 12 principles I'm

not going to go through through all of

them you can actually um look it up at

the agile manifesto. org um some of the

interesting things are that the highest

priority is to satisy is to satisfy the

customer and to continuously deliver

value you can take the software out um

and you can continuously make changes

because that is what happens in an agile

world there's continuous changes you

deliver new working things regularly um

that doesn't mean to say that's that

it's uncontrolled it's actually a lot of

control in in in the whole agile uh

world it is um it is quite simple but it

embodies the whole radical change of

what we've seen in the software world

where we've gone from a top down

programming like um some of myself and

and a couple of other people on this

webinar may may remember the days that

we did a structured Cobalt programming

um where we had a whole top down

approach those of us in Fortran that did

still did um coding on sheets will

remember top down um and we had to use a

waterfall model you had to specify

everything right to the end degree um

because it was really hard to make any

changes and so from a the waterfall

model which is a very structured you

specify you develop you test everything

in in in in and there are no changes to

the to

the um spec at any or or or to what you

what you deliver all requirements are

locked down based on that specification

because of the way that top- down

programming used to work and it reminds

me of structured business process as

well um so the release Cycles were long

and uh you couldn't move from the spec

it didn't really work well

um if we look at all the overruns and

things um on that where it's a very

rigid and strictly controlled process

what has happened with new programming

languages is that we've got a the whole

object orientation which is sort of an

unstructured programming approach for

lack of a better description um I'm

pretty sure the technical guys will will

Grill me for this but I see it as a as a

sort of we create all these functions

and I can call them at any point in time

so if you look at and one of the things

the key drivers for this was the change

that windows and these graphical

interfaces brought if I right click on

my mouse there's an action that I need

to do um so it needs to call that

specific object it needs to do what it

needs to do and uh then it goes away so

that with that the whole Agile

development methodology also started

because I can make these small little

chunks um of object code and I can call

it I can uh it doesn't have to be

sequential it's not top down I can call

it when I need it um it sort of created

a a a a whole new opportunity to create

Agile development tools as well where we

can shorten the development cycle we can

get products out quicker um and um it

it's easier to add functions without

breaking the logic which is one of the

challenges that we that you have with

with top- down structured programming

and that's why the whole waterfall model

worked well for that um what's nice with

the agile software development

methodology is that it's flexible and it

allows uh for a Agile development

approach um which is essentially what we

want in in in uh in a lot of what we do

in business as well so does that if if

if you replace some of these words that

I've got on the screen here with

business type words

um like the one that I just love is the

Simplicity the art of maximizing the

amount of work not done is essential now

to me that is really just such a

profound statement of what you want to

do in business what we find is everyone

is making it just so much harder to do

stuff and our Approach at at XM Pro is

really to is really to see how can we

maximize the art of uh sorry how can we

um how can we Perfect The Art of

maximizing the amount of work not done

so the whole agile software software

um development methodology um quite well

known and it's it's it's it's got its

challenges um but it's really if you

look at what the objective is and what

it's trying to to achieve it really

suits the way that businesses work right

now um so those are the 12 um principles

and you can substitute a lot of the

software words with business words and

um and it may sound a little bit like

what your business is or what you would

like your business to be like

so um one of the best definitions i'

I've seen of agility and it comes out of

a

CIO um magazine uh is really uh it was

done by Michael um shre uh and it's the

in the he says in the first and final

analysis agility is is about timely and

coste effective implementation and that

is a key driver these days things need

to be cost effective even doesn't matter

what we Implement with it's a software

BAS solution whether it's business

intelligence whether it's BPM um whether

it's strategy planning whether it

doesn't really matter what it is um but

what he says is that is the key part

full stop there's no question about it

needs to be timely and cost effective

planning is nice analysis is good

governance is groovy but agility means

action agility implies both the capacity

and capability to act now

immediately real time to me this is such

a powerful statement of what we're

trying to achieve in business we need to

have the capacity and the capability to

act we need to do it right now we need

to make the changes right now and we

would like to do it in real time now

there are some challenges with putting

some of these things in and that's

really one of exm Pro's driving

Ambitions is to is to make sure that we

can achieve this with um with business

processes as

well so is that how we should see uh

business processes um if I look at what

we used to do in terms of modeling all

the as EES and 2bs and um and trying to

come up with the writing um this whole

agility process would get us to our

business objectives a lot quicker so

what is a agile business process so I'm

just going to quickly um talk about and

I've got business slpress because it's

actually business um but a key driver of

business is business processes and exm

pro business is business processes so uh

we are not a workflow tool we are

Process Management tool and process is

just by definition uh is not necessarily

sequential uh or um a workflow it is it

is

activities that drive a specific

business outcome and they don't need to

be in a sequential uh uh form so so far

we've looked at um the agile definition

of what uh of what uh agile um method

sorry we've looked at the the dictionary

definition of what agile business is

we've also um looked at um at the

um sort of software methodology and and

when we look at businesses um we see

there's a definite shift in in business

from the predictable to unpredictable uh

I I know for a fact we find it hard to

get five people in a room and get them

to have the same view or version of a

process or uh or a business outcome or

or something like that so easiest way to

look at at at at the um agile business

or business process is to actually look

at the drivers that influence this

change from May from from a very

structured approach where we knew um

exactly how how business worked uh going

into this whole agile um business

approach and Peter draer coined the

phrase so there's the there's um there's

essentially three drivers and one of the

biggest drivers is is is the fact that

we've got this whole new knowledge

worker and Peter draer um uh uh everyone

in the management world NZ um Peter dra

is one of the biggest gurus around

um management strategy and he coined the

phrase knowledge

worker and uh essentially a knowledge

worker is is a is a move away from doing

workers to thinking workers um these are

people who have contextual knowledge

around

processes and they can make decisions

based on this structured processes don't

really work and they have to circumvent

structured processes because they want

to make their own decisions around

routing around logic around all sorts of

things doesn't mean it's uncontrolled

there's still control around uh

knowledge workers but it just means that

they can make their own decisions on a

lot of how uh processes works if you

think back around the the what I'd

explained around the top down

programming versus the object Pro object

orientation programming they are they

work in a world of object orientation if

they need to right click the mouse it

needs to respond to that not workers are

like that so if they have contextual

information they know something about a

process and I'm I'll explain a little

bit more bit later in the in the in the

uh presentation around the knowledge

workers but if or or around this

unstructured work or uh but as soon as

they know if if they have contextual

knowledge or if they know the context in

with in which this process is happening

they can make decisions which will rout

it in a different way it'll have

different business rules so exceptions

for them are the rule um and the rigid

workflow style processes don't really

work so if you've got a rigid workflow

engine that drive the work that they

need to do that's why they use

email um so these used to be the

exceptional jobs but right now we find

with the right that technology enables

our

work that it even goes down right to the

lower levels of work so there's a whole

shift to knowledge workers even into

areas that weren't traditionally

knowledge workers so if we look at the

second reason why we've become uh why

there's a move to Agile business it is

really that we've become interrupt

driven now what I mean by that is email

conditions us to stop and start all the

time we don't work in a sequential way

anymore I don't know if you do it um I I

personally if I see an email come in I

will stop whatever else I'm doing and

I'll attend to the email sometimes I do

three or four things at the same time

not that I do um

great job of that um but we've become

interrupt driven so we are used to the

fact that we don't do things in a long

sequential logic or in a in a in a in a

sequential State anymore the other thing

that has happened is conversations are

are now 140

characters um and uh by that I mean with

Twitter uh things like um Twitter has

changed the way that we see

conversations and how we can do

conversations and it's not just Twitter

they're tools like yamama socialcast and

all of those inside organizations that

are now have key parts of conversations

in them that's how we talk that's how we

collaborate um and they broken up into

into into little bit so we've become

interrupt driven in the way so I can

have certain parts of my messaging and

conversation in Yama and I can have an

email and I can have a whole lot of um

of

um uh uh different interrupt driven ways

uh there's tools like like MSN so I

might just also have a quick MSN chat

and office is looking at productizing

what the office Microsoft is looking at

productizing something they call office

talk we'll probably see it in the next

versions of office CRM and all those

products where it comes with a built-in

collaboration component or Twitter for

business or whatever weever whatever we

want to call that um the third driver

for agile business so the first one was

the fact that we knowledge workers the

second one is that we're now interrupt

driven and the third one which has had a

profound impact is actually uh mua's law

which say and because a lot of the work

that we do these days and doesn't matter

in what uh what type of job it is in

organization uh we find more and more um

that that people people use computers to

to do parts of their work and processing

power inside computers are doubling

every two years now if you look at this

graph is unbelievable um if you look at

the i7 processor that we have right now

in most of our in most of our uh

notebooks that we carry around you'll

find that it's got 2.6 billion transa uh

transactions on a chip uh interesting

conversation with a financial guy this

morning said to me so uh how many are

there in a packet if there's 2.6 billion

on a chip not everyone understands that

so um he said as a joke but um yeah so

that gives you some some perspective of

of what is happening with computing

power this just drives um what we can do

with computers and the way that we can

that we can use it what is more

interesting is uh Zuckerberg's law so we

had mu's Lord came out he's he was the

CEO of Intel at the time as far as I can

recall um mu but Mark Zuckerberg the CEO

of Facebook has come out with with a a

very interesting uh very similar and is

based on mu's law which is the law of

social sharing which says that we will

double the content that we share every

two years on social networks and they

base it on what they see in Facebook

right now there are around five billion

things statuses images videos all of

that shared on Facebook a day now this

was announced in SE end of September in

2011 at the F fi developers conference

so this is pretty recent um stats as

well four billion things and his view is

that this will double in the next per

per person we will double the um amount

what we share in a social way um or in a

collaborative way so all of these things

are driving um and it's got a a massive

impact on business because it actually

drives um what we do now I've got my own

my own law which I call F sc's law and I

hope it'll catch on which uh and the

statement is that business agility will

double every two years if we take all

these factors into consideration M's law

zacher BG's law and all the um social

phenomena that we see and the interrupt

driven I predict that we will become

twice as agile every so we will double

our agility every two years um that's

from sc's law and you can quote me on

that then uh Steve uh Keith snon and

Sandy kemsley um Keith Swinson is the

R&D vice president for fitso based in

the US he writes a lot on BPM case

management all of those sort of things

and S kimley is a well

recognized

um BPM analyst and she does she she also

does a lot of writing research and she's

got a great blog as well which I can

recommend and they've come up with if

you look at agile

BPM in a in a webinar that they did on

uh agile BPM using uh well just looking

at how process of change and what I like

about this is that the goal of the

system so when we look at the

transactional system the are the and

it's not that these are going away

that's the 8020 principle 20% of

processes will still be transactional we

still have a reg structure but we have a

80% of business and this is from Gartner

that came up with the 8020 um Janelle

Hill um at Gartner but the the the

what's great about this is that the that

the goal of the system in the past was

just efficiency and automation now it's

moved to problem resolution we can

actually do stuff with this so it's not

just about getting people to do things

faster but it's actually to solve

problems um and the the challenge is

that instead of being highly repeatable

it's become unpredictable so you need

tools to to to kind for um for that

so how does that change the way that we

work I said earlier that there are three

questions uh and and the first one was

why did we

um um

so just to step back

um of those three questions the first

one is agile business um and to me this

describes that agile business is The New

Normal so how does it change the way

that we work

well um in terms of the three questions

the first one was why did we change to

Agile business the second one is is um

is um how do we change the work and then

lastly we'll also look at the tools that

we that that we do this so if I just

quickly go back and we look at the 12

principles of the agile methodology

we'll recognize that that that um that

some of these have a profound

way profound impact on the way that

agile business has changed the way that

we work so so the first one is all

around continuous Improvement so we've

moved away from this trying to to get

one to get the spec for the process

which which was the BPR way the business

process re-engineering way we would

spend a lot of money to get Consultants

into can spend a lot of time and it's

not that we don't do that agile doesn't

say no documentation it means adequate

documentation so that we can uh get the

first version out quickly and we can

start improving on that so instead of

doing three years of BPR we can get the

base requirements down um without

spending all our time and money on that

and by the time you've got the base

requirement oh sorry if you do the

threeyear BPR project by the time we get

to do something all our processes have

changed we'd like to take a lot more of

a continuous Improvement proc approach

um in most of the work that we do these

days doesn't matter what it is um we'd

like to do smaller chunks we like to get

results a lot quicker and we'd like to

see things happen um a a lot easier and

I just love the next slide which is um

salvad doy said have no fear of

perfection you will never reach it to me

that is so so profound as well in terms

of what you're trying to achieve do

enough to from a we we find that right

now um the way that we work is become

let's do enough so we can get started

and get something done a lot of

businesses especially the ones that

perform uh well I've taken that um that

approach the second thing is what we

want to do is is sort of have what we

call intelligent experimentation I love

this for BPM but it's actually a phrase

that is used in the BR world uh um

that's where I've I've heard it um being

used but intelligent experimentation

doesn't mean um we just it still means

that we work in a controlled fashion we

take information from our analytics

tools from the process uh from from our

um analytics is a great driver for this

so we'll get information out of our

analytics tools and decide how we're

going to change it we're going to split

test certain things the the marketing

guys are brilliant at split testing ads

so that they can see which is the best

performing one and they'll drop the

other one and then start a new um

process uh uh ad that will compete with

the other one and and so that's how they

sort of um through a evolutionary

process build um the the strongest AD

that they can just continuous testing

there's no reason why we why we can't do

that in other areas of business and we

starting to we starting we start to see

that that emerges in a in a in a lot of

that we do so

um the other the other um great one that

I saw and this is this is once again

Gartner I take credit for this is to

design by doing rather than doing by

design gner has now come out and said

listen Maybe maybe you don't need to

spend as much time on trying to get that

or to strive for Perfection to get the

spec 100% right rather design by doing

it and as you do you improve it rather

than trying to do this whole design and

get the right thing um because you will

actually never never get there we find

more and more where there's a drive and

this impacts the way that we work uh and

it doesn't only apply to BPM it applies

to a whole lot of uh areas that Gardener

um in terms of the competency areas that

they apply this design by doing now so

there's a definite impact um on that and

then also we change our minds often

that's always been the case we just

never had the opportunity to change our

mind or to say that we'd like our

requirements to differ um what has

happened with uh with

um the new tools especially we and

social tools we have the ability to

change our mind often and that is now

getting into the way that we work we

expect things to change quickly we

expect next time uh that uh that there's

update on uh on Facebook that my um

iPhone app will automatically pick it up

um I don't have to worry about it so we

can change our minds often we can um and

that's got a profound impact on on on

the way that we that we work so once

again and I keep going back to this um

but really if you take those 12

principles and and you just apply the

business side of it you can see how this

impact the way that we uh the way that

we work

um So based on that agile work is The

New Normal we don't work the way that we

that we used to work we expect uh that

we will be experimenting we expect that

we'll be changing our mind so we've we

we we we have come up with a agile work

approach which we see as The New Normal

so in the last place I'm just going to

quickly talk around the tools that we

need to manage this so I've I've given

you um how business have changed and how

the work that we've done have changed so

they the the only thing that now still

needs to that remains that needs to

change is the actual tools because the

old tools don't work anymore the old way

that we've done things um don't work

anymore with this whole agile business

approach and once again I just want to

remind you it's not agile software

methodology even though it's a great

it's it's a great analogy around what

has happened in business but this is

really these are business tools that we

use anything from your bi tools to um to

to your BPM tools or whatever the case

might be um how many of you are still in

the water in the waterfall mode the

workflow style um versus the more struct

or unstructured uh um object orientation

or agile uh style so um you know only

20% of businesses can actually survive

on the on the

um uh on the sorry only 20% of processes

in sort of inside of organization will

survive on your old tools the others

need new tools and if you're not going

to provide it it will circum circumvent

that so just quickly going back to what

we want to achieve we want continuous

Improvement we want intelligent

experimentation we want designed by

doing and want to change our minds often

so how do we do that um well with XM Pro

for example we give you the ability to

create this Dynamic interrupt driven

processes you don't have to draw the

flow people can can sequence these at

runtime for example so we've got inside

as a feature we can do unstructured

process configuration this is not a runr

through of all the the features that we

have in exm Pro it is a very

comprehensive big uh application and it

does a whole lot of things I've I'm I'm

not not even scratching the surface on

on on most of the functionality I just

want to I just want to highlight the

fact that if if you're going to use

agile BPM methodology um by getting

things out quickly getting a lot of

collaborative design um XM proos

unstructured process configuration

allows you to do that so in the same

breath if you want to do Dynamic

allocation of logic instead of writing a

lot of code and that sort of thing you

can use our new Dynamic allocation logic

which is part of of XM Pro as well if we

look at intelligent experimentation you

need versions of processes you want to

split test them against each other so X

and PR version management handles a lot

of um what you need there so um and then

lastly just as a as a as a agile

implementation methodology if you if

you're going to use agile in your

business and you you going to make your

business bend over backwards to

accommodate the changes that that you

have in your organization the XM Pro

allows you to do that it allows you to

to do to get processes out quickly it

allows you to do integration to external

applications quickly it allows you to um

to change the way a process work and

test it against another process quickly

it is an Ideal tool if you're looking at

a at a agile approach to fit your agile

business and our whole dynamic BPM

platform is really built around and we

ideally suited to uh organizations that

that instead of wanting to get a whole

um um group of business process

re-engineering Consultants there are

looking to to spec enough get it out

test it improve it and look at the

intelligent experimentation I just love

the term so you'll find that intelligent

tools will be the new normal I say is

The New Normal um yes it is here right

now a lot of companies haven't caught on

to that yet but agile tools will be the

new normal you're not going to be back

in the workflow days um workflow is only

a very small component of

it so thank you very much thank you for

joining us on this if you want to see a

lot more around how we can actually in

terms of the BPM agile methodology um

free to discuss it with ourselves or one

of our partners and we can also give you

a full demonstration of what XM Pro

is we'd love to talk to you about um uh

your agile or how your business can be

more agile going into the future and uh

thank you very much appreciate your time

listening to me

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