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...

Transcript

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... 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

exceptions becoming the norm now they're

not the rule their the norm are the

infrastructure or there are other

information management tools that you

use a lot more complex than what they

used to be a lot more sophisticated than

what they used to be and is in order to

manage all the change in your

organization as everyone is stuck in

this analysis paralysis environment hi

I'm Peter France kopek I'm the chief

agility officer a Texan bro and I'd like

to tell you that agile business might be

the new normal for you so if you look at

this further how agile are you would you

like to be more agile and probably not

yourself if you look at this photo but

you can also sign question about your

business would you like your business to

be 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 to what you do so today we're

going to talk at we're going to have a

look at how agile business change the

way that we work and also our

expectations of the tools that we use to

manage that work this essentially three

things I'm going to talk about today or

that I'm going to look at and the one is

how did we change the agile business now

when did this happen the second thing is

how did it change the way that we work

and then thirdly how do we change the

the tools that we use to support 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 i'd like to

have a look is the change to agile you

know the actual change that happens to

agile business and the and just looking

at how did this happen so and what do we

mean by agile business I'd like two

approaches once again from three

different angles and the first one is to

look at the dictionary definition of

what agile means what I quite like is

the fact that it says it is a quick and

well-coordinated in movement sort of

agile leap and secondly the ability to

think quickly and if you look at the

antonyms it's awkward sluggish and which

of these describe your business this

might not be sort of quite like what

your business is right at the moment or

the way that day that you see your the

the current way that your business work

but is this a sort of way that your

business needs the guy is from this

definition would you like to have a more

quick and responsive versus awkward and

sluggish top business the challenges

that that even though you might not be

making that change a lot of businesses

around you aren't doing that so for

example five years ago the average

product lifecycle was around two 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 if you've noticed if you if you've

gone by Sony video camera or even just a

download book the three months of the

you bought a specific model it's no

longer available to the whole product

lifecycles becomes so quick and

everything around us has become nice

become active and lively rather than

sluggish our software is gone the same

one often do you find that you are

financed install app updates mine does

it at least once a week on the software

itself and if you look at guys like

Microsoft which in the enterprise

software space you'll find that

Microsoft Office seem to have a new

version area and I here with windows 8

under not be

they're not talking windows 7 windows

icon I'm not sure another started

working on windows 9 so they can't use

Windows 2008 anymore because within 2000

and in 11 12 14 and by the time i get to

windows 2016 i'll probably have won a

record as they had to change the

numbering convention just got to to

accommodate the change that we see in as

everything accelerates and and it goes

forward so if we look at an agile from

my from my software perspective and most

people know agile as a software

development methodology this is not what

this talk is around it is not but it

really gives us a good framework to

understand how other 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 come up with what they call

the agile manifesto and because of this

fast changing pace in software

development and we can we can replace a

lot of the words in here with business

words but what I'm going to do right now

is just very quickly it's all around

interactions it's all around things that

work right now instead of spinning your

life desire mining 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 in business intelligence or

whatever the case instead of spinning so

much time if you look at the BI tools

the whole intelligent experimentation I

love that term for BPM as well but and

the whole working software concept so

you'll get your bi working quickly to

BPM working get your strategy's working

quickly instead of spending a lot of

time trying to document that and then

also collaboration oven contract

negotiation so there's a continuous

collaboration in this whole agile

approach so if you look at some of the

software

world as a methodology they were the

leading guys in this and not 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 look it up at the

agile manifesto org and some of the

interesting things are that the highest

priority is to satisfy is to satisfy the

customer and do you continuously deliver

value you can take the software and you

can continuously make changes because

that is what happens in agile world

there's continuous changes you deliver

new working things regularly that

doesn't mean to say that's that it's

uncontrolled is actually a lot of

control in the whole agile world it is

it is quite simple but it embodies the

whole radical change of what we've seen

in the software world we've gone from a

top-down programming like some of that

myself and a couple of other people on

this webinar on my I remember the days

that we did a structured cobol

programming and we had a whole top down

approach those of us in Fortran that did

told that I'm cutting on sheets will

remember top down and we had to use a

waterfall model you have to specify

everything right to the nth degree

because it was really hard to make any

changes and some from my the waterfall

model which is a very structured you

specify you develop you taste everything

in and there are no changes to the to

the speak at any or to watch it what you

deliver all requirements are locked down

and 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 so

the release cycles were long and you

couldn't move from the spec I didn't

really work well if we look at all the

overruns and things on that way it's a

very rigid and strictly control process

what has happened with

newer programming languages is that

we've got a whole object orientation

which is sort of an unstructured

programming approach for lack of a

better description i'm pretty sure the

technical guys will will grow me for

this but I see it as a sort of we grade

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 book if I

right click on my mouse there's an

action that I need to do so I it needs

to call that specific object it needs to

do what it needs to do and then it goes

away so that with that whole angel

development methodology also has started

because I can make these small little

chunks of object code and I can call it

I can it doesn't have to be sequential

it's not top down I can call it when I

need it it sort of created a whole new

opportunity to create agile development

tools as well we can shorten the

development cycle we can get products

out quicker and 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 rig worked

well for that what's nice with the agile

software development methodology is that

it's flexible and it allows for a agile

development approach which is

essentially what we want in in in a lot

of what we do in business as well so

does that if you reply some of these

words that I've got on the screen year

with business top word like a lad the

one that I just love is the simplicity

the art of maximizing the amount of work

not done is essential 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 just so much

harder to do stuff and operated a Texan

pro is reeling this too is really to see

how can we maximize the art of I'm sorry

how can we how can be perfect the art of

maximizing the amount of work not done

so the whole agile software software

development method

quite well known and its edits it's got

its challenges but it's really if you

look at what the objective is and what

its flying to to achieve it really suits

the way the businesses work right now so

those are the 12 principles and you can

substitute a lot of the software words

with business words and and it may sound

a little bit like what your business is

or what you would like your business to

be like so one of the best definitions

of scene of agility and it comes out of

a cio magazine is really it was done by

michael schrag and it's the he says in

the first and final analysis agility is

is about timely and cost effective

implementation and that is a key driver

these days things need to be cost

effective even doesn't matter what the

implement with a software by solution

whether it's business intelligence

whether it's EPM with a strategy

planning whether it doesn't really

matter what it is and but what it says

is that is the key part full stop

there's no question about it needs to be

family 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 the

mean 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 X Emperor's driving

ambitions is do is to make sure that we

can achieve this with with business

processes as well so is that how we

should see business processes and if I

look at what we used to do in terms of

modeling all the a ceases and 2 b's and

i'm trying to come up with the right

thing and this whole agility process

would get

as to our business objectives a lot

quicker so what is a agile business

process so I'm just going to quickly

talk about and I've got business /

process because it's actually business

but a key driver of business is business

processes and X implies business is

business process so that we are not a

workflow tool we are process management

tool and processes by definition is not

necessarily sequential or a workflow it

is it is activities that drive a

specific business outcome and that I

need to be in a sequential form so so

far we've looked at the agile definition

of what of what agile method of looked

at the dictionary definition of what

agile businesses we've also looked at at

the so the software methodology and and

when you look at businesses we see

there's a definite shift in in business

from the predictable too unpredictable I

know for a fact we find it hard to get

five people in the room and get them to

you have the same view of vision of a

process or a business outcome or

something like that self easiest way to

look at at the agile business or

business process is to actually look at

the drivers that influence this change

from a from from a very structured

approach we knew exactly how our

business worked going into this whole

agile business approach and Peter

Drucker coined the phrase so this this

this 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 Drucker everyone in the

management will

nas Peter Drucker is one of the biggest

breweries around management strategy and

equine the fries knowledge worker and

essentially a knowledge worker is ISM as

a move away from doing workers to

thinking workers and these are people

who have contextual knowledge around

processes and I can make decisions based

on this structure process done really

work and have to circle the instructive

processes because I want to make their

own decisions around routing around

logic around also two things doesn't

mean it's uncontrolled there's full

control around a knowledge workers but

it just means that they can make their

own decisions on a lot of how processes

works if you think back around the what

I'd explain around the top down

programming versus the object object

orientation program they are they work

in a world of object orientation if they

need to right-click the mouse it needs

to respond to that knowledge workers I

like that so if I have contextual

information then know something about a

process and I'm not spending a little

bit more mid lighting in the in the

presentation around the knowledge

workers but if around this unstructured

work or but as soon as I know if they

have contextual knowledge or if they

know the context and with the in which

this process is happening they can make

decisions which will wrapped it in a

different way will have different

business rules so exceptions for them of

the rule and 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 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 it so

there's a whole shift do knowledge

workers even into areas that weren't

traditionally knowledge workers so if we

look at the second reason why we've

become 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 condition

to stop and start all the time we don't

work in a sequential way anymore I don't

know if you do it I personally if I see

it email coming I will stop whatever

else I'm doing and I'll tend to the

email sometimes I do three or four

things at the same time not that I do a

great job of that 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 sequential

state anymore the other thing that has

happened is conversations are on now 140

characters and by that I mean with

Twitter things like Twitter has changed

why that we see conversations and how we

can do conversations and it's not just

Twitter the tools like Yammer social

costs and all of those inside

organizations that are now have key

parts of conversations in and that's how

we talk that's how we collaborate and

they've 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 conversation in yama and i

can have an email and i can have a whole

lot of different interrupt driven wise

there's tools like in it since i might

also have a quick in the center and

office is looking at product izing what

the office Microsoft's looking at

practicing something that cool offers

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 we ever whatever

one call that the third driver for agile

business so the first one was the fact

that we knowledge workers the second one

is that we now interrupt driven and the

third one which is I had a profound

impact is actually worse law which say

and because a lot of the work that we do

these dyes and as the matter in what if

what type of job it is an organization

we find more and more that that people

people use computers do to do part of

the work and processing power

inside computers are doubling every two

years now if you look at this graph is

unbelievable well if you look at the i7

processor that we have right now and

most of our and most of our notebooks

that we carry around you'll find that

it's about 2.6 billion transacts

transactions on a chip interesting

conversation with a financial bar this

morning said to me so how many are they

in a packet if these two point six

billion on a chip not everyone

understands he said it as a joke but

yeah so that gives you some some

perspective of of what is happening with

computing power this just drives what we

can do with computers and the way that

we can that we can use it what is more

interesting is Zuckerberg floor so we

hadn't words Lord came out here he was

easier int'l at the time as far as I can

recall were but Mark Zuckerberg the CEO

of facebook has come out with with a

very interesting very similar and is by

stood on words 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 I base

it on what they see in facebook right

now they are around five billion things

statuses images videos all of that

shared on Facebook a day now this was

announced in stepped in the September in

2011 at the if if I developers

conference so this is pretty recent

stats as well four billion things and

these view is that this will double in

the next / per person we will double the

amount what we share in a social way or

in a collaborative way so all of these

things are driving and it's got a

massive impact on business because it

actually drives what we do now I've got

my own my own law which are call from

Scott legs law and I hope it'll catch on

which and the statement is that business

agility will double every two years if

we type all these factors into

consideration were low zuckerberg flow

and all the social phenomena that we see

and the interrupt driven up

that we will become twice as agile so we

will double our jealousy every two years

and that's from school fights law and

you can quote me on that then Steve

Keith swinson and Sandy Kemsley and

Keith Swenson is the warranty vice

president for fujitsu based in the US he

writes a lot on BPM case management all

of us sort of things and Sandy Kingsley

is a well-recognized BPM analyst and she

does she see also does a lot of writing

research and she's got a great blog as

well which I can recommend and I've come

up with if you look at agile BPM in a

webinar that they did on be agile BPM

using while just looking at how

processes of change and what I like

about this is that the goal of the

system so when you look at the

transactional system the other and it's

not that these are going away that's the

idea to any principle twenty percent of

processes will still be transactional

will still have a rigid structure but we

have a eighty percent of business and

this is what from gardner and they came

up with the idea 20 Janelle Hill my

gardener but the the the weather what's

great about this is that the that the

goal of the system in the past was just

efficiency in 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

that's actually to solve problems and

and the challenge is that instead of

being highly repeatable it's become

unpredictable so you need tools to do

together therefore for that sir how does

that change the way that we work I said

earlier that there are three questions

and and the first one was why did we so

just to step back of the three equations

the first one is agile business and give

me this describes that agile business is

the new normal sir does it change the

way that we work well in terms of the

three questions the first one was why

did we change to agile business the

second one is

is is how do we change the work and then

lasting will also look at the tools that

we that we do this so if I just quickly

go back and we look at the 12 principles

of the agile methodology will recognize

that that that that some of these have a

profound way a 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 BP oil way the

business process re-engineering way we

would spend a lot of money to get

consultants in to come 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 get the first version out quickly

and we can start improving on that so

instead of doing three years of BP are

we can get the vice requirements down

without spinning all our time and money

on that and by the time we've got the

bicep I'm oh sorry if we do the three of

BP our project by the time we get to do

something all our processes have changed

we'd like to take a lot more continuous

improvement price approach in most of

the work that we do these days doesn't

matter what it is and we'd like to do

smaller chunks with the alike to get

results a lot quicker and we'd like to

see things happen a lot easy and I just

love the next slide which is a Salvador

Dali said I have no fear of perfection

you will never reach it to me that is up

so profound as well in terms of what

we're trying to achieve do enough to

from we find that right now I'm the way

that we work has become let's do enough

so we can get started and get something

done a lot of businesses especially the

ones that perform well I've taken that

that approach second thing is that we

want to do 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 and that's where

I've heard it and being used but

intelligent experimentation doesn't mean

we just it still means that we work in a

controlled fashion we take information

from analytics tools

from the process from from our analytics

is a great driver for this so we'll get

information and analytics tools and

decide how you're going to change it

we're going to split test certain things

that the marketing guys are brilliant at

split testing ads so that they can see

which is the best performing one and

I'll drop the other one and they

installed a new pricey ad that will

compete with the other one and so that's

how they sort of flu evolutionary

process build the strongest add that

they can do is continuous testing

there's no reason why we why we can do

that in other areas of business and we

starting to see starting we start to see

that that emerges in an inner in a lot

of that we do so the other the other

great one that I saw and this is this is

once again Gardner I can take credit for

this is to design by doing rather than

doing by design God knows now come out

and said listen maybe maybe you don't

need to spend as much time on trying to

get that or do strive for perfection to

get this big one hundred percent 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 because you will actually never

never get that we find more and more

there's a drive and this impacts the way

that we work and it doesn't only apply

to BBM and place to a whole lot of areas

that gotten the in terms of the

competency areas that they apply this

design by doing now so there's a

definite impact 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 minds would

you say that we'd like our requirements

to differ what has happened with with

the new tools especially web-based 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 to next Dharma that that is

update on on Facebook that my iphone app

will automatically pick up

have to worry about it so we can change

our minds often we can and 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 but really if

you take those 12 principles in you and

you just apply the business side of it

you can see how this impact the way that

we were the way that we work 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 that we will be

experimenting we expect that we will be

changing our mind so we have come up

with a agile work approach which we see

as the new normal so in the last place

it's going to quickly talk around the

tools that we need to manage this so

I've given you how business have changed

and how the work that we've done have

changed so they might the the only thing

that now still needs to that reminds

that needs to change is the actual tools

because the old tools done working you

know the old way that we've done things

don't work anymore with this whole agile

business approach and once again i just

want to remind you it's not too agile

software methodology even that's a great

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 do to

your beep m tools or whatever the case

might be how many of you are still in

the water in the water full mode the

workflow style this is the more

structure or unstructured object

orientation or agile style so you know

only twenty percent of businesses can

actually survive on the on the on the

only twenty percent of processes in a

saloon 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'll second second

bin there so just quickly going back to

what we want to achieve we want

continuous improvement we want

intelligent experimentation you want

designed by doing and one to change our

minds often so how do we do that

well with X in private for example we

give you the ability to create this

dynamic interrupt driven processes you

don't have to draw the flow people who

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 run-through

of all the features that we have an X

Emperor it is a very comprehensive big

application and it does a lot of things

Ivan I'm not even scratching the surface

on on most of the functionality I'd

sooner I just want to highlight the fact

that if you're going to use agile BPM

methodology and by getting things are

quickly getting a lot of collaborative

design and eczema is 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 X and pro as well if we look at

intelligent experimentation you need

versions of processes you want to split

a stand against each other so X and

price version management handles a lot

of what you need to sir and then lastly

just as a as a as an agile

implementation methodology if you if

you're going to use agile in your

business and you make your business bend

over backwards to accommodate the

changes that you have in your

organization the next improv allows you

to do that it allows you to do to get

processes out quickly and it allows you

to do integration to external

applications quickly it allows you to to

change what the way I process work and

test it against another process quickly

it is ideal tool if you looking at a at

a agile approach to fit your agile

business and our whole dynamic BPM

platform is really built around and we

are daily suited to organizations that

that instead of wanting to get a whole

group of business process reengineering

consultants they are looking to to speak

enough get it out tested improve it and

look at the Intel

experimentation I'd love to them so

you'll find that intelligent tools will

be the new normal I say is the new

normal 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 day's work flies 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 on how you

can actually in terms of the BPM agile

methodology and free to discuss it with

the south or one of our partners and we

can also give you a full demonstration

of what X and pro is we'd love to talk

to you about your agile or how your

business can be more agile going going

into the future and thank you very much

appreciate your time and listening to me