Sriram Narayan - Agile IT Organization Design: For Digital Transformation and Continuous Delivery

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For Digital Transformation
and Continuous Delivery

Sriram Narayan

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Narayan, Sriram.
Agile IT organization design: for digital transformation and continuous delivery / Sriram Narayan.First Edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-13-390335-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Organizational change. 2. Strategic planning. 3. Information technologyManagement. I. Title.
HD58.8.N37 2015

004.068dc23

2015010984

Copyright 2015 Pearson Education, Inc.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. To obtain permission to use material from this work, please submit a written request to Pearson Education, Inc., Permissions Department, 200 Old Tappan Road, Old Tappan, New Jersey 07675, or you may fax your request to (201) 236-3290.

ISBN-13: 978-0-13-390335-5
ISBN-10: 0-13-390335-4

Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
First printing, June 2015

Continuous delivery is often described from the perspective of the technicians. This is understandable because that is where it started, but it does the process a disservice. Continuous delivery is a holistic approach. It requires change across the organization and it encourages such change, to the betterment of the groups that practice it. This book addresses that problem and looks at CD from an organizational perspective. It starts from Dan Pinks ideas of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators and describes how to structure an organization for successhow to encourage a focus on autonomy, mastery, and purpose that will motivate your teams and produce high-quality results. This book takes a look at all aspects of organizational design that impact the ability to deliver regular, small, high quality changes. If you follow the advice in this book, your organization will be the better for it.

Dave Farley, author of Continuous Delivery

A number of years ago, Silicon Valley marketing guru Geoffrey Moore quipped, A bank is just a computer with a marketing department. Today, technologiescloud, social, big data, the Internet of Things, and mobilecontinue to drive this unprecedented digital transformation in organizations. As such, the need for agility has moved from software development to corporate boardrooms. Srirams book makes the case that to thrive in these fast and uncertain times, enterprise leaders need to rethink how IT, not just software development, is organized, structured, and measured. His book provides guidelines, not prescriptions, which enable innovation, adaptability, and responsiveness at scale.

Jim Highsmith, Executive Consultant, ThoughtWorks, Author of Adaptive Leadership

Very hands-on and operational book for management of Agile-based development. Provides valuable insight for IT practitioners. A must read for IT professionals.

A.V. Sridhar, Founder, President & CEO Digite, Inc.

Agile IT Organization Design is an engaging, enlightening, and immensely practical book. While many authors have addressed Agile software development, very few have tackled the wider topic of the more systemic changes necessary to move from Agile software to an agile organization, and onwards to digital transformation. Even fewer have done so at more than a very theoretical level. Drawing heavily upon his substantial practical experience, Sriram Narayans book explores the pitfalls of many of our current organizational wisdoms and gently, but convincingly, suggests appropriate and relevant alternatives to try in their placeall the time backed up by real-world examples. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in, or struggling with, the challenges and opportunities of achieving organizational agility.

Chris Murphy, President and Chief Strategy Officer, ThoughtWorks

Agile and continuous delivery transformations require changes in technology, process, and people. This book is the first to tackle the people aspect in depth, and it does this very well. A must read for those taking the journey!

Anders Wallgren, CTO, Electric Cloud

Agile IT Organization Design tackles all the problems that we just want to ignore. Relying heavily on hands-on experience rather than theoretical exercises, Sriram provides concrete actions to address the issues with Agile software development and continuous delivery at a structural and organizational level. He clearly addresses issues of finance, accountability, and metrics, not just team structure and team processes, and gives many examples and scenarios to help understand how these issues manifest and how the proposed steps work to resolve the issues. Organizational transformations to Agile often fail, not because the individual processes and practices break down, but because the organization itselfits power structure, its organizational norms, and its culturefight against the gains that Agile has the potential to bring. Sriram focuses our attention on the systemic problems, but then provides action steps to allow us to address these problems in our context. This book presents no silver bullet, as those dont exist. However, Sriram provides for organizations a way to start facing reality and moving towards an organization that supports not only Agile software development but organizational and business agility.