Cesario Ramos - Creating Agile Organizations: A Systemic Approach

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Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding about Agileespecially at scaleis that its just a new process or way of working or mindset or culture. Senior management then incorrectly thinks, Since this is just a change of practices and processes and mindset, our role is to support it with education for the hands-on people. And... these new practices and culture can be introduced into the existing organization.

From this ignorance flows a world of dysfunction, disruption, and degradation, leading to the widespread failure of Agile to provide high-impact and lasting benefits.

Cesrio and Ilia are among a small group of coaches who really understand both this mistake and its remedy, focusing on a key element of successful change to being adaptive at scale.

Cesrio and Ilia also understand that organizational design (OD) is not something that senior managers should support. Rather, that OD is something senior managers need to themselves own, master, create, and leadrather than something delegated to middle management or consultants. In that sense, this book is a practical primer on OD for senior management.

Also, near the top of the list in Agile misunderstandings is the incorrect belief that Agile equals deliver fast. Sure, early, and frequent delivery is important for learning, reducing risks, and making an impact (or not). But especially at scale, consider this scenario: There are two fast-delivery feature teams, each specialized in a different domain: one in bond trading and the other in equities trading. Suppose they both deliver fast, and its discovered that theres little money (this quarter) in bond trading, but lots in equity trading. Butand this is the key pointas long as there exists a formal team called the Bond Trading feature team, and probably a Bond Trading software development manager, then even though they have learned bonds currently suck, the team is likely to keep doing the same kind of work, because the