Accelerate Your Pathway to Agility, Embrace Five Pillars of Business Agility (With Kwasi Amponsa) : Scrum Day London 24 TalkInTen

Scrum Day London is our second conference of the year, and we’re thrilled to bring you more exciting episodes from this renowned event!

As we continue our TalkInTen series, we have a special episode featuring Kwasi Amponsa, an enterprise agility consultant, who explores the crucial elements needed to achieve true business agility.

Kwasi on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwasi-amponsa-19750139/

Here is the synopsis of Kwasi's Talk:

In today’s fast-paced digital age, business leaders are more concern about the Teslasation, Netflixification, and Amazonification of their respective industry sectors than they are about their their business sector competitors. Business leaders recognise that disruptions induced through fast-paced technology innovations and consistent changes in customer expectations are unsettling established traditions and ways of operation. 

Businesses that are able to embrace and accelerate towards agility obtain the ability to be proactive and reactive at the same time when business dynamics shift. Obtaining agility is aligned to what I reference as the five pillars of business agility, my talk will therefore draw focus to the pillars that are required to enable business agility… 

1. Significance of obtaining a customer-centric operation
2. Evolution of technical framework
3. Enhancing the ability to deliver value at pace
4. Embracing autonomy in the workforce
5. Importance of simplifying organisational design

Episode Highlights:

- Business Agility: Learn about the five pillars necessary for achieving business agility in today’s dynamic environment.

- Practical Insights: Gain practical tips and real-world examples from Kwasi’s extensive experience.

- Transformational Strategies: Discover how to navigate organisational complexities and enhance your product strategy.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!

Use code PRODUCTAGILITY24 for 15% off training courses at Sheev.

Sheev - https://www.sheev.co.uk

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Ben Maynard

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Product Agility Podcast

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Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome to the Product Agility Podcast. I'm your host Ben Maynard and for the next few days we have extra special episodes coming to you from Scrum Day London 2024. This event is a beacon for agile enthusiasts and professionals and I'm thrilled to bring you insights and new ideas from some of the brightest minds in the agile and product community. For those of you who are new to the podcast, the Product Agility Podcast is your go -to resource for practical tips, strategies, and stories from world -class products and agile thought leaders. Our goal is to increase your knowledge and motivation to experiment, so together we can create ever more successful products. Before we dive in, I'd like to thank our sponsor for this episode, Sheave. Sheave is my company, and we specialize in helping organizations simplify, focus, and align. through embracing a product mindset and using Agile as a means to drive success. Whatever your product or Agile challenge, learn about how Sheave can help your organisation thrive or extend out your own Agile journey at www .sheave .co .uk. That's S -H -E -E -V. And to get a whopping 15 % off of all of our courses, use the code PRODUCTAGILITY24 at the checkout. Now we have an exciting lineup of speakers from Scrum Day London 2024 who will be sharing valuable insights and practical tips for you to experiment with. So grab a pen and paper, perhaps a hot drink, and let's dive into a talking tent. Scrum Day London 2024, I am here with Kwasi Aponza, whose workshop, and I'm going to read it out as it was listed on the website, Accelerate Your Pathway to Agility, Embrace the Five Pillars of Business Agility, happened earlier on today and... I'm looking forward to learning more about it because I think that business agility is something which is gaining more traction from there is more focused on it. It's been bubbling around in the background for years now and it's interesting to see it kind of making a bit of a resurgence. So I'm really keen to hear more about your workshop and just what these five pillars are. Thank you very much for having a podcast and could you introduce yourself and your talk to our and your workshop to our listeners, please. Thank you very much. So, who's Kwe Si An Ponsa? I am an enterprise agility consultant and I've been doing this work for about 16 years now. I've worked across industry in delivering transformational changes for the financial sector, organizations as well in the public sector, and also in government. Currently, I'm working for Jaguar Land Rover. I'm doing exactly what I've just said, agile stroke digital transformation. So that's me in a nutshell. Nice. So you know Shelby then? I know Shelby. I know Shelby, yes. Myself and Shelby work in the same department. In fact, I work for Shelby. It's a common theme, it turns out, whenever people come on the podcast and it seems that everyone works for Shelby is what I'm learning. They show Shelby is a, she's a friend of the podcast, friend of mine as well. She interviewed me for my own podcast a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, which is brilliant. So Shelby's fantastic. Anyway, enough about Shelby. Let's talk about you, mate. So you work at Jaguar Land Rover, great company, doing some really interesting things. I know they're saying it's a great kind of, point in your journey at the moment of how things are changing. But back to one side, your workshop, the five pillars of business agility, so what were these pillars? Yeah, thank you very much. So firstly, let's demystify the difference between agile and agility. I think we need to cross that point firstly before we move forward. often we often relate agile to Scrum ways of working. And that's, I said it earlier, it's almost becoming natural position for people to take because Scrum is the most dominant methodology out there. The other point worth making is that Scrum as a methodology can benefit methodology or any other agile methodology whether it be XP tends to be most relatable at team operational level. The problem comes along when you want to get better insight into what the teams are doing one, if you're able to measure the outputs that the teams are delivering as a second point, and you're able to then, if you're trying to also connect those outputs to strategy. Once we're embarking on that journey, then we're starting to make steps towards agility. And so that's the key thing that we need to draw our attention to. your ability to ensure or operationalize agile principles from a strategic level right down to the delivery that the teams are outputting as solutions to our customers. If you're able to achieve that, then you're on the road towards agility. So with that out of the way, what are the five pillars then that enables that to happen? What my talk focused on was number one, the ability to achieve a customer -centric working or operation. And this does not just focus on just having a product owner representing a customer. within the setup of an organization. There are practical things that you need to really put in place. How do you create effective feedback loops, for example? How do you enable a co -creation working environment? How do you also apply the principles around prioritization and prioritization led by empirical data? That's the first thing. The second pillar that we looked at in the workshop was the ability to to deliver value at pace or accelerate the pace towards value. Now, to do that, what we looked at critically was the ability to create an environment where you can pivot and make adjustments without mercy, if required. So what that essentially is saying is, if you're failing, don't just keep failing. But if you're failing, recognize that you're failing very quickly and take those critical decisions to change direction if need be. That's the first thing. So that's very reactive in terms of an approach. The second thing that we're looking at in terms of we're trying to accelerate towards value is the ability to be in a position where you're proactive. So we recognize that in the journey of industrialization, if you were to take right back to the 18th century, where we're looking at mechanization, form of industrialization to electrification, to automation, to globalization, to where we find ourselves now. And I would say that we are at that tipping point of digitalization. We need to be in a position where we can be very, plugged in with our customers. But in order to be plugged in with our customers, we need to understand what value means to our customers and therefore be in a position to deliver that value and understand whether we're delivering that value at pace and be in a position to make the adjustments if we need to be. So take for example in the automotive industry, we are in a position where we're creating automated vehicles, but it's also about the customer experience. It's not just about having a car, that's just a mechanical instrument. is also having a car that gives you the experience whilst you're driving it. And so therefore, we're moving towards a position where we're digitalizing the experience within the cars, introducing concepts around what you can subscribe to within the car and so forth, and being in a position where you're able to capture the experience of the customer who's driving that car to ensure that you're continuously delivering value back to that customer. You're only going to be able to do that if you're able. to these pillars. All of these pillars need to be connected. The third aspect of the pillar is to be in a position where you're enabling simplicity. So we often find ourselves in organizations where... the leaders come in and say, we want to go and do Agile. Why? Because it makes us produce quicker. We want to deliver value quicker, which is fine. We want to move and get things done quicker. We want to be in the position. Often you don't really hear them tell you that we want to enable a collaborative working culture. It's always about how can we get things done quicker, right? Which is fine, okay, how do we go do that? let's set up a Scrum team over there, or let's set up an Agile team over there. Well, they say let's set up an Agile team, but what they really mean is let's put a Scrum team in place, and then let's embrace that Scrum team with JIRA. And yes, we've ticked the box, and we've been able to achieve Agile, right? But what we don't do, what we don't take a step back to really assess is, are we, is the organization, organize to enable one, agile principles, two, to enable agility. So I always say the first step is look at how the organization is structured. Are we organizing the way where we can truly trace the value that we're delivering? Are we organizing in a way where we're really enabling cross -functional approach to delivering or not? So let's look at the organizational structure. Let's look at the operating model. How does that enable agile ways of working? So we need to ensure that we're enabling simplistic ways of working by really looking at how we're structured as an organization. So we need to enable simplicity within the organization. Third point is we need to enable, so we need to liberate the people that work within the organization by trusting them, by creating environments of psychological safety. by creating an environment where the knowledge workers are really given the empowerment to drive forward innovation. We don't build those trusts within organizations. And without doing that, we're not enabling agility. The fourth point addressed the ability to evolve our technology and processes. We can apply agile ways of working. be it Scrum, be it Camban at team level. The reason why Amazon was able to push Blockbuster out was because one, they were listening to their customers. Two, they were able to deliver what the customer want, but they were able to deliver in a timely manner and give them exactly what they want when they want it at a fast pace. You're only able to do that if you've got a technology backbone to support it. And so we can't look at Agile in isolation to the technology that embraces agility. We can't look at Agile in isolation of DevOps, for example. you know, to create an environment where we can continuously integrate, continuously deploy and release on demand, depending on what the data is telling us. So evolving around our technology is the fourth pillar. Sorry, that was the fifth pillar. I've covered them all, fifth actually. So yeah, so those are the five. Customer centricity, being able to accelerate delivery of value, being able to enable simplicity in our operation. being able to liberate the people that work in our workplaces, really get them to think and be empowered. And lastly, being able to embrace technology and evolve around. the use of technology in our agility. For me, these are the five pillars that enable agility. If we're able to do that, we move away from the concept of just agile. It has been said a few times in the building today. The question has been asked, is agile failing? My response to that is certainly not. Agile cannot afford to fail in this age, in this digitalization, as I explained earlier. It cannot afford to fail. is usually the application of agile. that's usually the problem. And having a broader understanding of what agility really means is what we really need to focus on. Leaders need to really, really focus on. Organisations in general need to focus on. I believe that that was brilliant. Thank you very much. I love the liberation of the people. I think that's such a lovely way of putting it. I'm kind of done with the word empowerment. It's kind of overused, it's become jargon. I think about liberation, that's such a... Motive term as well. I love it. Thank you so much for taking this time. It's been brilliant here about your five pillars I'm gonna put your LinkedIn link into the show notes if it would do want to contact you and ask you questions follow up Then they can grab you via LinkedIn. I suppose is okay. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Please do I love talking about these topics and most importantly for me is it goes beyond theory I like being involved in implementation of these principles. It's absolutely critical. I Awesome, yeah, you've got to keep your hand in man, otherwise what's the point? Thank you so much for coming along, it's been brilliant to get to hear about your workshop, even though I couldn't attend it, and everyone at home, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, going for a run, in the queue for passport control, which I guess, which I hear is where lots of people listen to the podcast. It is, it is, need to be there listening to you whilst you're waiting for security. Thank you very much for listening, thank you very much for coming on the show, and yes, we'll be back again at some point very soon.