Leading by example: how agile practitioners can kick start business-wide transformation

About this Case Study

Organisations are starting to wake up to the possibilities of being agile in non-product areas of the business. How can you - as an agile practitioner with skills, scars and experience - help them to understand what it means to 'become agile'? Where are the pain points that make the difference between success and failure? What are the new challenges likely to emerge in creating an agile organisation?

During the session, we will explore the following questions:

• 1. What is an agile organisation?
  Drawing on case studies such as FAVI and Bosch, we will explore what it means to bring agility to the whole organisation.
• 2. What barriers occur with agile at the scale of the whole organisation?
  Examining barriers such as key interfaces between agile teams and central services, long-term annual planning and budgeting cycles versus flexibility and agility and the challenges of strategy formation in an agile environment, we will start to gather ideas and experiences from on how to address these.
• 3. What is the role of existing agile practitioners within the organisation?
  Agile practitioners have the skills and scars needed to make great change agents - leading by example, showcasing digital knowledge, agile expertise and, most crucially, practical advice for colleagues. The change agent role can often be an isolating one, so we will also share ideas for maintaining momentum and enthusiasm, creating networks with the organisation and we'll take experiences from participants.
• 4. Lessons from Bosch: agility at organisational scale
  During the final part, I will be sharing practical insights and lessons learned during an intense year working on a transformation programme with Bosch to create an agile company.

About the Speaker

Cerys Hearsey, Managing Director, Postshift Consulting. Cerys is Postshift's lead consultant on technology-enabled organisation design. She currently teaches executives and change agents at large enterprises on the methods of enabling agile, distributed change.

In her 15 years working with enterprise clients, Cerys has supported organisations through the strategy, selection, implementation and embedding of social platforms, including IBM Connections, Jive, Yammer, SharePoint and Confluence. She has enabled organisations to grow mature social business platforms using adoption tactics and organisational health measure frameworks.

Before joining Postshift, Cerys was an independent consultant for 10 years, implementing knowledge and information systems. Cerys is happiest at work when armed with sticky notes and a kanban board. Outside of work, she enjoys diving in murky waters of the UK, searching for archaeological finds from an abundance of wrecks.

 CerysHearsey