The Agile Congruence Framework Part 2

4. Analyze Gaps and Build your Backlog

In the process laid out by Nadler and Tushman this phase was labeled Identify Problems. In the world of agile software development these problems are captured using tools like User Stories. Modern UX techniques can also be used to help with this Analysis. At Chatham, when facing some complex organizational changes, we use the concept of a Design Sprint to guide users through a problem identification process and capture the gaps in the current organization. Each organization typically has a different process for accomplishing this and there is a wealth of information in the software world on various processes that your organization could implement.

5. Modeling your Organization

Building a model of the organization can be simple for small organizations, but for larger organizations managers may need to leverage other resources like HR or Business Analysts. The actual techniques required for this phase will vary greatly depending on the size of the organization and your familiarity with the organization.

People

• Who are the people?
• What are their skills?
• What training is available to develop new skills in existing employees?
• What recruiting is available to hire outside talent?

Culture

• What are your organization’s communication patterns?
• How are decisions made when a formal process is not in place?

Work

• How do you release software?
  • Are all users updated simultaneously or do users need to upgrade? 
  • How frequently do you release software?
• How do you do change management and training for users? 
• How well documented are your existing formal processes?

Organizational Structure

• How are you structured to deliver?
• How many teams are involved?
• What are the accountability and responsibility structures?

6. Assess Congruence

When planning and prioritizing software changes in the context of organizational changes, it is important to evaluate congruence and identify associated organizational changes before you can properly prioritize software features. Features that are simple to implement but that the organization is not prepared to consume will result in lower priority. Without assessing congruence teams could choose to deliver these early, creating organizational misalignments.

7. Determine Value and Priority

In the book Agile Software Development with Scrum the role of the scrummaster included managing and prioritizing the backlog. In the nearly 20 years since that book was released organizations have realized that a key to delivering effective software is tight integration between the development teams and the business. This trend has shown several effective ways of managing the backlog, with a few guiding principles behind them. 

• While priorities can change, the backlog should stay prioritized each sprint entering sprint planning.
• There should be a single source of priority for the development team. One and only one person can tell a given scrum team what their highest priority features are. 

In the agile congruence framework organizational changes and software changes should be evaluated together. A development team will typically break features down to a ticket level to allow them to work in an efficient and coordinated manner, but this level of detail is too deep to make strategic prioritization decisions. Try to keep this decision making at the level of business level features.