Applying Lean and Agile Thinking across enterprisewide Value Creation Process
In my previous organization, I had the charter to implement "End to End Execution Framework". The goals behind this company-wide cross-functional strategic program were to:
- align product development with sales, delivery and operations
- orchestrate support functions such as legal and finance with product creation and selling processes
- provide visibility into process flows to ensure bottlenecks could be eliminted fast, and
- establish cycle times and provide dashboards and analytics to help improve overall lead times
In Dec 2013, we embarked on an ambitious companywide program to map process flows from pretty much all the functions: Pre-sales, Sales, Marketing, Legal, Finance, Service Delivery (SD), SD PMO, ED Engineering, Design Studio, Product Management, Product Engineering, IT, Production Ops, Analytics and finally Optimization. In the first phase, we mapped and optimized 50+ process flows that were grouped under three major value-creation heads - build product, sell solution and deliver outcomes. In several cases, the processes were not documented, and in some cases, the processes didn't exist. The activity took close to 4+ months of dedicated team of 3 process experts.
In next phase, we custom-built a workflow solution to help streamline end-to-end process flow. It was application of Lean thinking into the overall execution framework with the goal to imrpove agility through the entire value stream. We implemented workflows that allowed us to build process flows, provide visibility, management dashboard and metrics.
In this session, I will share our journey, pains and accomplishments.
This is a continuation of my work that was proposed in Agile India 2014. (http://confengine.com/agile-india-2014/proposal/26/agility-the-scale-of-busine). Based on this work, I will also propose a framework for addressing enterprisewide agility.
Outline/Structure of the Case Study
1. Explain the notion of enterprisewide agility
2. Describe our context ("before")
3. Descibe our goals and journey ("after")
Learning Outcome
1. What does scaling agility across the enterprise entail?
2. How do you contextualize the notion of agility in terms of sales, marketing, delivery or operations
3. Propose a framework for enterprisewide agility
Target Audience
Change leaders, Enterprisewide coaches,
Video
Links
I have presented on my experiences at Yahoo! leading large-scale agile adoption across the R&D organization at AgileIndia 2014. However, this case study is much more than that. We are talking about involving functions outside software teams, such as pre-sales, sales, markeitng, legal, finance, etc. into an overall organization-wide 'agile' thinking.
Earlier proposal for Agile India 2014: http://confengine.com/agile-india-2014/proposal/26/agility-the-scale-of-busine