Business leaders say they want Agile Delivery, but that's not the whole story. They actually want Predictable and Agile Delivery.

Large organisations need to make forecasts so they can make prioritization decisions, make plans and mobilize resources accordingly.

The traditional model is optimized for (mass) production at scale of identical things which does not suit customized services or knowledge work, in which the deliverables are always different. Neither does it allow for the deliberate non-optimization of secondary (supporting) teams.

In this talk Russ describes the mechanisms that make the output of delivery teams predictable, so they can be trusted to produce reliable cost estimates. He provides examples of teams that have succeeded and reveals the symptoms of those who are yet to reach this milestone.

He then describes how the organization can be re-engineered towards a value-delivery model, citing the inverted pyramid as one example.

W Edwards Deming wrote his guide to Business Agility more than 30 years ago, under the title Out of the Crisis. He criticised the operating model, design and management of Western organizations in detail and described a better way based on empirical control and quality improvement.

Deming is known as the father of quality, yet through the success of his teachings in Japan, lectures and published works, has probably had a greater impact on the whole area we now call Agile than any other individual. He understood the importance of people and their roles within the organization as a system.

In this talk we see how modern organizations seeking agility look through the lens of Deming’s 14 points for transformation, how they fare on his list of 7 deadly diseases and what they can adopt from his system of Profound Knowledge.

A lot has changed in 30 years, especially in the field of technology and our understanding of the workplace and the results are surprising.

Shockingly, the question “what’s the point of managers in an agile organization?” remains unanswered.

Managers have been sidelined by the Agile movement, being told to “remove blockers and bring coffee, but otherwise stay out of the way of the delivery team”.

Their bosses (who sponsor and desire transformation) expect those managers to “make Agile happen” but haven’t updated their job descriptions, so management still operates in a traditional way.

Yet middle management is critical to agility and necessary in all large organizations, even digital-natives such as Google, Amazon and PayPal.

Following years of practical coaching and extensive research, Russ Lewis reveals the three strategic actions managers must take to deliver Business Agility and why they are more important than anything else for every organization in transition to agility.