Enterprise Engagement

How to grow individuals out of a job description that is rigid, constrained and lacks empowerment.

An in-depth analysis of defining jobs and roles in organizations by Jeff Anderson. The writer walks us through the traditional approaches to roles and jobs noting that they don't allow self-organization - as they lead to rigidity, constrain, and lack of empowerment in the workplace. He further pinpoints that we can however define roles and jobs in an Agile organization without undermining self-organization to create a borderless workplace where employees focus on getting to the outcome rather than creating deliverables, specialists train and mentor others, and leaders step in to help when necessary.

Three practices that when modeled by a leader will shape the culture you want the organization to move towards.

Culture can be changed intentionally, and leaders from all levels can shape the organization with the practices they do with teams. In this online meetup Ronica Roth covers three practices that, when modeled by a leader, have a big impact on those around you - and will eventually move the organization towards the culture you desire. These three practices are: 1) Facilitate open and honest discussions; 2) Help people plan to learn; and 3) Express appreciation to make values real through storytelling.

Contrasting having a few coaches set the tone for many others or having dedicated coaches embedded in teams.

This whitepaper extensively talks about Agile coaching with the key focus on decentralized and centralized coaching. It states that there is a frequent misunderstanding with respect to the definition of agile coaching: coaching focus (e.g. enterprise vs. team) is confused with coaching alignment (centralized vs. decentralized) within an organization. We learn that centralized coaching is basically a distinct organization driving transformation across the entire organization while decentralized coaching is a less rigidly structured team of like-minded coaches that align themselves with a clearly defined product, service, or line of the business. Read the whitepaper now to draw the difference between centralized coaching and decentralized coaching, know the benefits of decentralized coaching, and generally gain a deeper insight into Agile coaching.

A scientific investigation of a model tested on both small-scale and large-scale organizations to determine the success factors for agile transformations.

What really attributes to a successful agile transformation? Christiaan Verwijs in this post summarizes a scientific investigation carried by Daniel Russo, a professor at the University of Aalborg, about the key factors that give agile transformations traction. The research is based on a model tested on a single organization and then on a large-scale sample for generalization. The results indicate that Scrum masters and other factors explained in the article, contribute to successful agile transformations.