The Free Beyond Agile Governance Review is a free-of-charge precursor of our Beyond Agile Governance Audit without any obligations. Typically, it would involve a range of activities aimed at assessing the improvement opportunities in your governance from both a compliance and agile point of view.

Some key Review activities:

1. Agile Practices: List Agile methodologies and principles that are being implemented and determine gaps towards a target Agile OS.
2. Process: Review the existing processes and determine Lean and Agile improvement opportunities for efficiency and effectiveness.
3. Performance Metrics: Examining if indicators and metrics are aimed at value, effectiveness, productivity, and quality.
4. Stakeholder Feedback: Evaluate feedback mechanisms from team members, management, and other stakeholders.
5. Risk Management: Assess if risk identification, management, and mitigation are embedded in the Agile Events, Roles and Artifacts.
6. Resource Allocation: Review if resource allocation is nimble enough to support agile alignment with strategic priorities and ROI optimization in a world of uncertainty.
7. Tools and Technology: Determine tools and technology improvements to support Agile practices better.
8. Cultural Alignment: Check that the organizational culture ambitions accentuate agile values.
9. Next Steps: Based on the findings, recommendations for next steps.

Each organization requires a customized approach based on its specific context, industry, size, and the maturity level of its Agile practices. The goal of the Free Agile Governance Review is to ensure that the potential improvements in your Agile governance will get you Beyond Agile and effectively support the dynamic, fast-paced, and collaborative nature of Agile working while maintaining the necessary level of oversight, control, and alignment with business objectives.

Short answer: We don’t! We build in more control by fully embracing adaptive planning and iterative development. We establish clear but flexible guidelines and empower teams with the autonomy to make decisions within those bounds. Regular feedback loops and continuous improvement processes ensure that control mechanisms are responsive and evolve with the organisation’s needs. This way, we maintain oversight and ensure quality while fostering an environment where innovation and adaptability flourish. With ‘Beyond Metrics,’ we lay a foundation of empirical control, only then setting the stage for successful flexibility endeavors.

We integrate compliance as a continuous, value-adding process rather than a final checkpoint. We encourage teams to view compliance as a partner to innovation, embedding regulatory and quality standards into every stage of the agile cycle. By making compliance part of the daily routines and utilizing tools and practices that automate and simplify adherence, we reduce its burden. This proactive approach allows teams to innovate freely while staying within the necessary boundaries, ensuring that compliance enhances rather than hinders the creative process. Our Beyond DevOps pipelines transcend mere CI/CD implementations; they are primarily conduits of compliance, steering every release towards excellence.

In Agile, accountability is shared and clearly defined among all team members, promoting a culture of collective responsibility. Together, they form a cohesive unit, each with its own roles and accountabilities, yet all are committed to the project’s success and accountable for its outcomes. This shared accountability ensures that every member is invested in the project’s success, fostering transparency, trust, and a high-performing Agile environment. We facilitate an awesome RASCI Workshop to make this crystal clear.

Transitioning from traditional ITIL to ITSM/ITIL4 using Agile principles marks a significant shift towards a more dynamic and flexible approach to IT service management. This transformation involves integrating Agile’s responsiveness and iterative nature into the structured environment of ITIL. The goal is to enhance the adaptability of IT services to rapidly changing business needs while maintaining the quality and predictability that ITIL offers.

Managing IT services Agilily.

This shift requires a cultural change within the organization, encouraging collaboration, continuous improvement, and customer-centric thinking. It also involves redefining processes and roles to be more fluid and less siloed. By adopting Agile methodologies within the ITIL framework, organizations can achieve a more seamless, efficient, and responsive IT service delivery, aligning more closely with modern business dynamics and the ever-evolving technological landscape. This integration, known as ITSM/ITIL4, promises a more holistic, agile, and resilient approach to managing IT services. Have a trial run of our Agile RASCI Roles workshop to experience how this could work for you.