How to use Scalar Framing for an Agile Transformation

Scaling an Agile team to an organizational mindset is one of the biggest challenges in any Agile transformation. There are many approaches and frameworks to solve them. But in the last article we described, why we might need to look at the problem of scaling differently and how this could look like.

This blog article will attempt to visualize the complexities of an organization using the powers of ten (If you do not know, what this is or need a refresher, check this article). As we described, Agile is not just a process and a set of tools to follow. It is rather a complete new mindset.

7 organizational principles for your Agile Transformation

Instead of just following a process or tools, we rather focus on how we think differently about our job. It is more helpful to base our decisions and questions on a set of principles, than a process or framework. Principles can help us to guide decisions we are making. Processes and tools just tell us how to do things differently. And we never ask why.

We recommend following these 7 principles:

• Self-organized, cross-functional, competent teams
• Incremental & iterative delivery
• Customer value priorities
• Continuous improvements
• Transparency
• Role of management towards facilitation over command & control
• Inspiring vision

(You will find a more profound description of each of these principles in this article).

Now, let’s look at different reframing possibilities to understand the challenges for each different level of an organization. Please beware, that this article does not explain the absolute truth. So, do not follow this as a recipe, but rather as an inspiration.

7 Powers of Ten

The different flight levels for each power of ten could be depending on the flight level of the organization (in brackets the reference of the scale in the video):

• 10⁰ – Mindset (The Individual / Hand)
  In the video, the camera zooms into the hand as an example of the scale smaller than the original starting point. It could have also zoomed onto the head, which would have then framed around the brain. This is the part where individuals make sense of what is around us and drives our mindset.
• 10¹ – Individual Interactions (The Picnic)
  This is the starting frame within the video. Also, the Agile Manifesto starts with the Individual & Interactions. The quality of a picnic is only as good as the quality of interactions. The same can be said about the performance of a team or organization.
• 10² – Technology or Tools (Park / Block)
  Technology and tools can help with the interactions. If used correctly, it can make interactions less complex. At this level, we look at how technology can help us to enable automating interactions.
• 10³ – Team (The Ward / Burroughs)
  Now the interactions start to become increasingly more complex. Whereas interactions between 2 individuals can still be somehow planned and certain, it becomes nearly unpredictable in teams.
• 10⁴ – Product / Service (The District)
  A product, service or delivery is always depending on the interactions not only between individuals within a team, but rather interactions between teams. Often a product or service can only be delivered, when there is high alignment, transparency and focus between several teams.
• 10⁵ – Tribe, Department or Portfolio (The City)
  Complexity and therefore also our perspective changes, when we move from a tactical view to a strategic one. Tribes, Departments or portfolio focus is our first strategic view. The Delivery of a Product or Service is only a consequence of the entire company strategy.
• 10⁶ – Company (The Country)
  Agile Transformations won’t work, as long as leadership believes, it is enough to run teams in an Agile way and does not need to touch leadership. But an Agile Transformation is also a change of the organizational culture: In the end, it is about changing the way on how we work and how we look at work. For this, we need to change believe-systems in the whole organizations incl. leadership
• 10⁷– Market (The whole world)
  The customers and their behavior of the market is driving our strategy; therefore, we are using this view as the highest flight level in our Agile transformation.

Now that we have established the different flight levels, we can take the perspective for each of the level. The key to change the way we look at our work, is not to give them the tools, but rather supporting them with questions (Tools can be made available via a repository).

10⁰ – Mindset (The Individual / Hand)

An Agile Transformation is change management, which impacts everybody in the organization. On the level of Mindset, the perspective on looking at the change is pretty individual. If we follow our 7 principles, the most significant change for the individual might be around the role of the individual in the team. As teams are supposed to be cross-functional, competent and self-organized, we might focus on that principle mostly to understand, what that change would mean for them individually.

Some questions the individual might ask on this level:

• What competencies would they have, and what more competences should they focus on?
• How would a t-shape mindset help them to be part of a successful team?
• How does my individual mindset influence the performance of the team?

10¹ – Individual Interactions (The Picnic)

The individual mindset and how we as an individual approach individual interactions will influence the quality of said interactions. However, whenever we interact with someone, we should not always have to ask about their approach and/or mindset. The mindset of the individual should be visible at this stage. Therefore, the following questions might help to improve the quality of interactions for better self-organization:

• What are the expectations other people might have from us?
• What are my expectations for other persons?
• How can I ensure, as an individual, that my peers and I deliver most value as soon as possible?

10² – Technology (Park / Block)

Technology on this level touches on ensuring that the information is available and individuals within a team or outside the team are aligned in their priorities and work. As an example, it should support making the progress of work visible and should provide as many answers as possible (and not inviting for more questions). On this level, we do not touch the technology stack for software engineering focused companies – this might come on the Product/Service level.

• What information can we automate in our interactions?
• How do I get the information I need in the easiest way?
• How can we align transparency of information easily?
• Where in our interactions are bottlenecks, and does it make sense to automate them?
• How do we ensure that the information is up-to-date?

10³ – Team (The Ward / Burroughs)

Teams are a group of people with a shared mission. They usually and consistently work on the same area of the product or service to ensure the delivery of said product & service. Our principles mention the important attributes of the team, but also addresses the role of management. Therefore, we could address the Agile transformation on this level with the following questions:

• What competences do we need as a team, which ones do we have, and how can we close the gap?
• What means collective leadership for us as a team?
• Do we have an inspiring team vision?
• Is there something we expect from our Managers, or they expect from us?
• What does successful collaboration look like in our team?

10⁴ – Product / Service (The District)

The product and the service are, what brings in the money in the end. Therefore, the questions around the product are around bringing the most value as fast as possible to as many customers as possible. Focus on customer-oriented priorities and incremental & iterative value delivery might just be the key:

• Who are our customers?
• How do we ensure that there is enough customer focus?
• Are we solving the right problems, and how do we know that?
• What does iterative & incremental mean to us?

10⁵ – Tribe, Department, Portfolio (The City)

When it comes to strategy and alignment, the role of management* becomes key. Traditionally, a manager is the person who controls the teams and gives them the work. For teams to be effective in uncertain and complex environments, the role of manager should change from being a transactional leader to a facilitating role. Therefore, the Manager’s job is to enable alignment, transparency & focus with the other teams. Like an ambassador for the team.

• What are the different scopes for each of the tribes departments or the portfolio?
• How can we make Management be as effective as possible?
• What do the tribes expect from management?
• What does one Tribe expect from another tribe?
• How do Tribes ‘govern’ themselves and how can they come up with own internal policies?
• How can we develop a customer-oriented and incremental roadmap for each of the Portfolios?
• What is our product or service growth strategy?

*using the word management on purpose in this context. Even in a fully self-organized team, there is management needed to ensure operations. We might not need managers specifically appointed to do so.

10⁶ – Company (The Country)

This is the view, on which most C-Level Directors look like. When it comes to an Agile transformation, at this level, it is not about the individual process of a team, nor about enabling the alignment or transparency – as we learned through this journey, that might happen already on lower level. The C-Levels of a company is suddenly not the decision maker or driver of the change – similarly as the technology at a lower level, they become enablers. Similarly, as on the tribe level, their role of management is more about facilitating, than about the decisions.

• How do we make values & principles visible in the company?
• How can we ensure that people want to work for us to support the growth?
• Is there a way, that we can enable self-driven decision-making at each level?
• How can we ensure, the whole company pulls in the same direction?

10⁷ – Market (The whole world)

The highest flight level on the organization could be the market. This is where the need from the customers come from and might be the level investors or shareholders look at. It is a strategic level for any organization, and it would help to drive the initiatives for the portfolios or tribes and in the end the product. However, this view might also change the perspective from the internal company view to the external market view:

• Is our vision inspiring enough for customers to buy our service or product?
• Does our vision inspire a product and service growth?
• How does the vision trickle down into our product portfolio?
• Do we have a mechanism to react and improve, quickly and easily, when is the market changes?
• What principles do we need to follow to ensure resilience and agility?

Conclusions

As mentioned before, this article is just an inspiration, not a recipe. It is not a framework, and you may not need to break down your organization into the powers of ten at all. However, it may give you an inspiration: When thinking about scaling, maybe before you think about jumping onto the next framework, to check, if with the right question, you can enable a change for everybody on how to look at their work. If they do this radically honestly, and with any given authority about their own work, they will change the way they work. And this will likely lead to a more agile and resilient organization.

But for being able to do so, it is better to focus on principles rather than frameworks.