The Rise of Value Streams and AI in Agile Approaches
Transcript
STEVE HENDERSHOT
Agile approaches continue to gain steam and evolve in ways that probably shouldn’t be surprising considering the name is, after all, agile. The pace, direction and application of these changes create opportunities for project leaders, and today we’re digging into the latest agile trends.
NARRATOR
The world is changing fast. And every day, project professionals are turning ideas into reality—delivering value to their organizations and society as a whole. On Projectified[r], we’ll help you stay on top of the trends and see what’s ahead for The Project Economy—and your career.
STEVE HENDERSHOT
This is Projectified[r]. I’m Steve Hendershot.
Agile is moving ever deeper into the mainstream, and considering its iterative nature, it’s no surprise that organizations and teams have come up with some innovative applications along the way, taking agile beyond the software development domain where it first emerged. In fact, 49 percent of respondents in Digital.ai’s latest State of Agile report indicate that they’re using agile approaches for projects beyond software development.
Today we’ll explore some of those trends, such as scaling agile across complex organizations, the larger role of artificial intelligence and automation within agile approaches, and the growing adoption of value streams. To do so, we’ll speak with a couple of project leaders, both of whom have the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner, or PMI-ACP, certification.
Let’s begin with Tammy Ashraf, Earth science systems integration manager at U.S. space agency NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in the Washington, D.C., metro area. Tammy started using agile approaches in a DevOps environment a few years back in a data systems engineering role at NASA, and she is now applying agile techniques to her current team, which is focused on research.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
STEVE HENDERSHOT
Tammy, thanks for chatting. Let’s start here: What do you like about agile?
TAMMY ASHRAF
What I’m learning and seeing is that, throughout my career, regardless of whatever industry I’ve worked in, we can’t really control the external drivers. We have to know how to set up our work and our programs, our projects, in such a way so that we’re able to thrive in the face of disruption. There’s a lot of uncertainty. There’s a lot of volatility. There are so many dynamic, changing variables. I really enjoy agile approaches because it not only has all sorts of different methods to making your work more adaptable to these changes, but it also embraces the agile mindset. It’s not just a specific framework, tool or template that you push onto people and say, “Here, follow this template.” Because if you do that, folks are going to roll their eyes at you and be like, “What are you talking about? Great, another template for me to follow.” It’s a mindset, and that mindset is very compelling. That’s what motivates people intrinsically. What drives change is the agile mindset.
STEVE HENDERSHOT
Was it a tough sell? You’ve got this project management approach that, in some ways, is closely associated with the phrase “fail fast,” which you’re not allowed to do with rockets. So was there a cultural adjustment there, to be like, “No, this can work”?
TAMMY ASHRAF
It’s interesting that you mention that—fail fast. The agile process is all about embracing those failures early in a project life cycle. Fail fast, fail early and fail often. Not always often, but more often than what’s usually the risk appetite for most projects. That agile process allows you to incubate ideas and accelerate innovation very quickly when you embrace that.
However, in the aerospace industry, that’s not always feasible because it’s high stakes. It’s high risk. There [are] a lot of safety measures involved for people involved in that process. There’s just a lot at stake, a lot of money at stake, millions and billions of dollars. And so the risk appetite in the aerospace industry, in general, it’s very risk-averse, and they’re not as open to just saying, “Okay, yeah, we can just blow up a bunch of rockets and experiment here and see what works.” That’s kind of like what SpaceX did, and they’ve learned so much from those mistakes and were able to quickly develop rockets that are actually reusable now and cheaper for sending payloads to space. And so what I’m seeing happening now is that folks are starting to realize agile is not just this fun, incubating, experimental process for making a whole bunch of failures and trying and experimenting [with] things. It’s not just a sandbox, but there’s actually earlier return on business investments and value from that process.
How do you carefully pick and choose elements of agile methods and processes into your traditional frameworks that work for your organization? There are some hybrid approaches, and one example is agile systems engineering. Systems engineering in the aerospace industry has very well-defined, matured standards, and those standards have worked many times over for sending things into space. But now what we’re seeing is that if we want to accelerate innovation—we want to learn quickly, we want to incubate ideas quicker—we want to see where we can embrace agile approaches into those traditional systems engineering frameworks to drive some of that innovation. Typically, if there’s hardware that you’re building, and within that hardware there are software systems that have to drive some of the functions of the hardware, you can embed agile methods to develop, test that software to drive the hardware functions.
STEVE HENDERSHOT
In some ways, that seems like a fairly straightforward win—adding agile techniques in the software domain to create hybrid approaches. But you’re also seeing agile being adopted outside of IT. So how are your teams using agile approaches beyond software and code?
TAMMY ASHRAF
Science is the domain of research and developing new knowledge, advancing knowledge. You’re working in this domain of a lot of complexity, that has a lot of uncertainty, and agile approaches are very good for those types of domains. Folks that I’ve been working with, or have worked with in the past, were so used to this waterfall approach and were trying to use these waterfall approaches on domains that are not best suited for waterfall approaches. This is a whole new area which we’re kind of experimenting with, and I’m really excited about: How do we take those agile approaches that were traditionally used in software domains, but how do we use that to advance other types of domains? For example, building on new knowledge, accelerating research and discovery.
There are so many different types of frameworks, you can pick and choose elements of that work, and you can customize it and make it work for your team. And, ultimately, the emphasis is not on just the tactics. It’s about the mindset. It’s about being agile versus doing agile, and I keep telling folks that’s the big, compelling aspect of agile, is the mindset approach to how the work is done, how the collaboration happens.
STEVE HENDERSHOT
Let’s talk more about that mindset aspect. How does that impact the wider adoption of agile across an organization?
TAMMY ASHRAF
For example, in organizations that are trying to drive change, embracing the mindset is intangible, yet it is highly influential in driving change. Tools and processes are tangible things you can see. However, they are less influential in driving change. If you really want to see change and success in your organization, start with the mindset. Start with aligning folks with the values and start aligning folks with principles of how we are going to work together, and how we are going to approach our work. And when you are in alignment with those elements, you will see [a] great return on investment versus just throwing another tool in someone’s face, and saying, “Here’s a tool. Use it. Make it work.” It’s not about the tools. It’s about being agile.
STEVE HENDERSHOT
All right, Tammy, we’ve talked about the agile trends you’re currently seeing in your sector. Let’s look ahead—what do you think is next for agile?
TAMMY ASHRAF
There [are] a few things that come to mind. The emphasis on cybersecurity. Just watch the news, and you’ll hear about data breaches happening all the time. And so how do you still maintain open collaboration [and] transparency while still maintaining and balancing employee privacy and security of your systems?
Many folks are retiring out, and there are a lot of project-oriented roles opening up and not enough people with the right skill sets to fill those roles. Organizations are struggling overall across the board with filling that talent gap for those types of roles. One thing that I’ve been advocating for for a while [now] is how do we set up those systems within our organizations so that our new and emerging professionals in project management get exposure and learning opportunities so that when these positions do open up and folks are retiring out, they’re set up and ready to backfill those roles?
STEVE HENDERSHOT
What skills do project professionals need to lead their teams as agile approaches continue to evolve?
TAMMY ASHRAF
If I had to give them advice on what are the top handful of skills they need to effectively navigate agile teams, number one, I would say, it’s the mindset. Understanding how to be a success advocate for your team. You’re there to lead your team in such a way that you empower them to be successful. Think of it as though you’re a coach for a sports team. How do you coach your team to be successful and win the game? Empower your team with what they need to succeed, and a huge part of that, too, is implementing servant leadership philosophies. Servant leadership is a huge aspect of how you can be agile, how your team can be agile.
You have to understand how to maximize your team’s collaboration and project success outcomes using digital tools, and [by] understanding the environment that you’re working in. Understanding how you can use the tools to help your team, not overwhelm your team.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
STEVE HENDERSHOT
Project leaders also are grappling with how to use technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to support the work of agile teams—an opportunity that’s perhaps especially pressing at companies at the forefront of those technologies. Projectified[r]’s Hannah LaBelle spoke with Adeyinka Adeniran, technical program manager at applied AI and data science software and services company Quantiphi in London, about how his agile practices are evolving.
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HANNAH LABELLE
Let’s start with your experience with agile. How have you been using agile approaches to lead your projects and programs?
ADEYINKA ADENIRAN
My first opportunity to dive into agile started in 2017 when customer needs and business needs started evolving. I was working with MainOne then, and we needed to do things differently to be able to meet the demands of our customers. Everybody wanted things to happen fast. There were a lot of changes that needed to be made. We had a talk within the project management organization, and we decided to embrace agile. We started using [a] scrum framework to manage our software development process, application development processes. Over time, the need to scale started happening. So we moved a step further into scaled agile, and then we started practicing agile at scale using the same framework of scrum to be able to maximize the potential throughout the entire organization. We had more teams involved, and we were able to deliver more value to our customers.
HANNAH LABELLE
So how has your use of agile approaches changed over the last several years?
ADEYINKA ADENIRAN
More recently, agile has evolved into DevOps; [it’s] more focused on design thinking, primarily on delivering business agility in terms of meeting customer demands and being able to deliver value to our customers.
I would like to talk about my current experience in Quantiphi. We realized that customers these days don’t just want us to work in isolation. It’s not like they have a problem statement, and they just throw the problem statement at us. So it’s more like a collaborative approach where we need to embrace the customer’s preferences and also take the feedback as we work with them to be able to meet their demands in terms of providing a solution that meets their pain points and also delivers value to their business. Even though the fundamental framework is still scrum, Kanban and Scaled Agile, but now it has been scaled up to the level of DevOps. So we are able to work collaboratively, effectively with the customer, taking their feedback and being able to reshape [that] feedback to meet their business requirements and business needs to deliver value to those organizations.
HANNAH LABELLE
Let’s talk about overall agile trends that you’re seeing in your industry and in your projects and programs. What would you say are the top two or three trends right now you’re seeing with agile?
ADEYINKA ADENIRAN
I will say value streams, which is more tailored to meet the business requirements and business needs of customers by working collaboratively with them. Having lean teams to be able to understand customers’ problem statements and their business requirements.
Another thing I will say is we [are] leveraging on the power of artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data to have more data-driven project management processes. A customer may have a problem statement which was wrongly scoped. But, with the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we are able to aid the customer to make the right decisions. And this, in turn, adds value to the businesses, and customers and clients are much more confident in our approach to project management.
HANNAH LABELLE
You also mentioned how your previous company more widely adopted agile approaches. Do you see that as a growing trend, along with building agile as a culture in an organization?
ADEYINKA ADENIRAN
Yes, that’s correct. Project management has evolved not just within the project management team but for the entire organization, leadership. Everybody needs to be able to key into agile as a culture, from the supply chain people to the decision-makers to the technology teams, application development teams. Every organization needs to become agile itself, not just practicing agile.
HANNAH LABELLE
Why do you think these trends are rising to the top right now? How are they affecting how you’re managing projects?
ADEYINKA ADENIRAN
There’s stiff competition. Every organization needs to maintain what we call a competitive edge to remain relevant in their respective industries. This means you have to make the right decisions. So from [the] bottom to the top of the organization chain, everyone needs to be aware of the data. The data must be reliable, the data must be accurate for them to make informed decisions, which will, in turn, affect their businesses. So that’s one of the reasons.
For value stream, organizations these days are much more driven at obtaining value for every penny spent. The senior leadership is always looking for the right opportunities. These days, you have one, two, three projects in your pipeline, and the senior leadership is looking for what benefits these projects have to the business. This makes value stream management now much more important in terms of creating a cultural process and practice within the organization that aligns more with what derives value to the business. If an IT department is going to develop an application, the value that that application would derive for the business and in the shortest possible period has to be proven. The project managers, too, now are much more confident in business acumen. So you have to be strategic, you have to be aware of the business impacts of any decision being made in the project management office.
HANNAH LABELLE
Adeyinka, thank you so much for talking with me today.
ADEYINKA ADENIRAN
Thank you, Hannah.
NARRATOR
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