Agile Innovation – SAFe: A scaled Agile approach for innovation and

transformation

#FinntechAmericas

A little insight that will save your life: A bank is a software company

The average lifespan of a company listed in the S&P 500 index of leading UScompanies has decreased by more than50 years in the last century (…) to just

15 years today.

Next?isWhat

Where does

innovation happen?

Don’t forget to take your shots, mister! Or you’ll have to visit the Innovation Doctor!

She’s right! You know?

Common causes of lack of Innovation. The gap we have to cross:

• Lacking processes that make innovation possible and or a reliable outcome of our work.

• Lacking a reliable and repeatable method evaluate the business value and impact on business of all the ideas generated.

• Lacking a method to manage all the ideas and still deliver concrete, short-term valuable incremental changes that helps us understand what works in practice

How do we go about treating the patient?

5 Actionable changes you can start with tomorrow that will enable innovation in your organization

Debrief• What were the key questions he asked?• What did he consider as “competition”?• What were they key words he used? • How did Christensen find the need?

Innovation starts with a deep understanding of the Customer1. Do research on your customers and product/service

situations (what job is your product/service hired to do?)

2. Create hypothesis, test them!3. Create interviews to explore the jobs your

customers needs solved4. “Get out of the building” – prepare and execute

interviews5. Pitch ideas to each other and collect feedback6. Use the free email support that comes with this

workshop and ask questions about what bothers you. Vasco.Duarte@oikosofy.com

Actionable Change # 1: Involve your customers in product and service

design by learning about their “Jobs-to-be-done”

In real life:

The process to support the change:

Actionable Change # 2: Projects kill innovation. Change to a continuous

flow of innovation.

In real life:

The process to support the change:

1. Create groups of five, with ten coins per group. One person is the timekeeper. The remaining four people process the coins.

2. Person by person, flip all coins one at a time, recording your own results (heads or tails).

3. Pass all coins at the same time to the next person.

4. Time keeper records time from the start of the first flip to the completion of the last flip for the group.

Large Batch Push

Exercise – Large Batch Push

5Minutes

Small Batch Pull

1. Similar five person process (4+1 time keeper)

2. Each person flips each coin one at a time and records the result

3. But, pass each coin as flipped

4. The time keeper records the time from the start of the first flip to the completion of the last flip

Exercise – Small Batch Pull

5Minutes

„Working at full capacity is an economic disaster“- Donald Reinertsen, Principles of Flow

In Progress: 5 Quarters worth of work

In the backlog: ~4 years worth

of work

Actionable Change # 3: Small is the new Big. Deliver constantly small

increments of value. Reducing risk and accelerating learning.

In real life:

The process to support the change:

The Scrum Process Framework

DevOps approach with

Continuous Delivery

Bug evolution in a non-agile project

OpenClosedSubmit

Timeline

Num

ber o

f Bug

s

Development phase Desperately testing and fixing phase

Waterfall

The 10 types of Innovation

(A possible model)

Actionable Change # 4: Break all the silos. All must work together to

make innovation possible

In real life:

The process to support the change:

Can we succeed without execution?

Portfolio

Do we have the right things in our portfolio?

Slow Processes: a (BAD) example

Time

Adde

d Va

lue

6 months trying to get the project approved

One dayBrainstorming new product idea 6 months

product development

Consequences of slow processes:• Higher costs -> due to the amount of

work that is pending while the costs are accruing

• Lower quality -> slow processes allow for “dirty” workarounds and hide quality problems (which in turn increase costs due to rework)

Corollary of fast processes

For any given process, if you can reduce the Time it takes to execute it, you will consequently reduce Costs and increase Quality

CASE: Flexible Requirements Management

Different content abstractions for different stakeholders

User Stories

Features

EpicsPortfolio Items – Customer marketable

Longer term planning (more than 1 iteration)

Where the rubber meets the road – what we do in one iteration

Product Marketing and

Portfolio

Product Owner + Architect + UX

Team + Product

Owner

Different ways to manage a portfolio of Epics/Features

Epic

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Epic Epic

Feature

Feature

Feature

Epic

Feature

Feature

Feature

Epic Option 1:• Many epics• Shallow implementation• New market / new business

innovation• Typical goal: catch up (me too or tick-

in-box products for reviews)Epic

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Epic

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Option 2:• Few epics• Deep implementation• Technological innovation• Typical goal: Hero products, unique

experiences, Niche-focused productsWHAT IS YOUR GOAL?

Epics in progressEpic work broken down

into featuresFeatures in

ProgressWork

completed

Visualize all work ongoingFrom Strategy to execution

Prioritize everything according to your strategy and biggest impact

Tim

e to

mar

ket

Impact on strategic goal

Best choices

Actionable Change # 5: Create transparency all the way from Strategy to execution, and manage for value delivery,

not for maximization of work

In real life:

Covered by NDA

Big Bank in the Nordic countries

10x

The process to support the change:If you want to know more: Contact us at the COBISCorp STANDEmail me at: Vasco.Duarte@Oikosofy.com