Unit 5 – Characteristics of an Agile Organization
Open Agile Architecture Practitioner Certification
5.1 Briefly describe the Socio-Technical systems’ principles.
Create autonomous teams. Design teams for multi-skilling instead of single skilling. Build in slack and view people as complimentary to the machine, not just an extension.
- Wholeness: the work system should be conceived as a set of activities that make up a functioning whole, rather than a collection of individual jobs
- Teams: the work group should be considered more central than individual contributors
- Process: variance or deviation should be identified and handled as close to their point of origin as possible
- Self-direction: internal regulation of the work system is preferable to external regulation by supervisors
- Multi-skilling: job and team design should be based on polyvalence or multi-skilling rather than single-skilling
- Slack: the work system should preserve some room for slack
- Joint-optimization: the individual should be viewed as complementary to the machine rather than as an extension of it
- Incompletion: since the context of the organization will continue to evolve over time, no organizational design can be considered “finished”
5.2 Briefly describe Autonomy and Self-Organization
Autonomous
A team capable of self-organization.
Self-Organization
The emergence of an order that results from the interaction of a systems components.
5.3 Briefly explain the Team Taxonomy concepts
Stream-Aligned Teams
cross functional and aligned to a business value stream, from front to back
Platform Teams
deliver an architecture and set of integrated components to internal teams
Competency Teams
regroup people from the same discipline/competency
5.4 Describe what a Product is in the context of the O-AA Standard
Products are bundles of services and/or goods. They have features through which users interact
5.5 Briefly describe Product Teams and roles
Product teams
Responsible for all product related work, including customer experience. Stream-aligned teams.
Product Manager versus Product Owner
Product manager is highly skilled and maintains relationships with the whole enterprise. Product owner is a scrum role that isn't necessarily as qualified but is responsible for the outcomes of a product.
Lean Chief Engineer
enterpeneur and architect. Represents the voice of the customer and is responsible for economic performance.
5.6 Explain the shift to an Agile organization using the Capital Management example
Instead of a classic program structure, the organization shifted to an agile model with cross-functional, stream-aligned teams intersecting with competency teams