Agile Deployment Models: Useful References
- Agile Deployment Models Handout
- Kotter Change Model
- Studio Change Model Links
- Various Management Books
- Organizational Maturity Models
- Tribal Leadership Model
- Reinventing Organizations Model
Agile Deployment Models Handout
Ledger-sized summary of Agile Deployment Models
Kotter Change Model
In his book Leading Change, John Kotter puts forward a change model with the following stages:
- Establishing a Sense of Urgency
- Creating the Guiding Coalition
- Developing a Vision and Strategy
- Communicating the Change Vision
- Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action
- Generating Short-Term Wins
- Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
- Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture
The model is typically presented as a set of linear stages. The key is to recognize real life is far more complex. At any moment, a variety of concurrent changes are happening, each in its own place in the sequence. Furthermore, a given activity might be influencing change on a variety of dimensions, each with active changes at a separate stage in the Kotter change model. As George Box famously said, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
The Kotter change model is rather abstract and intended for broad applicability to a large variety of organizational change efforts. In contrast, the change models discussed in Forging Change are specific to agile transformation efforts. So long as you open your mind to a less linear view of the Kotter change model, you will be able to recognize the Executive Pull–Based Change Model described in Forging Change as a concrete realization of the Kotter change model. In other words, the Executive Pull–Based Change Model is to the Kotter change model as a concrete Java class is to an interface it implements.
Studio Change Model Links
Amazon: Software in 30 Days: How Agile Managers Beat the Odds, Delight Their Customers, and Leave Competitors in the Dust by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland
Example Assessments
Huge list of various Agile Assessments
If you are an Agile Carpentry client, I will be happy to show you an example of agile assessment structures I have used in the past. In my experience, it is generally better to have a skillful expert help you craft an assessment specific to your organizational needs. The Agility Health Radar is very nice and inspirational, yet it doesnʼt do anything one canʼt do in Tableau or MS Excel just as effectively—and typically at a lower cost.
Various Management Books
Amazon: Dale Carnegieʼs Lifetime Plan for Success
Amazon: Various books by W. Edwards Deming
Amazon: Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins
Amazon: Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan and John King
Amazon: How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
Amazon: Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by L. David Marquet
Amazon: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
Amazon: Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux
Organizational Maturity Models
Tribal Leadership Model
Tribal Leadership is an older book, and gets less mindshare these days than Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux. The message of both books is similar.
Amazon: Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King, Halee-Fisher Wright
Random Google search result, I have not read this one carefully
Reinventing Organizations Model
Reinventing Organizations is the more contemporary model in use within the agile community. I personally find it a little cleaner than the Tribal Leadership model, although very similar in many ways.
Reinventing Organizations website
Amazon: Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux and Ken Wilber
Summary Table found using image search at FFluid: Fast Forward Concepts blog (content in German)
Another Summary Table found using image search at Strategy+Business in a 2015 article by Laloux
Video of a relevant lecture by Laloux
Wiki site with information focused on Reinventing Organizations
Lecture by Lyssa Adkins & Michael Spayd: Want a sustainable agile transformation?
- The Adkins/Spayd lecture introduces the concept using Laloux’s model. Towards the end, they mention that an organization is constrained by the level of thinking/mindset of the senior executive.
Amazon: Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World by Brian Robertson
- You will find the holacracy folks frequently reference Lalouxʼs work. I’m not advocating holacracy; I am simply pointing out that it is important to recognize the close marketing connection between Lalouxʼs and Robertsonʼs work.