Unlocking the Shadow of Agility with XSCALE's Adaptive Solutions

In today's fast-paced business world, organizations are constantly looking for ways to improve their processes and increase efficiency. One approach that is gaining popularity is the use of adaptive solutions. This holistic approach combines the best practices from a variety of disciplines, including Agile, DevOps, psychology, digital transformation, product management, and many others to create a tailored solution that addresses the root causes of a business problem.

XSCALE addresses The Shadow of Agility

The "shadow of agility" refers to the unintended consequences that can arise when implementing agile methodologies and practices in an organization. These consequences can include a lack of focus on long-term planning, siloed teams and departments, and an over-reliance on metrics.

XSCALE, with it's adaptive solutions and synergies, addresses these issues by promoting self-managing, self-organizing teams and streams, as well as providing a focus on business throughput and value-flow, rather than just completing individual tasks or items. By utilizing concepts such as de-scaling, self-propagating transformation and throughput accounting, XSCALE can help organizations to overcome the shadow of agility and achieve true business agility.

In addition, XSCALE can be applied to any existing agile framework such as SAFe or Scrum, to enhance their effectiveness and address the challenges that arise in large-scale organizations. The key is to have a Federated change community, adapt the concepts to the organization and have hundreds of champions. This can be done with coaching.

XSCALE is an effective toolkit for addressing the shadow of agility in agile transformation, it enables organizations to continuously prioritize bottlenecks in value-flow, work-flow, and the flow of learning across the organization, optimize speed to value and achieve true business agility. The next step is to further expand XSCALE guidance and create How-to get started guides to support organizations in the application of XSCALE to their specific situations.

One key aspect of adaptive solutions is the use of "descaling" values and principles. These focus on mutual benefit, pull-based delivery, and learning ecosystems, rather than traditional command and control structures. By embracing these values, organizations can work more collaboratively and efficiently, leading to greater business agility.

At its core, XSCALE is about uplifting capability and achieving "descaling" – a term used to describe the process of removing unnecessary layers and creating a flatter, more open structure within organizations. In Peter's words, "XSCALE is like Linux in the sense of it's a group of people who have the skills who are collaborating on building the collateral they need to be able to bring their skills to market."

During my time working with XSCALE, I have witnessed firsthand the power of its principles and techniques in transforming cultures and driving high performance. I'm going to pull from this experience and provide examples and how-to tips.

One of the key elements that sets XSCALE apart is its emphasis on self-propagating transformation – an approach that seeks to engage individuals who have already proven their ability to deliver business agility, product management, delivery performance, and DevOps.

The XSCALE manifesto defines its values as:

• Empowerment

• Collaboration

• Respect

• Transparency

• Continuous Improvement

Additionally, the concept of Sen No Rikyu's Mu Hin Shu is at the heart of the XSCALE approach. This principle emphasizes the idea of "plain and simple" and encourages the removal of unnecessary complexity in order to achieve true simplicity and efficiency.

I believe that XSCALE is a powerful tool that can help organizations overcome their most pressing challenges and drive real, lasting change. In this blog series, we will delve deeper into the concepts of XSCALE and explore practical tips for applying its principles in the real world. From my personal experience and guidance under Peter, I will share my knowledge on how to leverage XSCALE in conjunction with frameworks like SAFe and Scrum to create a mindset and culture of adaptive solutions.

XSCALE, is an Adaptive Solutions a synergistic approach that can be woven into any framework, business, and approach. It is a revolutionary approach to organizational transformation that goes beyond traditional Agile methods. Developed by Peter Merel, the XSCALE toolkit(s) are designed to enable self-directing portfolios of self-managing streams of self-organizing teams, thereby rapidly accelerating top-line business throughput by continuously prioritizing bottlenecks in value-flow, work-flow, and the flow of learning across the organization.

For example, the XSCALE Business Agility, is a toolkit that aims to enable self-directing portfolios of self-managing streams of self-organizing teams. Developed by Peter Merel, XSCALE Business Agility focuses on the practical aspects of business agility, with the goal of generating working capabilities rather than wishful thinking or text-book learning.

XSCALE Business Agility is divided into three different toolkits, XSCALE Product Agility, XDevOps and XSCALE Business Agility. Each of the three toolkits targets a different aspect of business agility, starting with Product Agility to align tech, design and business leaders, XDevOps that extends agility to all functions of a value stream and XSCALE Business Agility that solves the game-theoretic "Tragedy of the PMO" and forms a toolkit for self-directing portfolios of self-managing streams of self-organizing teams.

According to Peter Merel, the Pull-transformation method which XSCALE promote, is an alternative view of traditional transformation that is quicker, cheaper, safer and better than pushing change into existing teams and streams. The method is based on creating a new agile starter culture that's able to propagate itself, using agile to roll out agile.

In this extended blog, we will delve into the world of XSCALE and explore how it can be leveraged to create adaptive solutions that can help organizations overcome the most pressing problems they face. We will begin with an overview of the XSCALE manifesto and its values, followed by a detailed guide on how to apply its concepts and techniques to real-world problems. In the final section, we will provide examples and case studies that demonstrate the power of XSCALE as an adaptive solution in action. Throughout the series, we will quote Peter liberally and draw from his extensive experience as a pioneer in the field of adaptive solutions.

In this first part, let's highlight XSCALE and provide an overview of XSCALE and its key concepts, including the "XSCALE Business Agility" toolkit, "XSCALE Product Agility", and "XDevOps" toolkit. We will then introduce the "Pull-Transformation" approach to growing a self-propagating capability, which is at the core of XSCALE's ability to rapidly and safely transform organizations.

In the next section, we will explore in-depth how to apply XSCALE concepts and techniques to solve real-world problems that organizations face. We will provide detailed guidance on how to use de-scaling, self-propagating transformation and throughput accounting tools to resolve the "Tragedy of the PMO" and other common organizational issues.

Finally, in the conclusion, we will summarize the power of XSCALE as an adaptive solution and providing examples of how it has been successfully implemented in organizations. We will also explore the future of XSCALE and the opportunities for further research and development in this field.

Tips for applying XSCALE to increase business Agility

In this section, we'll take an in-depth look at how XSCALE can be used to create adaptive solutions that will transform the way you do business. XSCALE is a holistic approach to business agility that combines eclectic ideas from various disciplines to resolve the root causes of problems in organizations. Some of the problems that XSCALE can help solve include:

1. The "Tragedy of the PMO": This is a game-theoretic problem where a centralized Project Management Office (PMO) can create bottlenecks in the flow of value, work, and learning across the organization. XSCALE addresses this problem by enabling self-organizing teams to manage their own value streams and by forming a rotating council of circle representatives to align stream missions and maximize business throughput across the portfolio as a whole.

2. Lack of alignment between tech, design, and business leaders: XSCALE Product Agility (XPA) aligns these leaders breadth-first to form a product team that continuously distils value stream drivers and constraints into a maximum-impact release plan. This introduces throughput accounting and we'll detail that out now: First, let's define it. Throughput Accounting is a key concept in XSCALE that aims to optimize the contribution of each business function to top-line throughput, rather than blindly attempting to minimize operating expenses. It is an alternative to traditional cost accounting that takes into account the market and system constraints of the value stream, as well as the interdependencies of value streams across a portfolio. By continuously identifying and prioritizing the bottleneck that dominates throughput per stream and per portfolio, throughput accounting helps to optimize speed to value.

   1. One way to use throughput accounting is by identifying bottlenecks in your value stream. This could be a specific team or process that is holding up the delivery of value to your customers. By focusing on this bottleneck, you can make improvements that will have the greatest impact on throughput. For example, if your customer support team is the bottleneck, you could focus on improving their training or providing them with better tools to speed up resolution time for customer complaints.

   2. Another way to use throughput accounting is by measuring and tracking the performance of each business function in terms of its contribution to top-line throughput. This can be done by using metrics such as lead time, cycle time, and throughput. By comparing these metrics across different functions and value streams, you can identify where there are opportunities for improvement and where resources should be allocated.

   3. A third way to use throughput accounting is by prioritizing and balancing different value streams based on their contribution to top-line throughput. This means allocating resources to value streams that will have the greatest impact on the business, while at the same time ensuring that there is enough capacity in the system to handle the increased throughput.

      1. An example of this can be a eCommerce company where the Lead time of the product team is too high and the delivery team is not able to deliver the product fast enough to the customer. Throughput Accounting will help in understanding the lead time and cycle time of the whole value stream and it will help to identify the bottleneck, which is product team lead time, on the whole value stream. By focusing on this bottleneck, the company can make improvements that will have the greatest impact on throughput.

   4. Finally, Throughput Accounting can be used to optimize the contribution of each business function to top-line throughput. It is based on the theory of constraints (TOC) and is an alternative to cost accounting. It focuses on maximizing the speed of value delivery by identifying and prioritizing bottlenecks in value-flow, work-flow, and the flow of learning across the organization.

      1. One example of how throughput accounting can be used is in a hardware engineering value stream. Imagine a scenario where a drawing review process is causing delays in product development due to a high workload for a small number of expert reviewers. Throughput accounting can be used to identify this bottleneck in the process and prioritize it for improvement.

      2. To use throughput accounting in this scenario, first, collect data on the current process. This includes information such as the number of drawings submitted for review, the number of reviewers available, and the amount of time it takes for each drawing to be reviewed. Then, calculate the throughput rate of the process, which is the number of drawings reviewed per unit of time.

      3. Next, identify the constraint in the process. In this case, it is likely that the bottleneck is the limited number of expert reviewers available to review the drawings. To increase the throughput rate, the constraint must be addressed.

      4. One adaptive solution to this problem would be to implement drawing check automation. This would involve the use of software tools to check for errors and inconsistencies in the drawings, reducing the workload for the expert reviewers. Another solution could be increase the number of experts reviewers or use more efficient way of reviewing the drawing.

      5. To measure the success of this solution, re-calculate the throughput rate after the change is made, and compare it to the initial rate. By using throughput accounting, you can see the tangible impact of the change on the speed of value delivery and make data-driven decisions to further optimize the process.

3. Inefficiency in delivery performance, devops and product management: XDevOps (XDO) extends agility to all functions of a value stream. This concept applies high test DevOps based on Kim's Three Ways, Extreme Programming, Git Workflows, 3D Kanban, BDD, CI/CDD, Infrastructure as Code and Game Without Thrones.

4. Inability to assess the organization's readiness and adapt to changes: XSCALE includes assessment tools and techniques to determine an organization's readiness for change, as well as its willingness and ability to engage in the change process.

5. Inability to achieve self-propagating transformation: XSCALE focuses on the practical aspects of business agility and generates working capabilities rather than just wishful thinking and text-book learning. This approach is designed to achieve self-propagating transformation, where the initial in-house starter culture of product design, delivery, and devops working hand-in-glove with quality automation, service automation, and end-to-end throughput analytics can grow and propagate itself.

These are some of the problems that XSCALE can help solve. To apply XSCALE concepts as adaptive solutions, organizations can use a pull-transformation approach. This involves growing a slender, self-propagating capability rather than pushing change into existing teams and streams. Additionally, de-scaling practices from the Iroquois Confederacy can be adopted to resolve large and cross-cutting concerns in a decentralized way. Throughput Accounting is also a key concept in XSCALE, which can be used to optimize the contribution of each business function to top line throughput.

What Now? How to get started with adding XSCALE to your work

XSCALE is a toolkit for self-directing portfolios of self-managing streams of self-organizing teams. It was developed by Peter Merel and emphasizes on the practical aspects of business agility, and generating working capabilities rather than wishful thinking and textbook learning. XSCALE combines descaling, self-propagating transformation, and throughput accounting tools to solve the game-theoretic "Tragedy of the PMO". It forms one of three toolkits that, together, cover all the needs of an agile organization, including XSCALE Product Agility (XPA) which aligns tech, design, and business leaders to form a product team, and XDevOps which extends agility to all functions of a value stream.

XSCALE is different from traditional transformation methodologies as it does not rely on pushing change onto existing teams and streams, instead it relies on Pull-Transformation, where the most progressive staff form the starter culture, and the organization is pulled into the new culture at its most effective rate. This way the solution is quicker, cheaper, safer, and better than pushing change onto existing teams and streams.

In our experience, we have used XSCALE for coaching for years in retail and have found it to be an effective method for creating adaptive solutions that can be applied to any framework. By using XSCALE, we were able to use these concepts to descale the problems by introducing a federated change community and creating hundreds of champions.

The use of Throughput Accounting is one concepts in XSCALE that we detailed how it can be used to optimize the contribution of each business function to top line throughput. For example, in a hardware engineering value stream, one common problem is the drawing review process which can be overloaded with work in progress and has low throughput due to only a few expert reviewers. An adaptive solution to this problem might include the use of throughput accounting and the implementation of drawing check automation.

In summary, XSCALE offers a practical and effective method for achieving business agility and creating adaptive solutions. It can be applied to any framework, including SAFe and Scrum, and has been proven to be successful in multiple engagements. To get started, we recommend identifying your most progressive staff and forming a starter culture, and then gradually pulling the organization into the new culture. As we continue to expand XSCALE guidance, we invite you to apply XSCALE in your organization and discover the benefits for yourself. Check out more on this at - https://xscalealliance.org/

Look for future blogs where we'll detail more how-to guidance on applying XSCALE to create adaptive solutions for your business.