Often in large organisations we have to deal with groups with names like "legal" or "compliance" or to use an example from my days in the healthcare software industry "patient safety". To a project manager, the function of these groups seems to be to throw up obstacles and prevent getting things done. These groups tend to appear out of the woodwork near the end of a project, inspect everything that has been produced, identify a bunch of problems and then block release until they are all fixed. The problem of course is that at the end of a project, everything has already been built so changing things is hard and expensive. There is also a very good chance that the money is starting to run out so these changes would push the project well over budget. Throw in a rapidly approaching release date and a team already stressed with defects and last minute changes, and it's no wonder project managers view these groups with dread.

Of course, these teams are not just a bureaucratic hurdle to be jumped. They do an important job. The organisation could be in serious trouble if they release anything that is illegal or is not in line with whatever regulations they are under. Groups like legal and compliance have the skills and knowledge to make sure that doesn't happen. In the healthcare company I worked for, patient safety was responsible for exactly that - the safety of the patients whose treatment was administered through the software we wrote. They were trained medical professionals, with years of hospital experience, who assessed what we produced and made sure that in the stressful, overworked environment of a typical hospital, that the software could be used without the risk of accidentally administering the wrong drug or the wrong dose or operating on the wrong leg (or even wrong patient) or anything like that. That's a pretty important thing to do. We knew how valuable it was. We still hated dealing with them though. Product managers would jump through hoops to get their product classified "non-therapeutic" so they could avoid a safety review. The downside of course is that there was no safety review. If only there was a way that we could get the value that these groups provide without all the downsides.

As an agile coach I am always pushing for cultural change. That's what agile is really - it's not a delivery mechanism, it's a fundamental change in the culture of an organisation. What do we mean by organisational culture? There are many definitions but the one that I like is that culture is a shared understanding of values. It's the understanding everyone has of what the organisation thinks is important. Culture drives behaviour - people will seek to maximise what is considered important in the culture and will behave in ways that do that.

The problem of course is that, as anyone will tell you, cultural change is hard. CEOs are tasked with changing culture and spend years failing to do it. People say that the only way to change culture is to change all the people. Or that cultural change only happens when a generation of employees retire. I don't agree. Cultural change is really easy. You just need to let people know what the organisation values. "Hang on", I hear you say, "Just wait a minute. Organisations have been putting out statements for years about what they want in their new culture. People can often quote chapter and verse from the CEO's latest values statement. Millions are spent on flashy communications. And nothing changes."

For the last few weeks (interrupted briefly by the holiday break) we have been looking at executive coaching. We have taken a look at some of the big problems executives face and at some of the ways we can use agile tools to help resolve them. We have looked at resource planning, controlling financial spend and estimating ROI. All these things, though, are manifestations of a more fundamental problem - the problem of control. Control is a real issue for executives. They are responsible for a P&L. They have business goals to meet. They have people under them to meet those goals. They are expected to be in control.

In a traditional environment they maintain control through their position as central decision maker. Any significant decision will be funneled up through them. In an agile environment we recognise that centralised decision making is slow and inefficient, so we decentralise the decision making for efficiency. The problem is that, to the exec, we have taken away their decision making (and therefore their control) and not given them any other control mechanism to replace it. Without some alternative control mechanism, execs in an agile environment will continue to rely on their old control mechanism - centralised decision making - to the detriment of the agility of the group. All the unnecessary steering committees, status reports, executive briefings, financial controls, and so on are all manifestations of this fundamental problem - how does an executive maintain control when they are no longer the one making all the key decisions?

We have been looking at executive coaching and what sorts of conversations we can have with them as coaches. So far we have looked at resource management and financial control.  Continuing on our theme,  I'll be looking at the next burning question execs tend to have -  "How do I ensure good ROI in an agile environment?"

ROI is a term that frightens non financial folks but what it boils down to is "am I getting good value for my money?" Is the money I am spending giving me enough benefit to justify spending it? In a traditional organisation, ROI is managed through the business case and estimation processes. The business case will set out a number of benefits and the estimation process will work out how much it  will cost to deliver those benefits. In an agile environment, we don't go through those processes.  We don't do detailed up front estimates.  So how does the person in charge -  the person whose money we are spending - make sure they are getting good value?

Last time we looked at the most common question you get when talking to senior leaders - how to control spend. This time, we'll look at probably the next most common one - how to control resources. By control resources, I don't mean how to tell people what to do. What I mean is how to keep control of resource numbers. In non-business speak, that means "how can I manage the number of people in my team and still deliver?" This is, of course another side to the "how do I control costs" discussion, and is a particular problem for IT departments.

The answer seems obvious - just stop hiring people. Set a staff limit and stick to it. The reality for IT departments is a little more complex though and it's related to the way big organisations control the flow of work. Or to be more precise, how they don't control the flow of work.

Last time I talked about executive coaching and the need for coaches to engage with senior leaders. A lot of the comments I got were along the lines of "great idea but I have no idea what to say to them. I can relate to teams because I used to be a developer. I've never been a senior leader so I don't know that their problems are". That's fair enough. It's hard to relate to something you have never been exposed to so I'll throw out a few suggestions to get conversations started. Once the conversation has started, it will take its own course.

In my brief stint as a senior leader, and in my many subsequent interactions with senior leaders, there are 4 key conversations that come up over and over again. Financials is usually a popular one - how to maintain financial control in an agile environment. Resource management is another one. There is usually a good conversation to be had around the age old question of measuring return on investment, otherwise known as "how do I make sure I get my monies' worth?". The last one I will cover is control - how do executives maintain control of their portfolio when decisions are being delegated to product owners and teams. But first financials. I know...boring. Try to stay awake here, this may be dull, and involve dealing with finance people, but it is important stuff.

In the agile community, we tend to focus a lot on teams. This is a natural thing to do as building high performing delivery teams is where agile started. We tend to see management as an impediment to good team functioning. We talk about "the frozen middle" and "lack of executive support". We teach scrum masters and product owners how to shield their teams from management.

If we are going to stay in delivery team land, this is fine. We can build high performing teams and shield them from management as we always have, but if we want to take agile further - build truly agile organisations rather than just agile delivery teams - we need to take a different approach to management. We need to start engaging them as allies rather than treating them as the enemy.

What's the first thing you do when you look at a map? Find your destination? Maybe. Start planning a route? Sounds logical. But there is something missing. One fundamental step that renders the other two useless. That first step is locating where you are. Obvious really, but essential. Unless you can position yourself accurately on the map, no amount of accuracy in destination identification, or time spent in route planning, will get you where you want to go.

That's obvious when looking at a map. Very few of us (my mother excluded) will locate our destination then confidently set off without working out where we are now. My mother, on the other hand, will locate her destination, see that it is on the left hand side of the map and confidently set out towards the left. Consequently her excursions often end up in interesting places. Trouble is, the same principle applies to organisational change and in that context, very few of us perform the first step. We jump straight into desired state, plan a few actions and off we go. We don't spend much time, if any, on step one. We don't measure where we are first. The result is exactly the same as looking at a map without locating youself on it. You will start off confidently in a random direction and end up... somewhere. If it's at your intended destination that will be by good luck (or the help of someone you asked for directions) rather than good map reading.

When talking to stakeholders about why they want their project to go agile, the most common reason they give is speed. Faster time to market. Faster delivery. Fast, fast fast. If you dig a little deeper though, and ask what they mean by fast, they don't say things like "before our competitors", they will say things like "when you promised it". A lot of the time, speed is a kind of code for "no delays". Make us a commitment and stick to it. Don't jerk us around. What they are really looking for a lot of the time is not more speed in delivery but more predictability.

Predictability is really important to the wider business. They may have trade shows booked, advertising campaigns locked in, shareholder briefings prepared. If commitments aren't met, it can have big impacts on the rest of the organisation. I know of one organisation who sent out letters to a million customers advising of a change on a particular date, only for that date to slip by 6 months. Not only is that not a good look, it's expensive too, as a million other letters needed to be sent out advising that the change would not, in fact, be happening, then another million when the new date was announced. Fortunately, an agile approach is ideally suited to giving the business the certainty it needs. How can this be when the agile approach doesn't try to lock down everything in advance? How can you have predictability without certainty?