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rss-bridge 2022-12-21T17:22:00+00:00

Episode 543: Jon Smart on Patterns and Anti-Patterns for Successful Software Delivery in Enterprises

Jon Smart, author of the book Sooner Safer Happier: Patterns and Antipatterns for Business Agility, discusses patterns and anti-patterns for the success of enterprise software projects. Host Brijesh Ammanath speaks with him about the various common...

Jon Smart, author of the book Sooner Safer Happier: Patterns and Antipatterns for Business Agility, discusses patterns and anti-patterns for the success of enterprise software projects. Host Brijesh Ammanath speaks with him about the various common patterns and principles needed to survive and prosper in the digital age. They discuss why doing an Agile or Lean or DevOps transformation is an anti-pattern and how the focus should be on outcomes rather than outputs, and why psychological safety is the number one factor in building high-performing teams. Jon goes into depth on the need for a mindset change and why transformational leadership is required for leaders to coach and guide teams on this journey.

Show Notes

  • Episode 420: Ryan Ripley on Making Scrum Work
  • Episode 401: Jeremy Miller on Waterfall Versus Agile
  • Episode 238: Linda Rising on the Agile Brain

Transcript

Transcript brought to you by IEEE Software magazine.

This transcript was automatically generated. To suggest improvements in the text, please contact [email protected] and include the episode number and URL.

Brijesh Ammanath 00:00:16 Welcome to Software Engineering Radio. I’m your host, Brijesh Ammanath. And today my guest is Jon Smart. Jon is a business agility practitioner, thought leader, and coach. Jon is a lead author of the award-winning and best-selling book, Sooner Safer Happier, Patterns and Anti-Patterns for Business Agility. Jon previously was Global Business Agility Lead and partner at Deloitte. Prior to this, Jon led Vaso working globally for Barclays Bank. Jon has been an Agile and Lean practitioner since the early 90s. Jon is also the founder of Enterprise Agility Leaders Network, a member of programming committee for Devs Enterprise Summit, a member of the Business Agility Institute Advisory Council, a guest speaker at London Business School, and speaks at numerous conferences every year. Both me and Jon have worked together in our previous roles, and I have also reviewed Jon’s book. Jon, welcome to Software Engineering Radio.

Jon Smart 00:01:09 Thank you, Brijesh.

Brijesh Ammanath 00:01:10 We’ll be talking today about patterns and anti-patterns for the successful delivery of software in enterprises based on Jon’s book, Better Value, Sooner, Safer, Happier. We have covered Agile and Enterprises previously in Episode 420, Ryan Ripley on Making Scrum Work; Episode 401 – Jeremy Miller on Waterfall vs. Agile; Episode 238 – Linda Rising on the Agile Brain. Let’s get started with the session by understanding the drivers behind writing the book. Who was the target audience for the book and what motivated you to write the book, Jon?

Jon Smart 00:01:45 So thank you, Brijesh. The target audience for the book is leaders at all levels in all roles. So, it’s very much aimed at people working in large organizations looking to improve their ways of working and not only people in technology, not only software engineering but also outside of technology or people with no technology background. So, as much as possible, the goal is to try to use plain English and minimize the use of language that might be perceived to be jargon. And in terms of what prompted me to write the book, I’ve had, I think, speaking of the DevOps Enterprise Summit, knowing Gene Kim and then talking to Gene about the book writing process, it was, I don’t know, it was just like an aspiration I had to and a bit of an experiment to write a book. And I think being in that DevOps Enterprise Summit IT Revolution community, there are a number of people that have written books and Gene running his own book publishing company. So, then I had a conversation with Gene, Hey, what does it take to write a book? And then next thing you know, two-and-a-half years later there’s a book.

Brijesh Ammanath 00:02:53 Thanks. I think it’s pretty clear to me and the audience on the drivers for writing this book. And I know in your book you talk about better ways of working in the age of digital and the focus shifting to outcomes. What do you think has driven this change?

Jon Smart 00:03:06 So in Sooner, Safer, Happier, we are absolutely advocating a focus on the outcomes first and foremost. And the anti-pattern here is where organizations do an Agile transformation, where it’s all about the A word, it’s all about Agile. Agile is not the goal, the goal is something else. The goal is quicker time to value, quicker time to learning, more engagement with colleagues, higher levels of engagement, happier customers. So that this is the key, my key learning, with the lesson I learned the hard way and the mistake I made when I started out leading ways of working across a large financial services organization with 80,000 people. We were running an Agile transformation. We were measuring the wrong things. We were measuring how many Agile teams and so on, how many people have been trained in Agile. But that’s not the goal. The goal isn’t to do Agile, hence the language of better value, sooner, safer, happier, which is quality. Better is quality, value is value, which is unique, sooner it’s time to value. Safer is Agile, not fragile. And happier is happier customers, colleagues, citizens, and climate. So, really what we are coaching organizations on advocating for is to focus on the outcomes, and then there’s not one size fits all as to how you get there. Because every organization is unique, and that is a message that seems to be resonating, not surprisingly.

Brijesh Ammanath 00:04:29 Thank you Jon. And I also know that in your book you talk about business agility. I wonder if you could explain a bit about what is business agility and why it is important.

Jon Smart 00:04:38 So, we are lucky enough to be alive in a once-in-a-hundred-year pivot in ways of working, in how we do what we do. And it might even be more than once in a hundred year, it might actually be once in 250 years. So what is business agility? It is improving ways of working in order to improve outcomes. And the background to this is repeating technology-led revolutions. And so back in 1771, we have the first industrial revolution, and that was the very first time that we went from kind of craft working to division of labor and working in a factory. And it is still the case today, 250 years later, that you can trace the DNA of ways of working in a large organization, which is doing knowledge work which is unique and unknowable: You can trace the ways of working all the way back to 1771 and the very first factories that were in Darbyshire, in Northern England. And so, business agility is improving ways of working to deliver better outcomes. And it’s triggered by the latest technologically led revolution, which is the age of digital. And it’s driven by competitive pressure because no longer can companies take a long time to have a feedback loop on the value that they’re producing.

Brijesh Ammanath 00:05:59 Right. And do you think business agility, or the lack of rather, are more of a problem in large enterprises rather than smaller forms?

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