Agile & Digital Transformation best practice

In this week's edition of our weekly 3@3  series,  Al and Steve discuss the Agile method and DT best practice with Agile coach Paul Mathers. Paul was a business architect for 10 years before becoming an Agile coach with Arabica Transformation consultants. 

The 3 questions covered in this episode:

• Arm's length leadership - why is this bad for transformation?
  
• Theory over practice - do the certificates really help?
  
• Scaling - when is it right to do this?

Paul talks about the pitfalls associated with arms-length leadership in DT projects and the need to engage and keep engaged throughout the process. He suggests that all too often, C-suits participation in DT projects, stops at the point of tendering and argues that it's a tremendous amount of trust to put into a company that is as, yet not a known entity. Paul suggests that this is hands-off approach is indicative an over-promising by the transformation company and a lack of understanding by executives on the process of transformation, and that it is just that, a process, not a switch that you can assign immediate KPI's to. 

The act of immediately assigning value to something is what accreditation is all about, and Paul suggests that claiming to be an expert after completing a short training course and announcing yourself to be an 'Agile Coach' without any previous experience is a misnomer.

Al, Steve and Paul all agreed that certification has it's a place in some industries, but technical training on Agile theory and application of that theory, can not replace real-world experience or the insights a practitioner gleans from applying that theory in a real-world context. There are some things you can't learn in a controlled classroom setting.