Cost of Delay to express COVID-19 urgency to act

In learning how different countries are handling the COVID-19 pandemic, what is clear is that each are acting with varying levels of urgency. The level of urgency indicates how quickly a country acted to protect its citizens. Those that are acting with greater urgency and quality care, are saving more of their citizens. Those acting slowly and inconsistently have introduced a cost that translates to a loss of life.  I call this the cost of delaying health practices in light of the virus or cost of delay. 

What specifically is this cost of delay (CoD)?  Taking a page from blackswamfarming.com, the concept of Cost of Delay (CoD) is a way of communicating the impact of time on the outcome of we hope to achieve. In other words, for every period of time (e.g., a week or month), if we do not deliver value, there is an impact. Where CoD is typically used for financial considerations, I have turned it on its head for life and death considerations. 

What does this mean in terms of today’s COVID-19 pandemic? In a simple scenario, imagine that value is applying lockdown practices which includes stay-at-home orders, personal protective equipment (PPE), and social distancing. The positive impact of applying the lockdown practices is saving human lives.  The cost of not applying the lockdown practices is lost lives. As illustrated in the graphic below, for every week that we do not apply social lockdown practices, a number of humans die. 

Adding real numbers to the mix, this concept becomes much more tangible. Imagine if 40,000 people died over a period of 8 weeks.  For every week you fail to get lockdown practices in place, 5000 lives are lost (e.g., 40,000 divided by 8 = 5000).  This is real and substantial.  If another week goes by and lockdown practices are not yet implemented, then another 5000 people die.  The lives lost helps you understand the urgency in implementing the lockdown practices. The above illustration is an urgency profile where the benefits are consistent and long lived.  

The reality for COVID-19 is that it is an urgency profile is relatively short-lived which is represented by a steep curve up and then a steep curve down.  This means the longer we wait to implement lockdown, the greater the cost to human life and the less it can benefit the people. Current estimates in the US indicate that two-thirds of the casualties could have been saved if action to protect Americans just 2-weeks earlier like social distancing orders would have occurred. Below is an illustration of an urgency profile that is short-life affected peak.  

For more information on cost of delay, consider visiting Cost of Delay section of Black Swan Farming site. There you will also find various urgency profiles.

Embracing Agile in Tunisia

In October, I had the honor of being the keynote at the first Agile conference in Tunis in the past 4 years (generously sponsored by Vistaprint).  While I was grateful for the opportunity, seeing the number of the attendees from different fields highlighted the attention that Agile was getting in this growing Tunisian economy.  I was impressed by the quality of the professionals and students that attended, coming from a range of companies, government agencies, and universities.
 

My keynote was entitled the “Foundations and Future of Agile”.  You can watch the session here. I started my session by asking the question, “Who do you want to be.”  The intent was to get the audience to consider if they can be more than who they are today and make a commitment to Agile as they approach the future.  I followed this up with, “Who do we want Tunisia to be”?  I provided a vision on how Tunisia can be the pride of Africa. I challenged the participants to become the leaders in Agile and the customer value drive mindset.

To begin the “foundation” portion of my session, I focused on the Agile Values and Principles.  I find that too many companies lead with mechanics and forget the mindset of embracing the values and principles.  Leading with the mindset will remind people why they are doing agile in the first place.  As I shared each principle, one at a time, using a roman voting technique I asked attendees if they believed in each principle. I was pleased to see that there was a strong belief in embracing the principles.  This bodes well for their ability to apply Agile methods and practices and the future of Tunisia. 

As I moved into the “future” portion, I shared the importance of becoming customer value-driven.  I suggest that Agile shouldn’t be done for agile’s sake but instead the goal should be to build a customer value-driven engine. It is the customer who we are serving and who we want to make successful.  As they succeed, so will our business.  I shared the modern concepts of the enterprise kanban, customer value canvas, cost of delay, story mapping, and customer feedback loops.  I wove in the discovery mindset including incremental thinking, psychological safety, and, self-organizing teams.
  

I ended the session by asking again, “Who do you want to be? What is your role in building a greater Tunisia?”  With such potential in the audience from everyone I met, I can understand why some companies are already setting up development centers in Tunis such as Vistaprint.  I ended with asking all of the participants to make a commitment to explore in more detail one of the Agile concepts or mindset elements they learned today.  Almost everyone’s hand went up.  This will help make for a better future in Tunisia. I’m looking forward to it!

Note: In addition to my session, the conference included a session by Antonio Gonzalez on “The Role of an Agile Leader” and by JP Beaudry on “The Vistaprint Agile Journey”. Special thanks to Nawel Lengliz and Rahma Arfa for coordinating such a great event and to Walid Abdelaziz for sponsoring the event!  

Worth Reading: The Agile Enterprise: Building and Running your Agile Enterprise - for better business results

Imagine an enterprise where everyone focuses on the highest customer value.  Where strategy to tasks are visible so everyone knows if their work is aligned with the highest value work. Imagine an enterprise where a discovery mindset wins over certainty thinking. Where experimentation with increments and feedback help define the way toward customer value.

Imagine a company where employees use 100% of their brain power to self organize around the work and be trusted to think of better ways to work. Where leaders encourage employees to put customer value first.  Imagine an enterprise where customers embrace the products and services being built because they are engaged in the building of the work all along the way.

If you can imagine it, it can be yours!  In this unique and cutting edge Agile book, veteran Enterprise Agile Coach Mario Moreira, will guide you to build and run an Agile enterprise at every level and at every point from idea to delivery. Learn how Agile-mature organizations adapt nimbly to micro changes in market conditions and customer needs and continuously deliver optimal value to customers.  Learn cutting-edge practices and concepts as you extend your implementation of Agile pervasively and harmoniously through the whole enterprise for greater customer value and business success.

Readers of The Agile Enterprise will learn how to:

• Establish a Customer Value Driven engine with an enterprise idea pipeline to process an enterprise’s portfolio of ideas more quickly and productively toward customer value and through all levels of the enterprise
• Incorporate the Discovery Mindset; experimental, incremental, design, and divergent thinking; and fast feedback loops to increase the odds that what you build aligns more closely to what customer wants.
• Leverage Lean Canvas, Personas, Story Mapping, Cost of Delay, Discovery Mindset, Servant leadership, Self-organization, and more to deliver optimum value to customers
• Use continuous Agile Budgeting and enterprise idea pipeline at the senior levels of the enterprise to enable you to adapt to the speed of the market.
• Reinvent Human Resources, Portfolio Management, Finance, and many areas of leadership toward new roles in the enablement of customer value. 
• Establish a holistic view of the state of your Agile Galaxy from top-to-bottom and end-to-end allowing you to understand where you are today and where you’d like to go in your Agile future.
• Be truly Agile throughout the enterprise, focusing on customer value and employees over all else.

This book is geared for: Sponsors of Agile Transformations; Executives and Senior Management; Agile Coaches, Consultants, and Champions; Portfolio Management; Project Management Offices (PMOs); Business and Finance; Human Resources (HR); Investors and Entrepreneurs; Scrum Masters, Agile Project Managers, and Product Owners. 

This book concludes with an adventuring through an Agile Enterprise story that shows you how an enterprise may transform to Agile in an incremental manner with materials in this book.  Let the material in The Agile Enterprise help you achieve your successful customer value driven enterprise.

Thank you to the contributors JP Beaudry (on Story Mapping) and David Grabel (on Cost of Delay)!  A special Thank you to the Apress editing team!

Agile Education Engine - Bringing Power to your Agile Transformation

When I look across the numerous Agile deployment efforts, I see a lower rate of success in achieving the business benefits than I would expect.  May I suggest that in order to improve the odds of achieving Agile success and gaining the business results it can bring, there are three success factors. The first is that the Agile change must be thought of an organizational level change.  The second is that the Agile change must focus on getting the mind Agile-ready.  This is emphasized in the article Are you Ready for you Agile Journey.  And the third is that in order to bridge the gap between the Agile values and principles to Agile methods and practices, people need to be well educated in ways to build more customer value, optimize the flow of work, and increase quality with feedback loops.    

The current level of Agile education tends to be limited to 2-days of training and a variety of books.  I think most people will acknowledge that 2 days of Agile training does not provide enough learning.  On the other hand, reading lots of books takes a lot of time and are often not aligned with each other.  The other challenge with some of the Agile education is that it is often focused only on implementing the mechanics.

What is missing from many Agile transformations is an Agile Education Engine that helps you truly understand and embrace Agile and helps bridge the gap between Agile Values and Principles and the Agile methods and practices.  This will help folks better understand how to understand, embrace, and implement Agile and move beyond simply following the Agile mechanics of the methods and practices.  The Agile Education Engine can help ready the mind for an effective transformation.  

One of the best Agile education engines that I have seen is the material found in the Value Flow Quality (VFQ) work-based education system.  VFQ provides a set of well-researched topics that are easily digested in the form of readings, case studies, activities, and experiments.  It provides students with the ability to study a little, then experiment a little within their own context (aka, project or team).  The benefit of the VFQ work-based learning system is that it helps people apply their newly learned skills on the job when they need them.  This bodes very well for the learners because, they can learn at their own pace and as they are trying to implement the Agile values, principles, and practices. 

Some topics that VFQ offers are: Why Change, Optimizing Flow, Feedback, Requirements, Prioritization, Trade-offs, Understanding your Customer, Delivering Early and Often, Teams, Motivation, Attacking your Queues, Work in Progress, Trade-offs, and more.  Each topic includes a number of techniques that will help you achieve the business outcomes you are looking for.  The VFQ materials will provide you with knowledge on Value Stream Mapping, Story Mapping, Cost of Delay, 6 Prisms and much more.   

In addition, VFQ really helps you get to the state of “being Agile”.  It moves you away from thinking about the mechanics.  Instead, it provides you a layer of knowledge in a critical thinking manner to ensure you apply the principles and behaviors to the practices to gain the outcomes that you want.  Finally, applying the VFQ education is also an excellent way to kick-start an Agile transformation.  This way, the Agile champions for the transformation and teams are armed with a variety of different ways to bring Agile to the organization. 

If you find yourself struggling with getting a good baseline of Agile education, then consider the Value Flow Quality (VFQ) work-based learning system.  It will help you bridge the gap between the Agile values and principles and Agile methods so that you bring the Agile mindset to bear as you start or continue your Agile journey.