At AgilityHealth®, our team has always believed there’s a correlation for teams between qualitative metrics (defined by maturity) and quantitative metrics (defined by performance or flow). A few years ago, we adjusted our Agile team assessments to gather both qualitative and quantitative data. Once we felt we had a sufficient amount to explore, we partnered with the University of Nebraska’s Center for Applied Psychological Services to review the data through our AgilityHealth platform. The main question we wanted to answer was: What are the top competencies driving teams to higher performance?
Read MoreBoosting Output after Implementing Agile
One of our large financial services clients needed immediate help. The company was struggling to meet customer demands and industry regulations and needed to align business priorities to capacity before it was outplayed by competitors. They thought the answer would be to invest in Agile practices. But so far, that strategy didn’t seem to be paying off.
Read MoreAssess multiple teams across an organization virtually
Measuring the health and performance of just one team to gauge their maturity and help them grow requires many resources including establishing a method of measurement, time for the team to complete the assessment, someone to help the team analyze the results and establish a growth plan to move forward, and much more. Multiplying those efforts across all teams in an organization can seem daunting. But does it have to be?
Read More8 Patterns to Set Up Your Measure and Grow Program for Success
We all know that any time you start something new in an organization it takes time to make it stick, but if teams and leaders find value, they will work to keep a program flourishing. The same is true when you implement a Measure and Grow or Continuous Improvement Program within your organization. It takes planning and effort to get it started, but the rewards will outweigh the efforts in the end.
At AgilityHealth®, our Strategists work with organizations every day to help them set up Measure and Grow programs across their teams that will succeed based on the company’s needs and goals. Through their experiences, we have noticed some consistent patterns across our customers, both commercial and government, for-and non-profit. Understanding these patterns can help you set up a program that’s right for your organization.
Leaders across all industries and geographies are continually being asked to “Do More with Less”. While this reality isn’t new, it’s definitely not going away anytime soon. The question, then, is how do you empower teams to consistently deliver more value in sustainable ways?
How do you empower teams?
The good news is that Agile and Business Agility practices can do just that—help your teams deliver more value, faster, on a consistent basis.
While there’s no silver bullet to tackling this challenge, there are definitely patterns that work. The most effective approach we’ve seen at AgilityHealth® is to:
Using Crawl, Walk, Run and Fly to Measure Team Maturity
Accurately and consistently measuring team health and performance can be a tricky business, as can establishing agreed-upon levels of maturity for teams throughout an organization.
When we initially launched the TeamHealth® Radar in 2014, the assessment questions described the positive/highest level behavior for each competency we were assessing and asked the teams to rate themselves using the Tuckman model of Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. We noticed many teams, especially those who were newer to Agile, ranked themselves too high using this scale. Teams didn’t know what they didn’t know and most of the team members felt they were doing great, which was subjective. This led to some of the data not accurately reflecting their true team health and maturity.
It’s certainly true that teams go through the Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing stages and that Coaches should tailor their guidance based on the current stage of each team. But from a maturity perspective, we felt there was a more applicable scale and additionally, we wanted to easily provide all teams in an organization consistent guidance on how to build an actionable roadmap for growth.
2022 AgilityHealth Radar Updates
Oftentimes, in order to move forward, people follow the ‘out with the old, in with the new’ train of thought. A focus on continuous improvement can certainly follow that pattern. But at AgilityHealth®, we’ve learned that even though there’s a need for new developments, there’s frequently no reason to throw out the old when you can simply make a few improvements instead! With that in mind, we are thrilled to announce new AgilityHealth Radars to help further your transformation journey, as well as enhancements to some of our favorite radars and Growth Portals. Many of these new developments stemmed from feedback and ideas received from current customers. Here’s what we’ve done with those continuous improvement suggestions!
Read MoreUsing Data to Develop a Continuous Improvement Strategy
Over the last few years, organizations have needed to make a shift from reacting in a disorganized manner when something unexpected happens to proactively addressing or responding to disruptions quickly and effectively. This approach has helped organizations to rapidly recover, thrive, and move forward, thus improving their business agility.
Read MoreThe Target Dojo Experience
Travis Klinker, Target
At the EBA Summit this past September, Travis shared that starting an agile journey was not easy and they certainly had to practice patience. When starting Agile at Target not everyone was ready for the change. With a larger organization, it’s hard to change the mindset. The video recording of Travis’s presentation and slides can be found here.
Read MoreReskilling… upskilling… the future of work. No matter how it’s defined, companies are challenged with a critical need to build – and retain – skilled workforces to stay competitive.
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