Abdelkrim Ait Said's blog

Client Centricity

Agility is a concept of interaction that promotes the emergence of collective intelligence for the production of value. In a customer-centric approach, the customer, as the main beneficiary of this value, is at the center of the entire decision-making and production system.
Indeed, all efforts are focused on the realization of innovative and highly rewarding customer experiences.

Organizations taking this type of approach must undertake a radical transformation. Every decision must be made with consideration of the effects on the customer and not just on the organization itself, its entities or services.

As a result, it is imperative for companies that follow this approach to adjust their:

Organization
Business strategy (segmentation)
Ability to understand their customers’ needs (go beyond the simple requests of your customers)
Empathy
Ability to develop global solutions
Customer Relationship

A customer centric approach is based on market research to drive the strategy and user research to drive the design of the solution.

Empathy is fundamental here to build the design of the solution. The organization must break with its beliefs and preconceived ideas to build a solution based on what the customer experiences and feels.

The approach encourages user research and ‘Gemba walks’ that help agile teams gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs, how they see, understand and interact with their environment.

Beyond functional needs, the empathic approach addresses:

Aesthetic, ergonomic and emotional needs
Performance, safety and compliance needs
Impacts of the solution on its context
Architecture, maintenance and support needs

It’s all about thinking the solution as a whole to ensure that it meets the customer’s needs and also increases the perceived and real value of the solution.

The organization also learns how to take advantage of market rhythms and events in order to maximize the value of its deliveries.

As you have understood, transformation is not limited here to your organization’s production system, but goes far beyond that in its culture, its business strategy and its ability to question its beliefs in order to propose solutions that are most in line with its customers’ expectations.

Abdelkrim AIT SAID
Lean Agile Change Agent
Certified SPC Coach
Learn more on me here

Agile is simple… don’t complicate it!

When I start a new coaching service, I’m often surprised at how quickly teams succeed in adopting the « mechanics » of an Agile framework. Mostly Scrum, but not exclusively. So my question is: why do organizations take so much time to develop real agility within their teams, or even sometimes fail to really benefit from it? Is it a matter of framework? organizational or hierarchical barriers?

If you experience this kind of situation with your teams, may be you complicated your approach of Agility. Let’s get back to fundamentals. Agile is about feedbacks, that means your organization, your teams and your people continuously need feedbacks to learn and adapt to their environnement. It’s the hallmark of a complex adaptive system. Just to take an example from Scrum rituals. Daily meetings are interactions on technical subjects between dev team members, it’s a technical feedback. Sprint reviews are interactions on functional subjects between the team and all stakeholders. It’s a functional feedback. Retrospectives are interactions on how the team members can improve the way they work together. It’s a human feedback. You got it! it’s all about interactions. The quality of your rituals is a key element to allow the agility of your teams to emerge.

You can work in an agile way with motivated people only.
Abdelkrim AIT SAID

Agile is also about transparency which goes hand in hand with trust. Trust enables motivation. Within your organization, transparency must be bidirectional. Top-down and of course bottom-up. Get people always informed of strategic decisions. Your strategy must be clear and shared. Reciprocally, team backlogs and work in progress are visible for everyone. You can work in an agile way with motivated people only.

Yesterday’s paradigms are today’s problems… encourage learning even if it has to go through failure
Abdelkrim AIT SAID

If you enable transparency within your organization and foster people interactions, you are not so bad! With this new Agile way of working, you radically change the context. Therefore, you must change paradigms. Yesterday’s paradigms are today’s problems. Stop old reflexes that limit you to do Agile without being agile. Stop command & control, bring out servant leaders, take Inspect & Adapt as a culture and encourage learning even if it has to go through failure.

The foundations of the Agile approach remain the concepts of interaction and transparency, but don’t ignore negative impacts of old paradigms you are dealing with. Within your organization, help people to abandon old paradigms to facilitate the emergence of real agility within your teams. Old paradigms are often cause of failure in adoption of Agile.

Abdelkrim AIT SAID
Lean Agile Change Agent
Certified SPC Coach
Learn more on me here

Agile Framing … launch your agile teams successfully

Agile framing is an important step when launching new agile teams. Do not underestimate this step if you aspire to quickly take advantage of the huge benefits of agile.

Launching your teams without preliminary framing, is starting without vision, without technical preparation and without modalities of self-organization.
On the other hand, the main risk of spending too much time preparing for the launch of your teams is giving your competitors a head start, in an ever more changeable and uncertain market.

It’s up to you to strike the balance between an unpreparedness that risks prematurely compromising your project, and a time-consuming and often inefficient over-preparation.

The Product axis

An Agile team does not start without vision … In this context, how can you make the collective intelligence of your teams emerge around the products and services they work on?
— Abdelkrim AIT SAID

An agile team does not start without vision. This seems obvious, but in reality, it is not often the case. If your teams know what they have to do, they don’t know why they are doing it and don’t know the needs to be addressed. In this context, how can you make the collective intelligence of your teams emerge around the products and services they work on?

In order to implement the product vision, your agile teams must begin their journey with a clear product vision, a well-defined success criteria and a value-prioritized backlog. Many tools and workshops can help you to reach theses requirements as Pitch Elevator, Story Mapping, Design Thinking approach and so on…

The technical axis

The vision is essential. The technical basis that will bring it to life is just as important … the economic viability of your product depends on it
— Abdelkrim AIT SAID

Another pillar of agile framing is the preparation of the technical aspects that your teams will have to deal with. What are the best development practices to adopt? What architectural and infrastructure elements will be required to support the vision? What tools should be used to support their activities? What quality standards should be adopted to avoid building, from the very first days, a technical debt that will probably never be paid off!

Vision is essential. The technical basis that will bring it to life is just as important. They are both legs of the same body and the economic viability of your product depends on it.

The organizational dimension… to live and grow together

Help your teams choose the agile framework within which they want to evolve… Choose an « Agnostic Agile » approach.
— Abdelkrim AIT SAID

Now that your functional and technical framing elements are known, ask your teams to lay the foundations for their self-organization. This is where team life begins! Help them choose the agile framework within which they want to evolve. During this stage, the role of the coach is crucial. Choose an « Agnostic Agile » approach.

All models are wrong, some are useful
— George BOX

Everyone’s roles and responsibilities must be known and workflows materialized. Your teams must agree on the notions of « ready » and « done » for their backlog items.

With an established and shared product vision, a technical foundation ready to support the vision and the modalities of a self-organization defined, you will put your teams in the best arrangements to successfully develop your next products.

Abdelkrim AIT SAID
Lean Agile Change Agent
Certified SPC Coach
Learn more on me here

Abdelkrim AIT SAID, Lean Agile Change Agent

Change now or die tomorrow! In a high uncertain market, organizations that do not adapt fail. In that context of high uncertainty and change, I strongly believe that Agility can produce huge positive results.

I help teams to reach their best potential and to provide to their customers the right product at the right time.

I encourage organizations to provide teams with a shared vision, to facilitate interactions and collective intelligence instead of building rigid processes, to strive for continuous improvement and excellence, and finally, to celebrate together successes.

As a coach or team facilitator, I support as well big corporations as young dynamic scale-ups, in their digital and agile transformation since 2014.

Abdelkrim AIT SAID
Lean Agile Change Agent
Certified SPC Coach