How business agility creates resilient systems.

In today's episode of the Definitely Maybe Agile podcast, Peter and Dave talk about how resilient systems prevent you from losing money when things go awry.

This week takeaways:

• Risk management is the responsibility of the entire organization.
• Build a stronger system capable of learning and recovering.

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com 

Transcript

Peter 0:04

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, a podcast where Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello and welcome to another episode of Definitely Maybe Agile. Today we continue our series about business agility and how it impacts your bottom line. What's on the cards today, Dave?

Dave 0:22

It's interesting. So we're looking, I mean, business agility typically is built around some sort of a digital product, right? So we're, you know, the topic that we wanted to touch on now is resilience systems really prevent you losing money because you know they do they work well when we expect them to, and there's resilience built into them. So even if you stress those systems, they're still going to work well within a certain bound uh which will allow us to keep going. I also wanted to roll into this. This almost has something to do with risk management and how risks are handled. So I think it's it's not as simple as just looking at, you know, the systems are built better, therefore we're doing better. I think it's the approach to risk that uh agile organizations uh adopt or can adopt, which really has an impact here.

Peter 1:11

Yeah, there's um one of the interesting things you see in uh more agile organizations is a focus on making the risk visible, making risk uh a part of the conversation. Whereas so often uh in a lot of organizations it's kind of taken for granted as something we can't truly understand, so we're gonna ignore that it exists. And the that's one of these things which drives um, well, a lack of resilience, like a fragility of the systems that we we sometimes see. Whereas if we uh uh acknowledge that there is risk in the system, things are gonna fail. We know that things are gonna fail. So why don't we build systems that will be able to respond to that failure and be able to learn from it so that uh the next failure that occurs, we're better able to respond.

Dave 1:59

There's a really great talk by Dave Snowden, um, and I'll try and find the link, we'll stick it in the notes, where he's talking about complexity and risk and failure, risks and failure that can happen in organizations and systems and so on. And what's it and broadly speaking, the talk is about how if you've got Gaussian risks, that's one thing. We've got a normal distribution, we uh typically understand that normal distribution very well. We can manage those risks. But if you've got a power law or some non-Gaussian distribution, then we need to approach risk in a different way. And it's less of a gated, you know, do X, Y, and Z kind of control-based piece. And it's much more distributed and exploratory in terms of understanding and managing risk. And that's sort of exactly what we seek on agile in agile delivery teams in terms of technical risk and various other risks and compliance issues they may deal with, but also in in agile organizations where there's that realization that risk is not somehow templated and controlled through policy and controls, but is something that is within is is addressed within the organization.

Peter 3:11

Yeah, and and even the fact that uh looking to define it in mathematical terms is uh a step beyond this uh the the kind of more deterministic uh policy-driven controls uh methods of that we typically see uh as a risk control mechanism. Uh uh there's lots of work I do in space around um the concept of lean control out of the uh BVSSH space. This uh the the idea of how do you uh go from the standards and policies and regulatory controls into an understanding of what's necessary uh from a governance perspective in the context of the team so that they're you're better able to r respond uh rather than it being a case of uh calling somebody up who really doesn't understand what is the problem or the situation that you're trying to actually um solve within your system.

Dave 4:03

Well, and and this is that that organizational agility is about blurring the lines between these sort of distinct functions or or uh sets of expertise and and bringing the right information, the right skill sets to the table for the right reasons. So it's almost raising our awareness to be able to look for things and sniff things out that might be an issue, and then being able to discuss those kind of kind of openly without having to kind of jump through all the right hoops, or maybe just not be aware of where the conversation should be raised.

Peter 4:33

Exactly. There's another element as well that business agility brings in as related to this risk, which is the um the emphasis on learning from things when they go wrong. So this emphasis on ensuring that that learning is captured and that action is taken as a consequence of it. Whereas uh that that isn't always the case. We we talk about doing things like post-implementation reviews, but very often those become something that's done at the end of a long project and then it uh gets uh signed off and then it cat collects digital dust in some repository somewhere, and uh, but nobody ever goes back to actually action the items that are in there. Whereas the within a more um business agility mindset, we're looking at a learning from those uh failures as they occur and ensuring that action gets takes place um as quickly as possible after the event.

Dave 5:28

I I absolutely right. And the the phrase that I have in my mind, or the two words, if you like, that I have in my mind as you're describing that is one is that timely, the focus on timely uh learnings and timely opportunities or learnings from that, versus the focus of building the habit and that mental muscle so that it isn't is this the right time for learning, but it's a continuous act of, oh hold on, maybe now's you know, there's something's happened, now's the time for us to do it. So shifting from is this the right time, is it the right cadence, to a mental muscle of just kind of continually being aware that lessons can be learned really as and when you need to.

Peter 6:07

So, and this is a favorite topic of mine because it's a space that I work in a lot. So uh, how would you sum this up in uh in three bullets?

Dave 6:15

So I think um I really like the way we ended up talking about risk management in the rather than just the purely on the technical systems, because I think risk is is a more and more of an urgent uh topic in many organizations. So, where we're coming into on this one is understanding that risk is moving away from that sort of risk management, is moving away from a policy template gated type of thing into something which is really the responsibility of the entire organization. That aligns beautifully with the agile organization and how they're working on with that agility, being able to blur the lines between um parts of the organization to address that and think about it all the time. The second piece is I just touch on then that that lessons learned, the learning aspect of the organization and that shift towards it being a habitual kind of habit of the organization or or activity of the organization rather than something that is injected on a regular cadence.

Peter 7:14

Yes, exactly. And it's the you fall to the strength of your systems where you're building a more and more resilient system because when things go wrong, and they will go wrong, you they already have, you may not even be aware, but they've already gone wrong. And when that happens, they you're they're gonna fall to the strength of your system. And the stronger you build your system, the the better your system is at uh at learning and recovering from those events, the uh the less money you'll lose as a consequence of it.

Dave 7:44

And and I just want to understand you when you talk about system there, you're actually talking about the people in the whole system of an organization as well as or in a you know as well as the technical system.

Peter 7:56

And I suppose we should clarify that. We we use the word systems a lot, and there's so many words in our language or uh it gets a little overloaded, but yes, the the the systems, uh consisting of the people, the process, and the technology. Fantastic. Uh so with that, I'd I'd like to sum it up. Uh, if you would uh like to send us any feedback, you can at feedback at definitely maybeagile.com. It's always a pleasure, Dave. And uh I look forward to next time.

Dave 8:21

Yes, for sure. It's been a great conversation, again, great series, actually. I think we've had some really interesting uh discussions there. So thanks again, Peter.

Peter 8:28

Thank you, Dave. You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts, Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock, focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and DevOps at scale.