Why Direct Agile?
Direct Agile brings over 12 years of experience in tailoring transformation strategies for large organisations. We excel in understanding diverse environments, listening to our customers, and identifying their unique needs and pinch points. By developing bespoke strategies and implementing the best-fit structures, we ensure that each transformation journey aligns with the organisation’s goals. At Direct Agile, we understand that one size does not fit all, and our personalised approach ensures that your organisation achieves measurable success.
We integrate evolved ways of working (EWOW) to help your organisation optimise and harmonise current processes and tools. By complementing and enhancing existing systems, we ensure a seamless transition that aligns with your strategic goals while driving efficiency and innovation. Our adaptive approach empowers teams, enhances collaboration, and builds resilience into organisational workflows.
Introduction
Enterprise transformation requires a structured, yet adaptable, approach to change. Organisations must align strategic vision with operational execution, ensuring continuous value delivery to customers. This white paper outlines a framework for enterprise transformation that combines top-down strategic alignment with bottom-up execution. By leveraging a two-year strategic cycle, quarterly planning events, and lean portfolio management (LPM), organisations can achieve agility and flexibility while pursuing long-term objectives. This dual approach ensures that every level of the organisation contributes to achieving strategic goals while adapting to immediate needs and challenges.
Strategic Vision and Two-Year Cycles
A successful transformation begins with a clearly defined vision and strategic goals that span a two-year cycle. This long-term perspective provides direction while allowing for iterative adjustments based on progress and evolving business needs. For large-scale builds—such as infrastructure or complex technology solutions—which can take 8-10 years to complete, these two-year cycles provide manageable increments for planning, execution, and review. This incremental approach reduces the risk of stagnation and ensures regular reassessment of objectives.
Why: A two-year cycle offers a balance between long-term planning and short-term flexibility. It allows organisations to establish a clear roadmap while remaining responsive to market shifts, technological advancements, or unforeseen challenges.
Benefits:
- Improved focus on measurable goals through OKRs.
- Enhanced adaptability as milestones evolve to reflect real-time changes.
- Reduced complexity in managing large-scale, multi-year initiatives.
Strategic goals are translated into Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), providing measurable targets for the organisation. Milestones aligned with OKRs serve as checkpoints to ensure continuous progress. These milestones are dynamic and can evolve over time to reflect new challenges and opportunities.
Quarterly Planning Events
To bridge the gap between strategy and execution, the organisation conducts two-day quarterly planning events. These events bring together all stakeholders within the programme delivery ecosystem to:
- Plan the next three months of work.
- Identify risks, impediments, and cross-team dependencies.
- Ensure alignment between strategic goals, OKRs, and delivery milestones.
Why: Quarterly planning creates a structured cadence for aligning teams and priorities while maintaining flexibility. It ensures that strategic goals translate into actionable plans across all levels of the organisation.
Benefits:
- Encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams.
- Provides an opportunity to identify and address risks early.
- Increases transparency and accountability at all levels of delivery.
Quarterly planning fosters collaboration, transparency, and collective ownership of outcomes. It also provides a forum for recalibrating priorities and responding to changes in the business environment.
Lean Portfolio Kanban for Leadership
At the leadership level, a Lean Portfolio Kanban system offers real-time visualisation of delivery progress. This tool enables leaders to:
- Link initiatives directly to OKRs and customer milestones.
- Monitor the flow of value through the portfolio.
- Make informed decisions about prioritisation, funding, and resource allocation.
Why: Lean Portfolio Kanban provides a clear and concise view of strategic progress, enabling leadership to make timely and data-driven decisions.
Benefits:
- Increased visibility into initiative status and alignment with strategic goals.
- Better prioritisation of work based on organisational value.
- More effective resource allocation and risk mitigation.
By maintaining a holistic view of the portfolio, leaders can ensure that initiatives align with strategic objectives and drive customer value.
Lower Management Kanban for Operational Alignment
To ensure alignment between leadership and operational execution, lower management maintains an LPM Kanban system. This system:
- Feeds updates into the leadership Kanban.
- Tracks the progress of Epics linked to leadership-level initiatives.
- Provides visibility into execution at the programme and project levels.
Why: A hierarchical Kanban system bridges the gap between strategic direction and tactical execution, ensuring a consistent flow of information and alignment.
Benefits:
- Clear traceability of work from team-level tasks to strategic initiatives.
- Improved communication between leadership and operational teams.
- Enhanced ability to adapt plans based on real-time execution data.
This hierarchical Kanban approach creates a seamless connection between strategic priorities and day-to-day operations.
Team-Level Delivery
At the team level, work is broken down into Stories that contribute to Epics, Initiatives, OKRs, and Milestones. Teams are empowered to choose their preferred working methodologies, whether Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid approaches. This flexibility allows teams to operate in ways that best suit their context and fosters innovation.
Why: Teams operate most effectively when given autonomy to choose methodologies that align with their specific workflows and challenges.
Benefits:
- Increased team engagement and ownership of outcomes.
- Enhanced adaptability and efficiency in delivery.
- Encourages innovation by allowing teams to experiment and refine practices.
Digital Delivery Visualisation with Jira
The entire framework is supported by Jira as a digital delivery visualisation tool. Jira provides:
- A centralised platform for tracking progress across all levels of the organisation.
- Real-time updates and dashboards for transparency.
- Integration of team-level Stories with Epics, Initiatives, and OKRs.
Why: A digital tool like Jira ensures that information is accessible, up-to-date, and actionable, reducing manual effort and errors in tracking progress.
Benefits:
- Improved collaboration and communication through a shared platform.
- Enhanced ability to track progress and identify bottlenecks.
- Provides leadership and teams with a single source of truth for decision-making.
This digital backbone ensures that all stakeholders have access to accurate and up-to-date information, enabling better decision-making and coordination.
Conclusion
Transforming the way organisations deliver programmes and projects requires an integrated approach that aligns strategic vision with execution. By adopting a two-year strategic cycle, conducting quarterly planning events, and leveraging Lean Portfolio Kanban systems, organisations can create a cohesive and adaptive delivery ecosystem. Empowering teams to choose their working methods while maintaining alignment with strategic objectives ensures agility, innovation, and sustained customer value. With tools like Jira, this transformation becomes both achievable and scalable, setting the foundation for long-term success.
Written and produced by Sabrina C E Noto
Founder, Direct Agile Ltd
Leadership and Enterprise Coach
