Unlocking Business Agility with Evidence-Based Management

Patricia Kong helps organizations thrive in a complex world by focusing on enterprise innovation, leadership, and teams. She is a people advocate and fascinated by organizational behavior and misbehaviors. She is co-author of The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum (Addison-Wesley, 2017). Todd Miller has practical experience as a Scrum Master, Product Owner, Software Developer, and Agile coach on a variety of technical and creative projects across a multitude of industries. He has been a professional Scrum trainer with Scrum.org since 2016. Kurt Bittner has been delivering working products in short, feedback-driven cycles for more than 40 years, and has helped many organizations do the same. He is particularly interested in helping people form strong, self-organizing, high-performance teams that deliver solutions that customers love, and helping organizations use empirical feedback to achieve customer outcome-focused goals. Ryan Ripley is a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org, and has experience as a software developer, manager, director, and Scrum Master at various Fortune 500 companies in the medical device, wholesale, and financial services industries. He is the host of "Agile for Humans," the top agile podcast on iTunes. He recently co-wrote Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions for Common Scrum Problems (Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2022).

• Foreword by Ken Schwaber     xiForeword by Dave West      xvPreface      xixIntroduction      xxvii  Chapter 1: Finding Purpose      1Rediscovering Purpose      3Goals      4How Goals and Measures Influence Behaviors      7How to Rediscover Purpose      10Closing Satisfaction Gaps Creates Value      11Customer-Focused Goals Enable Autonomy and Purpose      14Improving Strategic Goals      17Ask “Why?” to Uncover the Real Objective      17Refocus “Internal” Goals on What Customers Need to Experience      19Think About How You Will Measure Progress Toward Your Vision      20What to Watch For      21Moving Forward      22  Chapter 2: Using Empiricism to Progress Toward Goals      23Understanding Value      25Progressing Toward Goals in a Series of Small Steps      27Taking Small Steps Toward Goals      29Steering Toward Goals      32Adapting Goals      34Adapting Tactics      36The Real Purpose of Goals Is to Foster Conversations      36Losing the Plot and Finding It Again      37What to Watch For      38Moving Forward      39  Chapter 3: Becoming (More) Effective      41Value Is Essential, but Frequency Matters Too      42It Is Not Delivery Speed That Is Important; It Is Feedback Speed      44While Focusing on Speed, Do Not Lose Sight of Value      45Speed Is Not Enough; Teams Must Also Be Effective      46Too Many Things at Once      48Where Should Teams Start?      50Beware the Efficiency Trap      51Balancing Speed and Effectiveness      52Cutting Corners: Sometimes Necessary, Sometimes Fatal      53What to Watch For      55Moving Forward      56  Chapter 4: Managing and Overcoming Expectations      59People Who Largely Seek to Validate Expectations Are Often Disappointed      60Transforming “Bad News” into Just “News”     61Letting Go of Expectations      64Expectations Can Be Stubbornly Held      65Replacing “Meeting Expectations” with “Seeking Goals”      68Stakeholders and Transparency      69How to Define and Categorize Stakeholders      70Escaping the “Echo Chamber”      73Diverse Perspectives Counter “Groupthink”      76What to Watch For      77Moving Forward      78  Chapter 5: Separating the Signal from the Noise      81Identifying Signals      82Interpreting Evidence from Signals      84Dampening the Noise      85Bias Creates Noise      88The Customer Is Not Always Right      90Objectifying Narratives      92Getting Unstuck      94Making Decisions      96What to Watch For      97Moving Forward      98  Chapter 6: Applying EBM at the Product Level      99Mind the (Satisfaction) Gap      100When You Find Yourself in a Hole, Stop Digging      101Not All Ideas Are Valuable      103Replacing False Certainty with Experimentation      104Using Strategic Goal Mapping to Form Experiments      106Products Are Vehicles for Running Experiments About Value      108Sometimes Teams Lose the Thread and Need a Reminder      110Running Experiments and Measuring Results      111Inspecting Results and Adapting Next Steps      114Customer Experience Is Not Always About More Features      117Sometimes You Must Say No      120What to Watch For      121Moving Forward      122  Chapter 7: Applying EBM at the Portfolio Level      123Maximizing Output Does Not Maximize Value      124The Problems Start with Misfocused Goals      126Revenue and Profit Are Important, But They Are Poor Goals      127Reconnecting Investments with Customer Outcomes      128You Can't Have It All at Once      129How to Measure Outcomes      130You Do Not Know What You Do Not Know      131How to Choose Between Bets      132Make Small Bets      133Kill Bad Ideas as Quickly as Possible      135Propose Experiments      138Evaluate Proposals      139Make Sure All the Cards Are on the Table      140Keep Teams Intact, and Bring Them Work      140Separating Budgeting from Funding      141Run Experiments      141Evaluate Progress Toward Goals      141What to Watch For      144Moving Forward      145  Chapter 8: Applying EBM at the Organizational Level      147Why Change Efforts Fail      148To Initiate Change, Give People a “Why”      149Assess Where the Organization Is Today      150Empowerment Takes Trust, Transparency, and Time      152Benefits of Empowering Teams      153Measuring Empowerment      154Growing Empowerment      155Inverting the Organization to Support Empowerment      156Reducing Context Switching      157Growing Self-Sufficient Teams      158Aligning Supporting Departments      160Setting and Adapting Goals      163Most Goals Can—and Should—Change      163What to Watch For      164Moving Forward      165  Index      167