It is hard to manage what you can’t measure. A common problem in Enterprise Transformations is that “Agile” often means something different to everyone involved. Without a clear understanding of the goal, it is hard to set direction, measure progress, or achieve success. Compounding this problem is the fact that “going Agile” is typically perceived as something that mostly just affects the Agile team members, not the whole ecosystem, including the folks on the business/product management side.
What Is the Enterprise Agility Maturity Matrix?
The Enterprise Agility Maturity Matrix can be used to set transformation goals on the path to organizational Agility, monitor progress, and get everybody on the same page regarding Agile including: Agile Coaches, team members, managers, and senior leadership. This tool has also been used in many other creative ways such as to focus retrospectives and to help people at all levels do an Agile maturity assessment of their own understanding of Agile so as to encourage self-paced learning and open people up to learning from folks that may have more Agile experience.
The tool is a spreadsheet with a section for describing the organization as a whole and another section which is for describing individual teams. There are a number of Agile indicators for each section and each indicator ranges from a ‘0’ (impeded) to a ‘4’ (ideal). For each cell in the matrix, there is a simple English explanation of what it means to be at that level for that indicator. The goal is to get as many indicators to a ‘2’ (sustainable) as possible. This helps the organization understand when they are over the main hump of adoption so that they don’t stop investing in the adoption too early. If not enough indicators get to the sustainable level, the organization will likely backslide to its old ways.
The model for the Enterprise Agility Maturity Matrix was initially developed by a large group of Eliassen Agile Coaches that have had experience with Enterprise Agile Transformations at a wide range of Agile organizations. Over the past six months, it has been more widely disseminated via seminars and webinars and been refined based on the input of people who have downloaded it and provided feedback. We are now making it even more widely available via this blog and look forward to your feedback. We will continue to provide additional information on how to best use this tool in future blog postings.
Alternatively, Atlassian has blogged on how to use JIRA Agile to track your Enterprise Agility. If you are a JIRA user, check it out here.
Have a question for Eliassen Group Chief Agilist Damon Poole or a question about Enterprise Agility? Please send us an e-mail at solutions@eliassen.com or explore our Agile Consulting Services.
