Align Your Org
During this phase, people connected to a Lab partner team are brought together to align to the problem and the approach to solving it.
The Exchange Lab has experience assessing the context within an organization that might enable or disable success of developing new ways of working. It is critical that frictions within an organization related to the program are surfaced before a team is formed. People within the organization should be empowered to resolve these frictions, with coaching and leadership from the Lab.
Pre-conditions:
- Executive sponsors are committed to leading their organization to develop modern digital capabilities.
- There is a priority service delivery challenge to address, and there is a sense of the underlying problem to solve
- A Product Owner has been identified.
What success looks like in this phase:
- The people (stakeholders) inside the organization who will be responsible, accountable or implicated in the service delivery changes associated with the product are engaged.
- There is a sense of what key stakeholders need to be able to accept and/or adopt digital approaches.
- There is a commitment to make it work, and a plan to bring people along.
Applicable Standards:
Define Governance
Governance is different for Agile delivery products that continuously improve than we typically create for projects that have an end date with a fixed scope. The Lab will work with the program area to understand the current expectations related to governance and how we can work to adjust expectations and structures to be aligned to Agile methods.
See the Governance section for more details on what we have learned works to date.
Get Training
Prior to hosing an Alignment Session, participants should have some knowledge of Agile methods. The Product Owner in particular should have experience or training.
There are a variety of learning pathways and approaches to consider. Plenty can be learned by reading articles, watching videos and taking online courses.
The Lab has developed several courses since 2016, delivered by individuals who have gained experience within the BC Public Service. We also partner with agencies and other governments to produce learning materials that are freely available. Training provided by vendors (for a fee) may also be recommended.
In every case, training should be grounded by BC public servants with experience participating in or supporting a productive Agile team. They can provide deeper orientation on how to apply the learning within the government context.
Can anyone get this training? Given limited resources, training seats organized by the Lab are allocated to people who are on or supporting Agile teams seekig to partner with the Lab. Other training opportunities may be organized by anyone through engaging the cohort of experienced trainers to see about availability.
- Contact the ExchangeLab@gov.bc.ca to get connected.
Bring Everyone Together
The Lab Team co-designs an alignment session with the Product Owner (PO) and key Alliance team members. The session may take between 1 and 2 days depending on the complexity within the organization(s) and the problem to solve.
Sessions should include everyone that will be interfacing with the PO on a regular basis. This ensures there is a consistent set of expectations related to how a PO leads the team and engages stakeholders, which is different from traditional project management.
LaOps Resources
- Alignment session design and facilitation templates
- Partnership Agreement template
- Guidance for ongoing alignment activities (TBC)
- Guidance for Agile Governance (TBC)
A few courses available to teams that partner with the Lab:
- Agile fundamentals (Digital Delivery 101, 201)
- Digital leadership
- DevOps for Non-Devs
- Openshift 101, 201