Supplement Your Framework With Chapters
Creating chapters is the opportunity to switch from a traditional top-down management structure to a cross-cutting format. Its purpose is to foster personal development amongst those who have the same occupation.
Each chapter is led by a chapter manager who keeps track of requirements for skills development and establishes appropriate training programs.
Here are a few examples of some common chapters:
Product Owners, Scrum Masters, developers, architects, testers.
Supplement Your Framework With Guilds
Guilds serve the common good, and it’s a good idea to encourage them in your workplace. You can help them define objectives and select or recruit motivated individuals. The members of the guild share their experiences, resolve their problems, and improve their practices together.
Examples of common guilds:
Identifying needs, automated testing strategies, environments, and deployment.
Launch a Guild
To launch your guild, I suggest you organize a workshop and utilize a change canvas format. One possible format that is shown below.
The change canvas workshop is a process that takes place in nine successive stages, allowing you to define a short-term action plan:
Define the urgency and explain why change is necessary.
Identify the agents of change.
Define the vision of the guild and its purpose.
Identify the means of communication necessary in order to drive change.
Describe the target situation and the desired outcomes once the change has taken place.
Identify the criteria for success that will foster the change.
Measure the benefits expected following the change.
Calculate the human and material investment that will have to be allocated.
List the concrete actions that can be realized in pursuit of the stated aims.
Facilitate a Guild
You may choose to facilitate the first workshops. If you do, you’ll take on the role of timekeeper and moderator.
The workshops follow a clearly defined structure that falls into two parts:
A close-up on the status of your backlog.
Each of the action leaders shares their observations and difficulties they have encountered in turn. This may lead to new topics of discussion.
A close-up on your priority issues.
This may give rise to new actions in the backlog.
As the facilitator, you should use a board that serves as:
A visual medium for the session.
A way to track progress.
A report of the meeting.
After three months, you’ll organize a demonstration of the work performed by your guild. A joint demonstration with all of the guilds could be held as an "exhibition” or special viewing, with each guild having an opportunity to present their outcomes.
You could also organize a retrospective, with the aim of improving things over the next three months.
Close a Guild
Unlike a chapter, which endures over time, a guild may not exist forever. As you want to form guilds around areas of common interests, if that interest wanes or is so specific that the organization no longer values it based on their current context, you can disband them. The members can decide to close the guild once its goals have been achieved.
Advantages
Enabling a person to develop their skills in an area they are interested in through contact with motivated and experienced people who share the same focus.
Providing a solution to difficulties fed back during team retrospectives or during the agility at scale retrospective.
Putting the operational staff at the heart of the initiative.
Enabling pragmatic and practical expression of the agile transformation of the company.
Points of Caution
Take responsibility for running the first workshops for each of the guilds in order to build momentum and identify a guild member who will be able to take over.
Frequently check in on the dynamics of each guild.
Over to You!
During the last retrospective of a SAFe train, your teams highlighted a certain number of difficulties:
A test automation strategy that is difficult to implement on the ground.
A lack of strong Product Owners when dividing up functionalities.
A lack of alignment on the definitions of “ready” and “done” among the teams.
A lack of automation that is hampering integration and continuous deployment.
You are empowered to create the chapters and guilds that are best suited to these difficulties. What do you suggest?
Answer Sheet
You can check the answer sheet to see the chapters and guilds that are best suited to difficulties encountered.
Let's Recap!
Chapters are an excellent way of aiding personal development and helping people acquire skills linked to their new roles.
Setting up guilds allows operational staff to become agents of agile transformation within the company.
You now have all of the key tools to successfully transition to agility at scale! 🥳 Before you dive in, here is one final quiz to test your knowledge!
