Executive Prototype

Description

Executive alignment and engagement are so important to any successful transformation. We are doing everything we can to help organizations with that step and we have come up with a prototype process that is proving to be successful. We have realized that executives are very busy so getting them to commit to taking the training on their own is hard. We also realized that just taking the training for the sake of training isn’t that meaningful for them.

Instead, what has been working is a prototype where executives schedule a weekly meeting to take it together. Additionally, instead of this just being generic training, we bring in examples at the end of each module to show the approaches applied in their own organizations. This provides the executives with principles on how to make issues visible and the specifics of what is going on in their organizations. We have found this leads to great discussion and debates that tend to slow down the training but accelerate the alignment across the executives.

“I believe this step is so important to any successful transformation that I am willing to provide a free prototype of the training to any organization that can commit to the prototype. You will need to provide a lead to run the training and make their company-specific issues visible and get an executive team committed to completing the training.”—Gary Gruver


This Engineering the Digital Transformation executive prototype approach starts with 1–3 change agents taking the white belt training through completion so they can facilitate the training with a leadership group. These change agents will prepare material showing how these concepts apply to their organization to facilitate discussions at the end of each module.

The prototype will run over eight 1-hour sessions. It will be a combination of training and discussions around applying the concepts to your unique organizational challenges.

If you are interested and have executives that are willing to commit to completing the prototype training for your company and 1–3 change agents willing to do the legwork to facilitate the training, please request a prototype below.  This request will need to include the company for the prototype, the list of executives and their roles, and the name of the facilitators. Once we receive that information for your company, we will send the facilitators free access to the training. These facilitators will then be responsible to complete the training and go through the steps to make their processes visible. Once that is complete, we will send access to the executives to take the training. 

“ABS sought Gary’s guidance as a DevOps expert, and we sent three of our IT executives through his White Belt training. The training was very well done. The unexpected benefit we found in the course was the way it aligned our thinking. Where before we would look at challenges we were dealing with from our own particular perspective, this course expanded our approach and fostered a common understanding. We plan on bringing more of our people through his training.”—Director of Enterprise Architecture

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of the prototype, executives will be able to

    • Gain an aligned understanding of the opportunities for improvement across the executive team
    • Have a common understanding of how they make their software development and delivery processes visible for different teams
    • Understand how to measure the success of improvements
    • Create a culture of continuous improvement.

Course Overview

Module 1

Module 1: Manufacturing History

Course Introduction:
Manufacturing has had a long history of continuous improvement. In this module leaders will review the major innovators and improvements they championed to provide a background for concepts and approaches that can be applied to software.

Module 2

Module 2: Providing Visibility of the Software Product Design & the Associated Development and Delivery Processes

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify the different deployment pipelines and architectures in organizations and the challenges that accompany them
  • Document your own deployment pipeline to make your process visible

Module 3

Module 3: Building in Quality

Learning Objectives:

  • Analyze the progress teams are making in developing a stable quality signal
  • Analyze product control charts to understand the day-to-day stability of your systems plus efficiently debug automated test failures

Module 4

Module 4: Understanding and Optimizing Workflow

Learning Objectives:

  • Interpret the metrics that show the sources of waste that are slowing down flow for different deployment pipelines in your organization
  • Understand the changes that can help improve flow for different types of bottlenecks
  • Compare and contrast the approaches used for optimizing flow for manufacturing and software
  • Justify the importance of focusing on flow throughout the software development process
  • Identify the sources of waste that can slow down flow in your organization

Module 5

Module 5: Continuous Improvement

Learning Objectives:

  • Determine how well teams are using product control charts and building acceptances test to improve the level of quality they build into their applications
  • Compare and contrast the approaches for continuous improvement in manufacturing and software
  • Create A3 product charts to enable the organization to engage in continuous improvement of the product
  • Analyze your deployment pipeline and prioritize the product/architectural changes most important to improving flow
  • Analyze the waste slowing down flow for your deployment pipeline and prioritize changes to improve flow

Module 6

Module 6: Planning

Learning Objectives:

  • Explain the differences in planning between manufacturing and software and justify why software requires a different approach
  • Modify your approaches to planning that takes advantage of the unique characteristics and capabilities of software

Module 7

Module 7: Culture and Leadership Roles

Learning Objectives:

  • Explain the importance of having a systematic approach for engaging the organization in continuous improvement
  • Identify the different deployment pipelines you want to target for improvement and staff them with the appropriate leadership team
  • Describe the role of the leadership team over the deployment pipeline in driving the continuous improvement journey
  • Describe the role of executives in staffing stable product teams and adjusting capacity across teams over time

Interested in an Executive Prototype?

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