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Get to know Aligned Agility’s VP Enterprise Agility – find out what Disney World has to do with agility, the difference between agile and digital transformation, and about her holistic approach to transformation.
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With over 20 years’ experience in leading large-scale organizational change and improvement initiatives, Tina is an industry veteran and trusted advisor that earned her stripes by focusing on delivery and business alignment, offering the right balance of consulting and practical expertise.
Tina started working in agile in the mid-1990s when a family member taught her the C3 model, now known as Extreme Programming or XP. She made a decisive move to agile transformation when a friend at a large consultancy was looking for a transformation professional. “I had fallen in love with agile practices and thought ‘let’s see if I can help’. And I’ve been solely focused on agile transformation ever since,” she says.
And the rest, as they say, is (agile) history.
When asked to explain what agile is all about in simple terms, Tina replied: “When you’re going on a family vacation to Walt Disney World, you might write out a day-by-day agenda to ensure you can ‘do it all’. But what if on day two little Johnny falls off the teacup ride and breaks his leg?” She explains that as humans we would immediately react, scrapping the day’s plan to head to the emergency room.
“In traditional software or business delivery, if it’s not on the plan, you can’t do it without going through weeks of change control. That’s not how humans function. Agile helps businesses learn to respond to market conditions and quickly adapt, just like parents would if their child broke a leg on vacation.”
And it’s that adaptability, she says, that should drive any agile transformation: “If your current ways of working are causing you churn, overhead, manual waste, or you’re lagging behind your competitors, you need to adapt to a new way of working – whether that’s organizational change, process improvement efforts, or agile transformation.”
Tina has a knack for boiling agile down to its fundamentals. When asked to describe what she does in layman’s terms, she says: “I help people who work on different teams–and who tend to speak different languages–talk to each other and understand what they need from each other. Agile helps people work like people.”
Tina is all about clarity. “Whether we call it agile transformation, enterprise transformation, or digital transformation, we all have the same goal. We’re changing our organization to be more adaptive,” she says.
“I could undertake an ‘agile transformation’ and ignore technology, but how far is that going to get us? I can teach people how to be scrum masters, but if I don’t consider the business’s needs, goals and technical aspects, that’s only going to go so far. And if I just focus on the technology – the way some think of ‘digital transformation’ – and don’t teach people new ways of working and adopting a collaborative agile mindset, nothing will change. People, processes, and tools all need to be considered when delivering an agile transformation. They are not mutually exclusive.”
With over 20 years’ experience in leading large-scale organizational change and improvement initiatives, Tina is an industry veteran and trusted advisor that earned her stripes by focusing on delivery and business alignment, offering the right balance of consulting and practical expertise.
Tina started working in agile in the mid-1990s when a family member taught her the C3 model, now known as Extreme Programming or XP. She made a decisive move to agile transformation when a friend at a large consultancy was looking for a transformation professional. “I had fallen in love with agile practices and thought ‘let’s see if I can help’. And I’ve been solely focused on agile transformation ever since,” she says.
And the rest, as they say, is (agile) history.
When asked to explain what agile is all about in simple terms, Tina replied: “When you’re going on a family vacation to Walt Disney World, you might write out a day-by-day agenda to ensure you can ‘do it all’. But what if on day two little Johnny falls off the teacup ride and breaks his leg?” She explains that as humans we would immediately react, scrapping the day’s plan to head to the emergency room.
“In traditional software or business delivery, if it’s not on the plan, you can’t do it without going through weeks of change control. That’s not how humans function. Agile helps businesses learn to respond to market conditions and quickly adapt, just like parents would if their child broke a leg on vacation.”
And it’s that adaptability, she says, that should drive any agile transformation: “If your current ways of working are causing you churn, overhead, manual waste, or you’re lagging behind your competitors, you need to adapt to a new way of working – whether that’s organizational change, process improvement efforts, or agile transformation.”
Tina has a knack for boiling agile down to its fundamentals. When asked to describe what she does in layman’s terms, she says: “I help people who work on different teams–and who tend to speak different languages–talk to each other and understand what they need from each other. Agile helps people work like people.”
Tina is all about clarity. “Whether we call it agile transformation, enterprise transformation, or digital transformation, we all have the same goal. We’re changing our organization to be more adaptive,” she says.
“I could undertake an ‘agile transformation’ and ignore technology, but how far is that going to get us? I can teach people how to be scrum masters, but if I don’t consider the business’s needs, goals and technical aspects, that’s only going to go so far. And if I just focus on the technology – the way some think of ‘digital transformation’ – and don’t teach people new ways of working and adopting a collaborative agile mindset, nothing will change. People, processes, and tools all need to be considered when delivering an agile transformation. They are not mutually exclusive.”
Transformation is often driven from the bottom up or the top down, but everyone at all layers of the organization needs to be on board for it to get anywhere. Mid-level management is often the spot where transformation stalls. The trick? “Communicate, communicate, communicate – and regularly, not just at the onset. Taking the time to plan and deliver the communication aspect is key for buy-in so that everybody understands what’s in it for them,” Tina says.
Ultimately, Tina’s a maverick, preferring a holistic approach to agility and eschewing more traditionalist ideals about how the Agile Manifesto should be interpreted.
“The focus used to be completely on tech,” she says. “Back then, they were able to deliver software faster, but often ended up being slowed by the business side not being able to produce requirements or specifications fast enough. If you hold onto the idea that agile is only what is in the Agile Manifesto – and is exclusively for software development – you’re missing the point of business agility. Agile is about the whole organization; it's a culture change.”
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