Strategy consulting

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Defining the strategy for your teams to execute the highest value work.

What is Strategic consulting and how can ADAPTOVATE help? 

Strategic consulting starts with defining the problem. The first step is to ensure the facts which will guide your understanding of the size and nature of the problem are known. This data-led understanding of context is critical.  

 

Next we need to know what is difficult or hard about solving the problem. There is occasionally a lack of understanding or perceived ease in creating the solution. This is known as the challenge or ‘complication’.  

 

Once the barriers to solving the problem are understood, then the strategy is describing what plans we propose to solve the problem. There may be more than one initiative to undertake, and these are prioritised based on what impact we think will be achieved by executing these strategies against the overall objective.

A Strategic alignment

At ADAPTOVATE we believe that the first step towards scaling Agile requires a broad alignment on purpose throughout the business. We work with leaders to create alignment on what problems we are trying to solve and “why” we need to solve it and “what is important”. This enables them to by cascade prioritised objectives and key results from organisational level down to the team level.

Once the strategy for teams is aligned and clear, they will be empowered to execute the highest value work. ADAPTOVATE helps leaders and organisations execute their strategies through implementing agile ways of working to drive measurable and accountable business outcomes.  

Seven enablers for Agile at Scale to execute business strategies

We believe there are seven enablers for Agile at Scale which help ensure that strategy is executed well, by those with the right capability focused on the highest priority work:

1
Broad Alignment on Purpose 
2
Certainty of Team and Funding
3
Autonomy and Collaboration
4
Empowered People with Authority
5
Growth Mindset culture with embedded Test and Learn Behaviours
6
Sustainable Agile and Lean practices 
7
Flexible Architecture and Integration

Test plan and test strategy in agile

Within Agile there are numerous opportunities to test whether our strategy is working. At a team level, at the end of every work delivery cycle known as a sprint (often a two week period) we test whether we have made an improvement on our product or service by showcasing our work to our stakeholders for validated feedback.  

 

When a group of teams or squads are working towards a strategic outcome we use data insights from a monthly business review to determine whether our approach is meeting our objective.  

 

Across agile organisations we also test our performance quarterly as part of our Quarterly Delivery Cycle (QDC). We monitor business performance across many key performance indicators (KPIs) but importantly we check whether we are progressing against our objectives and key results (OKRs) which are specific ambitions for that preceding quarter. The Quarterly Business Memo defines what went well within the last quarter and what we need to work on in the following quarter.  

 

Each time we set out objectives and key results, we need to have a plan as to what initiatives we will ‘test’ to achieve them. An agile strategy example may be to convert more customers on our home loan website to become profitable, we need to ‘test’ whether advertising to bring more people to the website (volume) will drive conversion (test 1) or speeding up the application process once customers are on the website will drive conversion (test 2). This ‘test plan’ forms our backlog or prioritised list of proposed executions to achieve our outcomes throughout the quarter.  

 

In this example, both hypotheses or ‘tests’ could be run with an agile cross-functional team to determine which execution delivers the best outcome for the business.  

 

If the first test, advertising to attract new customers, was successful in increasing conversion then we may continue to execute against this strategy. We may also run a second test, speeding up the home loan process, and measure its impact on our outcome. Our investment can be determined by the outcome of each ‘test’ and we will consistently determine value with our stakeholders and customers to determine whether to pivot and try a third ‘test’ or improve our execution of test one and two. 

Let us help you create and execute on your agile strategy.

Locations

CANADA

110 Cumberland Street Suite # 307

Toronto Ontario M5R 3V5

Canada

+1 647 631 1205

AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

Sydney


Simpson House, Level 5, 249 Pitt Street

Sydney NSW 2000

+61 2 7200 2530

Melbourne


L7, North Tower, 276 Flinders St

Melbourne VIC 3000

+61 2 7200 2530


Auckland (Tāmaki Makaurau)

Level 4, ACS House, 3 Ferncroft Street,

Grafton, Auckland 1010

New Zealand

UK

5th Floor, 167-169 Great Portland Street

London W1W 5PF

+44 20 3603 1662

SINGAPORE

3 Temasek Avenue #18-01 Centennial Tower

Singapore 039190

+65 9012 8992

POLAND

ul. Czackiego 15/17 street

00 -043 Warszawa

+48 505 626 416

USA

695 Town Center Dr Suite 1200,

Costa Mesa, CA 92626

USA

+1 424 543 2623

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