by Sergio D'Auria | Sep 21, 2023 | Business, Decision Analysis, Innovation Process, Leadership, Operationalize and Optimize, Planning, Project Management
In the second of our Karma Framework series, we will discuss Guiding Principles and their value to an organization, engagement, or project. For an overview of the Karma Advisory Digital Transformation Framework, visit our site to see the first part of our series or view the LinkedIn Post.
Karma Advisory Digital Transformation Framework
What are Guiding Principles?
Principles, values, or clarifying statements serve to focus and simplify decision-making in projects. Guiding Principles are living statements, and as the project goes on — their meaning and nuance are codified.
What are the benefits?
Enhance Decision-Making Dynamics
When everyone is clear and in agreement about what they value, decisions become more streamlined. Guiding principles provide a clear framework, reducing second-guessing and scope for conflict. In addition, they provide unambiguous language to remind all stakeholders of what they agreed to in the past.
Build Authentic Resonance
When decisions align with predefined principles, they resonate more with the stakeholders involved. This fosters trust and ensures that decisions are in line with the organization and program values and objectives.
Identify Potential Points of Friction
If certain decisions do not align with the Guiding Principles, it serves as an early warning system. It is an indication that there might be underlying issues that need addressing, whether it is re-evaluating the decision itself or the principles that guide it.
Foster a Cohesive Team and Dynamic
With clear guiding principles, teams work more harmoniously. There is a shared understanding, mutual respect, and a common direction, making collaboration more fruitful.
When should a team figure out guiding principles?
The ideal scenario is to come up with an initial list of guiding principles in the beginning — in doing so, stakeholders can debate what they explicitly value, ensuring transparency and mutual understanding.
These debates around what the team values will continue to be tested against deliverables throughout the project. Sometimes the original principles are accurate and other times they need to be made more precise or broader.
What is an example of a Guiding Principle?
One example is the Guiding Principle of data integrity. Often, you will see this principle defined to mean “ensure accuracy and consistency of data.” However, to really understand this principle, the team needs to dig deeper and understand the implications from various perspectives:
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From a technology perspective – To maintain data integrity, the team needs to look at data systems to reduce manual entry, leverage systems of record as much as possible, and institute quality assurance in technology processes where appropriate.
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From an operations perspective – To maintain data integrity, the team needs to look at operations and consider training, standard operating procedures, and implementation of quality assurance and quality control processes.
It is very important to consider a principle from a 360-degree perspective — this enables a simple statement to provide clarity throughout all facets of a project.
Key Takeaways
While decisions are not always black and white, Guiding Principles help make the implicit explicit – ensuring decisions are consistently oriented in a mutually understood direction. As important as the upfront work of setting clear Guiding Principles, they can and should also continually be revisited as a project evolves through its natural lifecycle.
We hope guiding principles can support your organization in getting things done! Be on the lookout for the next in our series.
About Karma Advisory
Karma Advisory works at the intersection of business and technology for both public and private sector clients. We are focused on helping organizations translate their business needs into actionable technology solutions. We work with our client’s teams to understand their goals and on-the-ground realities and work side-by-side to implement solutions. We strive to be an objective, trusted, and results-driven partner — bringing a values-driven approach to working with our clients to achieve their vision and goals.
We look forward to speaking with you, sharing more about our work, and learning more about your organization. Visit us at www.karmaadvisory.com or reach out at Info@karmaadvisory.com.
by Sergio D'Auria | Sep 5, 2023 | Development, Innovation Process, Leadership, Operationalize and Optimize, Tech Strategy, Technology
In today’s constantly evolving digital world, organizations must align their strategies, data, security, and core principles. At Karma Advisory, we believe this alignment should be the primary focus of any initiative from the very beginning. We prioritize building trust by listening to our clients and working closely with key stakeholders. Our Digital Transformation Framework has proven to be a powerful tool for solving crucial technology challenges and ensuring solutions are future-proof.
Our Approach of Humility
Every business faces various challenges, some of which may not be openly discussed or easily discovered. At Karma Advisory, we understand the significance of the knowledge shared by our partners and avoid having preconceived notions. Instead, we come ready to listen and learn, acknowledging our clients are the experts in their business and have critical insights necessary for the success of any program.
The Danger of Oversimplification
Consultants offer fresh perspectives and valuable experience, but sometimes the temptation to compartmentalize challenges into fixed methodologies can lead to oversimplification. At Karma Advisory, we appreciate the value of methodologies, but we also understand organizational challenges are complex and nuanced. We are passionate about delving into the details, asking relevant questions, and refining our thought processes and solutions along the way.
Karma Advisory Digital Transformation Framework
At Karma Advisory, we perceive digital transformation as the alignment of strategy, data, security, and core principles. Our Framework is represented graphically below, followed by a breakdown of the four leading success factors in our Framework.
Karma Advisory Digital Transformation Framework
Strategic and Policy Alignment: At the top of our framework, understanding the ‘why’ of an initiative is crucial. This ‘why’ gives direction to teams and motivates them to address challenges. By understanding the strategy and aligning it with policy we can create effective messaging and maintain focus.
Data and Security Alignment: Anchored at the foundation, data alignment signifies the lifeblood of any institution. A team’s operation generates data, which needs to be transformed first into information and then insights. To do this, we understand that legacy systems, ambiguous data definitions, and the rapid evolution of technology can prove to be challenging for transformation projects. In addition, when discussing data, in today’s digitization of operations we believe security is no longer simply a technology requirement or compliance activity, but an organizational cornerstone.
Guiding Principles: Think of these as the compass of an institution. Positioned to the left, these principles are pivotal in steering decisions, underpinning project mandates, and ensuring everyone is aligned with the project’s goals, aims, and scope.
Iterative Improvements: Whether it be governance structure, business processes, or training and change management, the ethos that enables success is iterative. Ongoing improvements, or in other words, the small wins, create compound returns. At Karma Advisory, we take a whole lifecycle approach to solution development. Our senior resources roll up their sleeves to understand current challenges, capture future-state goals, develop a plan for meeting those goals, and most importantly, execute projects to deliver value iteratively.
Be on the lookout for the next part of this series where we will dive deeper into the components of our Framework.
Karma Advisory works at the intersection of business and technology for both public and private sector clients. We are focused on helping organizations translate their business needs into actionable technology solutions. We work with our clients’ teams to understand their goals and on-the-ground realities and work side-by-side to implement solutions. We strive to be an objective, trusted, and results-driven partner — bringing a values-driven approach to working with our clients to achieve their vision and goals.
We look forward to speaking with you, sharing more about our work, and learning more about your organization. Visit us at www.karmaadvisory.com or reach out at Info@karmaadvisory.com.
by Krishan Patel | Apr 21, 2021 | Execution Services, Methods
There has been a takeover of the product development methodology of choice happening over the past 10 or so years.
For those of you who started in product development before that time, then you’re familiar with the waterfall approach where phases in the product development cycle happen one after the other. There is little room for overlap. Kind of like a … waterfall.
When I began my career, I didn’t even know this approach had a name. I just thought it was the way software was developed.
More and more, agile methodology has become the choice for software development teams. Just like the name suggests, this more flexible approach focuses on iterative development. This allows for changing customer needs during the development process.
A ton of great software that has been developed using waterfall. The approach has benefits that made it useful to begin with. And the flexibility of agile can be a huge benefit.
So, which should you choose?
Well, maybe both.
Because there is another methodology that uses characteristics in each to balance discipline with flexibility: hybrid agile waterfall methodology.
Keep reading to dig into the benefits and challenges of this hybrid agile waterfall methodology. Plus, when to consider using it.
Firstly, What are Agile and Waterfall?
I must say, whoever named these approaches were spot on. So, a big thanks to them for making this all a bit easier to remember.
Waterfall
In a traditional waterfall approach, the system development lifecycle phases occur in succession. When one ends, the next begins. Waterfall is gated approach from requirements to design, development, testing, and release.
This approach has limited flexibility to accommodate changing requirements. Business analysts gather detailed business and technical requirements at the beginning of the lifecycle. Policy changes that require system considerations are evaluated after the application is released.
In most cases, this means re-starting the lifecycle and going through it all over again. This delays implementation of any new or updated requirements.
Benefits of Waterfall
- Strict timelines, budget, and scope provide clarity for the development and executive teams
- Defined requirements and design set expectations for the final solution to be delivered
Challenges of Waterfall
- In-ability to accommodate changing customer requirements
- Strict timelines, scope, and budget allow little room for flexibility
Agile
In a traditional agile approach, requirements are defined during each version of the application. This flexible approach allows technical resources to adjust as policies change.
Working products are iteratively delivered and tested by business users. Changing priorities and requirements are gathered during each iteration and incorporated into a future one.
Agile provides a method to develop a solution when the full scope of requirements is unknown. High engagement from end users is necessary to continually iterative and improve. However, executives and business owners may struggle with open-ended timelines and a lack of clarity as to what will be delivered.
Benefits of Agile
- Ability to accommodate changing customer needs
- Frequent delivery of software updates
- Iterative development that incorporates customer feedback
Challenges of Agile
- Open-ended timelines, scope, and budget
- Lack of clarity into what the final solution looks like
- Requires a high engagement with the business team during the entire development lifecycle
What is Hybrid Agile-Waterfall Methodology?
To accommodate needs across business and technical teams, there is another approach: hybrid agile waterfall.
Hybrid agile waterfall utilizes characteristics from each of the methodologies described earlier to balance flexibility with rigor. This hybrid approach establishes a baseline set of expectations, delivers frequent releases, and follows disciplined project management.
All of this enables both the business and technology teams to find a common ground.
The Hybrid Agile Development Lifecycle
Agile is iterative, waterfall is not. So, how is this reconciled in the hybrid agile development lifecycle?
In the hybrid approach, development and independent verification and validation (IV&V) is iterative while the rest of the phases in the lifecycle follow a waterfall approach. Think of it as agile development with a waterfall approach to project and product management.
This iterative approach to development and internal testing provides flexibility to refine requirements during a given sprint.
Speaking of development sprints, this is where the iterative magic happens. Quality is assessed based on the health of a sprint. How accurate were estimates? Were requirement changes incorporated? Was a viable solution delivered compared to what was planned to be delivered?
To complement the flexibility of iterative development, a more strict approach is followed for project planning, requirements gathering, design, user testing, and release deployment. This increases clarity in the project plan and budget.
Benefits of Hybrid Agile-Waterfall
There are several benefits of a hybrid approach versus a more traditional single approach:
- Creation of higher quality end-user focused systems through iterative design-build-test cycles and increased collaboration between business and technical teams
- Enables requirements refinement, changing customer needs and design flexibility
- Balances flexibility with disciplined project management to add clarity to the development lifecycle
- Mitigates uncertainty by setting a baseline set of expectations
- Delivers frequent, useful and customer-focused solutions
- Provides a realistic interim approach that can be used as a stepping stone during an organizational transformation from waterfall to agile
Downsides and Challenges of Hybrid Agile-Waterfall
Of course, there are challenges to the hybrid approach. But, with the right steps, these can be mitigated:
- Thrives only with the right staff and the right culture – stakeholders need to be open to change and iterative improvements
- Requires communication, structure and proper feedback
- Business and technical teams need to be comfortable with initial uncertainty
- The difficulty of balancing between a phase-gated approach and iterative approach without settling into the comfort and familiarity of either
Hybrid Agile Control Points
At the end of the day, a solution that meets customer needs is the goal with any development methodology. To continually assess and maintain quality, control points are established. These control points are used to review and confirm the solution is meeting customer needs, budget, and timeline before moving on to the next phase of the lifecycle or development iteration.
Here are the control points used in the hybrid agile waterfall methodology:
Roadmap
Each iteration works against a granular set of requirements. But, a high-level roadmap is used to manage the overall product. The roadmap outlines the end solution to be delivered while the requirements outline the solutions to be delivered at the end of each iteration.
Maintaining an initial roadmap is not only useful from a communication standpoint, it also ensures that the bigger vision is realized. Each granular requirement is reviewed against the roadmap before inclusion in a development sprint. This ensures that at the end of each iteration, the delivered solution aligns with the overall product vision.
Backlog Management
The requirements backlog is where new system features are tracked and maintained. The backlog is reviewed to ensure that new items are not out-of-scope from what is needed for the system.
In the heat of development sprints, it is easy to lose track of what is and what is not important. By validating that what is being added to the sprint backlog is meeting the business needs prior to the kick-off of a new sprint, the team can fully focus on development tasks.
Minimum Viable Product/Business Value
It is easy to add too much into development. It happens all the time.
The goal of each development iteration is to deliver a minimum viable product that adds business value. Maximum value is delivered with minimum development is the winning combo.
This may sound difficult. And it can be.
But, the role of IV&V during each development cycle is to validate that each user story or requirement adds value. This ensures reduced complexity and minimizes wasted effort.
Sprint Planning and Review
At the completion of a development sprint, it’s time for everyone on the team to put their “Monday Morning Quarterback” hats on.
It’s important to continually assess the health of sprints. Not only is development iterative, but so are improvements. By reviewing sprints, improvements can be made the next time around.
That’s the beauty of iterative development, you’re often fortunate enough to have another opportunity to nail the delivery of a solution that your customer will love.
During sprint reviews, the project team evaluates question such as:
- What did we say we are going to do?
- What did we do?
- How well did we meet our goals for the sprint?
- How well were our estimates?
- Did we incorporate all the changes?
- Did we adhere to our agile processes?
- Is documentation – e.g., design, use cases, test results – accurate, complete, consistent and traceability to the product?
Answers to these questions drive the continuous improvement of each development iteration. But, what if your customer can’t wait until the next iteration to realized improved processes and solution delivery? Well, you need a more real-time approach.
Sprint Cycle
In addition to post-sprint retrospectives, there are certain control points that are evaluated within a sprint. Iterative improvements don’t always need to be implemented for the next development cycle. To have a true continuous improvement agile development cycle, the health of a sprint is evaluated on a daily basis.
During a sprint cycle, the project team evaluates metrics such as:
- How healthy of a sprint did we maintain?
- Is our velocity on target?
- Is our burndown chart accurate?
With these control points at each step in the development lifecycle, quality of the product and process is continually assessed. Those assessments drive continuous improvement of the methodology to ensure organizational needs are fully met.
When To Use Hybrid Agile-Waterfall?
In most solution delivery cases, a hybrid approach can be substituted for a traditional agile or waterfall approach. There are plenty of success stories and case studies that span industries and product variations.
In addition, there are different ends of the methodology spectrum that could warrant an exploration into a hybrid approach. Maybe you’re using waterfall and would like more flexibility. Or you’re using agile and would like to add more certainty.
In either case, a hybrid approach could mitigate some of the issues you’re currently experiencing with your development lifecycle.
Here are just a few examples where you may want to consider a hybrid agile waterfall:
- Your organization is currently using a waterfall approach. But, you’re having issues addressing changing customer requirements during the long development phase. In addition, a lack of cross-functional collaboration is preventing you from delivering high-quality solutions that your customer loves.
- Business and/or technical stakeholders in your organization are not comfortable with uncertain timelines and budget. However, they value the flexibility of an agile approach.
- The culture of your organization lacks openness and willingness to change. But, the inflexibility of a traditional waterfall approach is preventing you from delivering. An initial step to a hybrid approach – or multiple even smaller steps that slowly introduce agile processes – can be the first piece of moving to full agile.
- The project timeline and budget are set in stone. But, a high level of collaboration with a flexibility to address changing customer needs is required.
Ready For a Hybrid Approach?
If you or your organization is looking to move from a waterfall to an agile methodology, then a hybrid approach may be the most realistic first step in the transition.
Alternatively, maybe you’ve already moved to agile. But, the executive and business teams are uneasy with the lack of uncertainty into timelines and budget. A hybrid approach can help add clarity to project and portfolio management.
There are pros and cons to any development approach. The best methodology is the one that is right for your organization. And that is dependent on your culture, customer needs, budget, and countless other variables.
But, you know the value and importance of testing. So, if you’re interested in learning more about hybrid agile waterfall or if you’d like help to test this approach on a pilot project in your organization, email us at hello@karmaadvisory.com.
For a Conversation on Business Continuity, Check Out the Karma Insights Podcast
by Krishan Patel | May 21, 2018 | Decision Analysis, Technology, Toolkit
At the heart of getting something done is getting everyone on the same page to move the project forward. This is especially relevant in an environment of a variety of individuals from department teams, and, ultimately, different walks life.
The diversity of views creates a challenge: Do we argue about the rightness or wrongness of ideas or a decision? Or, do we agree on a set of “guiding principles” and make decisions?
What is a guiding principle?
A guiding principle is a statement that summarizes a criteria or value-based mechanism. Let’s take the following situation in pricing strategy:
- Situation: Company X has developed a patented Water Retention System that helps trees grow faster, while using 80% less water.
- Complication: The founder and owner of Company X wants to target low-income farmers that cannot afford an expensive system. The venture capitalists wants the founder to charge higher rates to ensure maximum distribution, and ultimately a strong return on their investment.
- Question: How should Company X price the Water Retention System?
If you were in this situation, how would you facilitate a decision? Clearly, both the owner and the venture capitalists have a strong case to make regarding the rightness of their decision.
Option A: Conduct a pricing analysis, and present different prices and see if there is a price that meets both needs.
Option B: Develop a core set of guiding principles around making key business decisions, and then conduct a pricing analysis, and evaluate the options based on the guiding principles.
In Option A, there is an implicit debate about what the Owner and the Venture Capitalists value. In Option B, there is an explicit debate about what the Owner and the Venture Capitalists value.
Why is this important?
The point of this example is codifying the unsaid in guiding principles, each individual can evaluate what they value and see whether it resonates.
If there is resonance, then decision making and team dynamics can be more fluid (or, at the leaser — easier).
If there is not resonance, then decision making will be stalled and inauthentic — team members may grudgingly go along, but there will continue to be dissension as increasingly complex decisions are made, and the team will need to decide whether to continue together or not.
Originally posted on Karma Advisory’s medium page here.
