Phil Thompson
Consultant
Boston Consulting Group
More about Phil Thompson...

I work with board level executives through to delivery teams to enable them to bring the best out of themselves and their organisation. Through honest but challenging conversations I challenge the status-quo of structure, governance and most critically culture, as shaped by leaders’ behaviours and incentives. I move the focus of transformation efforts onto valuable business outcomes rather than operational processes and the delivery of features. The aim is always to “Be better”, not to “Do agile” Agile is not just Scrum, and to fully exploit the benefits of Business Agility an organisation must look at themselves holistically. Being agile typically means centralised purpose definition, rolling budgeting and fractal governance models of empowered teams that respond to change in their strategic roadmaps frequently. There needs to be clear roles and responsibilities, with incentives tied to outcomes of real value delivery in the hands of customers. An agile organisation possesses a culture of leadership that focuses on creating the right environment for others rather than delivering cascades of instructions. Agile organisations have strong technical excellence that enables delivery to be continual and automated in its monitoring. A move to embrace business agility recognises that change is the new normal, this is not a step change to a new suite of processes, this is continuous improvement; steady but relentless. This is what I do. I am a change agent, a transformation consultant and an Agile Coach. I bring these deep cultural changes into organisations through focusing on the leadership and supporting those in operational processes. I am a catalyst to instigate the positive feedback and action cycle of continuous improvement. I am a trainer, a professional coach, and a group facilitator. I am a mentor of suitable processes and practices. I am both the honest mirror that highlights issues and the conduit to the tool box that a company can use to address them.

Phil Thompson is talking about  
Agility in non software teams, lessons from the front lines
Synopsis - this is will appear in the programme so attendees know what you are doing. Please be as clear as possible.: Many non software teams and departments are being caught up in a wave of “imposed Agile transformations”. Typically these are not being requested from within and take the form of the top down application of standardised processes and deliverables that cause as much confusion, disruption and harm, as they provide value return. I have had the privilege to work with teams in HR operations, recruitment, knowledge management, finance, automotive engineering and contract management and have helped them to improve their ways of working; pulling on my decade of experience in continuous improvement and agile culture. I will step through the main opportunities I see in these non software departments and teams to improve their value delivery and ways of working. I will consider the following What is the motivation for the interference? What type of work does the team do? What is the definition of “Team” in their context? What is the balance of work between creative and transactional? What is the definition of success?
Key takeaways…
During the session I’ll make the following key points: • Whilst obvious, it often is overlooked: the objective is to be better, not to be Agile. • Objectives can be set for a team, but operational practices are most effective when self-created or at least invited. • Focus on transparency of activity and progress • The majority of frameworks for delivery were created for complex solution delivery by a team – writing software. Non software teams have a different context and those frameworks often don’t work well straight out of the box.