Now I come to the next pattern, which is the program

pattern. Now, this is a very important pattern for all of

you and part of the Agile fundamental scores, which we're

doing tomorrow. By the way, the first one, piloting it

with you is going to cover how to do this in detail.

In principle, it takes an idea, which is a strategic

initiative, a new requirement. It can even be a bug fix.

This is just work requirement.

And you take it, and you discover it and you deliver it.

So, the discovery pattern is mobilize, understand, explore.

You keep doing this. And here are your management gate

checks, where the funnel is being managed.

So, these red things is the funnel management. Those are

the leaders standing in front of the wall and saying the

team can do only two things. And we have got 15 things

waiting. What are we going to do? And try to solve it

there.

You can get more people. That's the easiest option, but

it's normally not the best sometimes. You can stop work.

You can start work. You can do different things.

So, same process. By the way, this process, understand,

explore, prototype, evolve, is exactly the same as Design

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Thinking. How many of you know a little bit about what's

happening with Design Thinking?

The Design Thinking model, do you recognize that?

Understand, explore, prototype, evolve. Exactly the same.

So, it maps beautifully, and the practices will soon get

merged. We're working together with Design Thinking to

bring it closer so we can learn together and use it

together.

So, the first thing you do is you take this idea and you

make what is called a discovery brief. One page. It will

be...should be about one hour to write that down by the

person who's initiating it. That's it.

You take it into this, and the discovery cycle is this.

This should take maximum one to four days. For

multi-million dollar project. I'm talking anything from

hundred thousand dollars to 50 million even.

How is that possible? How long do you think this process

takes? This is where the waste is. On average, how long

do you think from idea until the time you start work? Nine

months, 12 months?

Feasibility study, more feasibility study, more discussions

in corridors, more feasibility study. Work is not even

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started yet. Is there any cost put together for that? No.

Nobody is keeping track of that cost.

This is where time and money is lost. Not so much in this

phase. It's in this phase that's the dangerous phase. And

nobody is really tracking that. In Agile, five days.

That's all you get for that.

Oh, my God, how can you do it in five days? You can do it

because you're focused on one thing. You're not doing ten

things. And the reason you can't do it is because you're

not focused. And people may say, oh, yeah, but we have

time to think. We need time. We need to think about it.

What do you think, they're walking around thinking about

it? No, you don't do that. You don't think about it. You

just put it in the drawer. When the next meeting comes,

you pull it out and you go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Again, you talk about it.

The talking is where the magic happens. That's where

you're thinking. That's where you're bouncing, when you're

sharing things with each other.

So, we're going to put them all in the room together. The

key stakeholders, the product owner, the customer, the

technical architect, the designer. Whatever the

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requirement is, the process owner. We're going to look at

the first thing. Workshop, sticky notes. What's the

problem.

Next, what's the outcome? So, here's the problem. This is

where I want to go. What's in between? What are the big

blocks in between? Here, what are the blockers? What is

stopping me going from here to there? Put them out.

Workshop it. Workshop facilitate it.

What are the pieces of work, the epics and features that

you need? They will be identified. Then, only then, we

talk about the solution. But how often do people come to

you and say we want a CMS system. They tell you the

solution up front.

You don't have time to take a step back and say before you

talk about the solution, tell me what is your problem.

What are you trying to solve?

So we go through that. Then we talk about solutions. Now

here we use DeBono's Techniques, the six hat technique to

think about different solutions. Not only how do you do

this, also maybe you create other solution options. You

use Design Thinking to think about what the customer really

wants.

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Then you estimate it, you plan it, you cost benefit it.

That's round one. So, you take this. This is called the

cone of uncertainty. When you are here, this could be plus

or minus 300 percent when the idea is there.

When do you know the actual cost of the issue, of doing it?

When do you know the real cost? At the end, when you've

actually done the work. You don't know it before that.

Everything's a guess.

So, what you want to do is you want to do these discovery

workshops. And if the steering committee says, oh, you

know, that number is too big, can you do it once more?

Take another two days and go down so 60,000 feet, 30,000

feet, 10,000 feet, couple of days, couple of days, couple

of days.

Now you get approval for delivery. Does that make sense?

But the steering committee must say yeah. Because

remember, when you are doing this in this phase, you're

looking at benefits. So, supposing I tell you the benefits

for this system is $5 million a year. How much will you be

willing to spend for it?

Give me a number. Imagine it's your money. $5 million,

your money. You are saving a year. What's the maximum you

would be willing to pay for the solution? Give me some

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numbers. How much? Ten. Okay. So, three million

maximum. How much would you be will be to place?

>> You have to do present value...

>> Yeah, how much? It's all fine, all fine.

There's one thing that will never let you down. That's

that. Your gut. People know intrinsically. You go to the

shop, you want to buy a shirt. Depending on what the shirt

is for...if it's for the wedding, yeah, now you're willing

to pay maybe a hundred euros for it. Maybe 200 euros.

But if it's just for office, I don't know. How much would

you pay? 30 euros, 20 euros? So, you know automatically

what sort of ballpark. Customers know exactly.

So, if you say five million a year, three year, 15 million

is total saving, you may want to pay somewhere between

three million or ten million. It depends on the appetite

for the customer.

So, by doing this exercise, sometimes I've seen many

projects come to gate number one, and they say listen, this

is not worth it. Take it from the wall. Cancel. Next

one.

Because you can only do ten projects. How much projects

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are there in the funnel, do you think? 20, 30? Demand is

always more than supply so you have to choose. So, by

doing these quick loops, we're actually reducing it.

[END OF SEGMENT]

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