The Net Objectives Guardrails System: A Conversation with Al Shalloway

The Net Objectives Guardrails System: A Conversation with Al Shalloway Al Shalloway and Jim Trott talk about the Guardrails System, a holistic system of six agreements that people in an organization make that work together to keep all roles across the value stream aligned and on track in the transition to Lean-Agile. Here are the agreements. We agree to Work on items that will have us realize the greatest amount of Business value across the enterprise, Collaborate with each other in order to maximize the realization of Business value across the enterprise, Ensure that all work will be made visible, Take the necessary steps to sustain or increase predictability, Keep the work throughout the value stream within our capacity, and Encourage everyone to strive for continuous improvement   This show is part of an ongoing series of conversations with Net Objectives consultants and thought-leaders on a variety of topics. Recommendations - Reading and Sites Find the slides used in this session at http://www.netobjectives.net/podcasts/last20160831_slides.pdf or at the Net Objectives Portal: http://portal.netobjectives.com/pages/library/transformation/guardrails. You can use the forums on the Net Objectives Portal to ask questions about the webinar.  Note, you will have to register on the portal to do so. Music used in this podcast: “And So It Begins” and “Easy Lemon” by Kevin MacLeod © Incompetech Inc. Blog Type: Podcast   Transcript Introduction The Net Objectives Guardrails System is a holistic system of six agreements that people in an organization make together. These agreements work together to keep all roles across the value stream aligned and on track in the transition to Lean Agile. View Full Transcript In fact, if you started noticing the business ‑‑ how you collaborate ‑‑ these almost sound like they're tied to each other, and they are. You can't collaborate without visibility. You need visibility to get the next one, predictability. Take the necessary steps to sustain an increased predictability. Predictability is not just knowing what you're working on, this implies quality. [inaudible 5:56] will not allow you to have predictability. Then how do you keep the work throughout the value stream within our capacity? This is where managing working process comes in. That's quite useful. Then encourage everyone to strive for continuous improvement. Of course, because we're trying to learn, part of the system is, how do we use this not only to get our work done but how do we use this to actually improve learning as we go? This is a key point that the Guardrails System actually fits into a bigger system. What does this mean and how do you actually relate them? If you step back and think about it, if we're going to work on the most business side, it means we have to have a sequence list of some sort up at the front. These are what's important. It forces that, have it be visible and yet manage it so we don't work on everything at once but we have to limit our working process to the capacity of the system. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Scaled Agile Framework, you'll notice these are all reflected in that agreement of the portfolio, a frontend to a program that says, "We're only going to work on these things in this order and across the teams. These are actually things we have found to be pragmatic and useful. They often get incorporated into other systems that are out there working together, some of the defined systems that are there. This is the basis of, "How do we do improvement and guide people working together?" Jim:  Al, one question is, where can I go to get more information about the Guardrails? Are there papers, are there sites and things like that? Al:  We have actually right now both the paper and a recording of a webinar. The paper is actually right there. You can see portal.netobjectives.com. Portal.netobjectives.com is a new site we've had up for about three or four weeks. It's still a little bit in be