Thank you very much, Carlos. Buenos tardes, everyone. My name is Sanjeev Augustine, and I'm here today to talk to you about three steps to leap from agile teams to business agility, or what we call end-to-end agility.
A little about myself—I’ve been working in agile for over 20 years, starting around the time of the Agile Manifesto. I’ve written three books on agile management, with my most recent being From Project Management Office (PMO) to Value Management Office (VMO).
I love traveling, world cultures, and Paco de Lucía, in case any of you are followers of his work.
Our company, Lightspeed, has been working in the agile space for 15 years. We are mission-driven, focusing on making people’s work more valued, productive, and fulfilling—based, of course, on a humanistic agile ethos. On this slide, you can see some of our industry recognition and clients.
Three Steps to Business Agility
Today, I want to talk to you about getting to business agility with three steps:
- Setting up end-to-end value stream teams
- Establishing an agile VMO (Value Management Office)
- Moving from agile budgeting to fixed funding
Let’s begin with this goal in mind—business agility. I prefer a simple definition: the ability for an organization to change directions on a dime for a dime. That means being able to pivot quickly and at a low cost to maintain competitive advantage.
Case Study: U.S. Small Business Administration
An organization that demonstrated business agility successfully was the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) at the beginning of the pandemic. They rolled out the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), working with financial institutions and banks to process more loans in April and May 2020 than they had in the previous 17 years combined. While challenges arose, they adapted quickly, demonstrating how agility can drive rapid response in a crisis.
Delivering Value Rapidly
Our goal today is to embed this kind of agility in our organizations. Here are the three steps to achieving this:
- Deliver value rapidly and directly to customers.
- Increase decision velocity from the top of the organization to the bottom.
- Link strategy to execution, ensuring all agile teams align with the overall strategy.
- Ensure teams have the necessary funding to move and pivot effectively.
Step 1: End-to-End Value Stream Teams
Agile teams work in short time-boxed iterations—sprints in Scrum or iterations in SAFe, XP, or other frameworks. The goal is to deliver a working product at the end of each cycle.
However, many organizations struggle with long lead times and delays both upstream (before development) and downstream (after development). This disconnects agile teams from customers and leads to delivering output rather than real business outcomes.
The biggest challenge is that most organizations, unless they are startups, have legacy structures with organizational silos. This creates an anti-pattern we call “Water-Scrum-Fall,” where agile iterations are sandwiched between waterfall processes before and after development.
To overcome this, we must cut across silos with value stream teams. A value stream is the set of actions that add value to customers—from an initial request to the realization of that value.
For example, in a credit card application process, teams must work across departments like validation, credit checks, approvals, and card distribution. This requires integration across business units and systems.
To achieve this, we must shift left—integrating with business customers early to resolve pre-development bottlenecks—and shift right—addressing deployment and operational issues post-development.
Step 2: Establishing an Agile VMO
Beyond end-to-end teams, we need to speed up decision-making across the organizational hierarchy. Legacy command-and-control structures slow decisions, making agility unsustainable.
The solution is an Agile Value Management Office (VMO), a cross-functional team of middle managers, project managers, and program directors. This group:
- Aligns strategy with execution.
- Manages the portfolio of work.
- Tracks progress and ensures prioritization.
The VMO works closely with an executive action team, setting objectives and key results (OKRs) to guide value stream teams. Synchronization meetings across all levels ensure alignment and accelerate decision-making.
Step 3: Moving from Agile Budgeting to Fixed Funding
One of the biggest impediments to business agility is outdated financial processes. Many organizations have hundreds of agile teams but still follow an annual budgeting process. This creates inefficiencies and delays.
Instead, we need a fixed funding model:
- Pre-fund value streams at the start of the year.
- Plan dynamically with quarterly updates.
- Use OKRs to track delivered value.
- Focus on economic winners—products that generate real business value.
With this approach, teams no longer have to wait for budget approvals. Instead, they can focus on delivering high-value product increments.
Case Study: Portfolio Kanban
One financial services client implemented portfolio Kanban to track work across value streams. Their system:
- Allocated fixed budgets to customer onboarding, billing, and other value streams.
- Visualized work at the portfolio level, ensuring clear prioritization.
- Enabled teams to validate, pivot, or stop initiatives based on real-time results.
This allowed for greater flexibility, faster decision-making, and efficient funding allocation.
Conclusion
To achieve true business agility, organizations must:
- Set up end-to-end value stream teams.
- Establish an agile VMO for decision acceleration.
- Move from traditional budgeting to fixed funding.
Thank you very much. Do we take questions now, Sergio, or later?