Today we're going to talk about a really interesting proposition. Q asked me to approach some discussion about Scrum and Agile beyond IT, in places that we don't normally see it. Here's an example of something they call Dynamic Work Design. Most of us know that anytime you have something new to sell, you have to label it differently than what's out there, so they chose a label they call Dynamic Work Design.
This presentation is taken from conversations with folks working at a place called the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That is the institute that developed the CRISPR gene sequencing device. Two articles they wrote and presented publicly—one was about how they used it to help cure cancer and other diseases, and another was from the MIT Sloan Management Review. All this stuff is public, with the exception of some pictures I'm going to show you that are okay to release because they're so much after they've been taken. We're not giving anything away.
For those who don't know, I work for Scrum Inc., the organization founded by Dr. Sutherland up there in the left. He's the inventor of the Scrum framework and the co-creator of Scrum as laid out in the Scrum Guide. Some of you may have seen some of our books over the years. In The Scrum Fieldbook, Chapter 4, that's me doing Scrum in IT, but most of the time you'll notice that the stories we're presenting nowadays are things like automotive, avionics, consumer-packaged goods, or process development—that's actually where I spend a lot of my time. Or we talk about these topics from a global perspective. The Scrum at Scale Guide is what do you need to do when you're adding 10, 100, or 1,000 teams—some additional mechanisms and principles needed to get the whole thing to work really smoothly. A lot of my work with Dr. Sutherland helped influence that creation.
Who am I? I'm a Principal Agile Transformation Consultant with Scrum Inc. I work in a lot of Fortune 500 companies: AB InBev (the consumer products company most of us know as Anheuser-Busch), KDDI (the second-largest telecom in Japan), Rio Tinto (the third-largest mining company in the world), and many others. I'm sure we all recognize these names. I spend a lot of time doing this business from a global perspective, and again, it's beyond IT.
So what is Dynamic Work Design? The idea behind this was that a couple of researchers decided to look at a changing paradigm in the workplace. Basically, they said if you want to have efficiency or flexibility, you need two different organizational designs. Then they did a study to see if it's possible to have both. It turns out the research says yes. To many of us in the Agile world, we might wonder why research was needed to find that out, because for us it's been obvious for over two decades. But sometimes people need the data. So the traditional approach to work design, as they said, is in two different ways: one they called the factory mode, because things can be designed in a serial or assembly line fashion with well-defined tasks. The other they called studio mode, which is the more creative kind of work that we, in the Agile space, often do. In a traditional mindset, you can do one or the other. Then the question is, how do you do both, or how do you incorporate this so-called Dynamic Work Design? It turned out they looked at Toyota, similar to how Takeuchi and Nonaka did for the original paper that sparked Scrum. They found that Toyota had a production system where they used an andon cord concept, or in modern times a button. When there’s a problem, you push a button, a light goes on, the manager or other workers come over and solve the problem, then restart the line. The root of Dynamic Work Design, much like the root of Scrum, is in the Toyota Production System. People specifically leaders are confusing practices and principles, and there's no guarantee that the practices will work outside the software context. But the research found that when an Agile method works, it's because the practice manifests a key behavioral principle. The real key is to see which principle is underlying the practice, then adapt the practice for the new situation.
The four key steps they identified are:
- 1) Separate what they called the well-defined (factory mode) from the more ambiguous work (studio mode).
- 2) Break processes into smaller units.
- 3) Introduce a trigger and check that moves you from factory mode to studio mode.
- 4) Identify the chain of individuals supporting this.
For them, that was how they discovered applying these concepts in places like a genetics sequencing lab.
So let's see how it went down at the Broad Institute and what “dynamic work design” or “Agile” for them looked like. The Broad Genomics Facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sequences DNA in patient samples from around the world, with major technology changes happening every 12 to 24 months. So you need ways to manage that change. A hundred thousand to two hundred thousand samples a year are processed in the lab, and alignment was an issue. They had a lot of internal confusion about how to unify and push the technology forward. How did they start? They started with Scrum in IT. They asked, "Can we do this in the lab?" One of the main people leading that was Kendra West, who helped them do it. She found that they needed to adjust the names of certain things because scientists don't resonate with certain terms, or a daily scrum might not always fit if the experiments are 21 days to get results. So adjusting the meeting frequency to what makes sense, using physical boards, that kind of approach. Another interesting aspect is the Agile Manifesto had to be adapted. They replaced “Responding to change over following a plan” with “Seeking improvements over sustaining practices” and replaced “Customer collaboration over contract negotiation” with “Collaboration over competition.” The principle is still the same. They just needed to adapt the words to fit their environment. It's the spirit, not the letter of the law.
They came up with four big things. One: constant reconciliation of intent and activity. The results were they started with the “why,” they used frequent feedback, which is basically sprints. Two: regular use of structured problem-solving—like the Toyota Production System style. They used a value stream analysis. They had 48 steps in their sequencing process and realized half of them didn't add anything, so they cut it down to 17. Three: define and use optimal challenge—like in the Lucy and Ethel video from “I Love Lucy,” we can't run the line too fast or too slow; there's an optimal speed. In their environment, they found that they needed to create a single prioritization and small batch approach. They cut the turnaround time from 120 days to 60, and the utilization rate from 50% to 85%. Four: connect the human chain. Instead of big departmental handoffs, they used direct human interaction. They set up daily or weekly scrums, physical boards in a common area, and integrated everything. That's basically a scaled Scrum approach. They found it extremely valuable, boosted output and clarity.
Finally, just remember that it doesn't matter if it's called dynamic work design or anything else. It's basically Agile in a new environment. The same principle applies: focus on the principle, not the practice. Hard on process, easy on people. Don't blame the people; fix the process. Keep in mind the complexity of humans. We might do well to adopt these steps, trust them, and see the results. That’s the real benefit and secret to business agility. Thank you, everybody.