The Evolution of the Transformation Sprint Flow

Business Agility
Transformation sprint
Digital transformations

Haydn and Fin will tell a story about how the Transformation Sprint Method, evolved from their work in supporting transformations in a variety of organizations. The Transformation Sprint evolved from their work on Enterprise Flow where they observed a number of fault lines in how business transformations are designed and then executed. In response to this they began to work on the concept of a generative operating model, a way to tempt leaders away from one big bang transformation program towards creating a sophisticated learning environment so that their teams could figure out what the transformation really needed. Coupled to the new concept of a Lighthouse Project, this became the Transformation Sprint, a 4 week transformation design exercise that radically reduces transformation risk, setting up a platform for success.

The Story

• How transformations are designed and how this contributes to the problems they encounter
• The psychology of transformation design and why we are predisposed to designing them in the wrong way
• Typical problems in transformations that you can use to quickly identify what will go wrong with yours
• The concept of generative operating models
• The design of lighthouse projects
• How these fit into the agile sprint context for transformations
• How to implement a transformation sprint

The Learning

• Why we design transformations the way we do and why this is somewhat inevitable but almost always wrong.
• How to spot these traits in your own design.
• What it means to “plan” a target operating model and why this idea should give way to the generative operating model.
• Designing transformations as learning experiences that carry very little risk.