Introduction to Lean-Agile
Lean-Agile is a powerful methodology that blends the strengths of Lean and Agile principles to drive meaningful change in software development and business processes. By combining Lean’s focus on eliminating waste and maximizing customer value with Agile’s emphasis on adaptability and continuous improvement, organizations can unlock new levels of efficiency and customer satisfaction. Lean-Agile provides agile teams with a structured yet flexible framework that supports rapid delivery, iterative learning, and ongoing enhancement of the development process. This approach is especially valuable for organizations seeking to scale agile methodologies across multiple teams, ensuring that Lean and Agile principles are embedded at every level. Ultimately, Lean-Agile empowers teams to deliver high-quality solutions that meet evolving customer needs, foster business agility, and create lasting value.
Key Principles of Lean-Agile
At the heart of Lean-Agile are several key principles that guide development teams toward greater effectiveness and responsiveness. First and foremost is a relentless focus on customer value—ensuring that every activity, feature, and process directly contributes to what customers truly need. Lean-Agile also prioritizes eliminating waste, whether it’s unnecessary steps, delays, or redundant work, to streamline the value stream and improve efficiency. Continuous improvement is another cornerstone, encouraging teams to regularly reflect, adapt, and enhance their ways of working. Cross functional teams are essential in this model, as they bring together diverse skills and perspectives to solve problems collaboratively and deliver value faster. By adopting a holistic approach that considers the entire value stream, organizations can identify opportunities to reduce waste, improve efficiency, and ensure that continuous delivery becomes a reality. These Lean-Agile principles enable teams to be more productive, responsive, and aligned with customer needs.
Project Background
For over a year, McKenna Agile Consultants partnered with our North American partner and a prominent US charitable organisation to advance their lean agile transformation. The primary focus was implementing SAFe Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) practices to enhance the organization’s ability to adapt, deliver value, and align strategy with execution, thereby improving overall business agility. This engagement marked the beginning of a comprehensive 15-month LPM journey aimed at embedding lean and agile principles across the entire organisation.
The Challenge
Since early 2020, the digital and technology divisions of the organisation had made significant strides in adopting agile methodologies, particularly within their software development teams. These digital Agile Release Trains (ARTs) had demonstrated impressive results, achieving a 100% predictability measure in their most recent Program Increment (PI) — a testament to the effectiveness of their agile practices at both the team and program levels. While agile is highly effective at the team level, broader organisational and cross-team coordination is necessary to achieve full business agility.
However, the broader organisation was not moving at the same pace. The challenge was to extend the lean agile transformation beyond digital and technology, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and empowering cross functional teams, especially product development teams, throughout the enterprise. To kickstart this effort, McKenna Agile Consultants collaborated closely with another consultancy during the initial LPM assessment and experimentation phases. Unlike many companies hesitant to collaborate with “rival” consultancies, this cooperative approach leveraged diverse expertise to accelerate progress.
During these early phases, several opportunities emerged to enhance the organisation’s lean agile transformation:
- Improving alignment between strategy and execution to ensure business needs and company goals are effectively met.
- Reviewing and redefining key roles and responsibilities within portfolio management processes to empower agile teams and streamline the decision making process.
- Implementing objective prioritisation mechanisms on a quarterly cadence to maximize customer value and optimize resource allocation.
- Measuring throughput and flow across the portfolio to identify bottlenecks and reduce waste.
- Using forecasted capacity to support rolling road-mapping and adaptive planning.
- Establishing a Portfolio Kanban board to visualise all inflight initiatives, promoting transparency and collaboration across business stakeholders.
The Solution
Partnering on the LPM Assessment and Initial Experiments
The initial stage of the lean agile transformation involved two key experiments. First, we reviewed the existing prioritisation model and introduced alternatives such as RICE scoring, the 9 Box prioritisation tool, and Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) — a lean tool designed to maximize customer value by focusing on delivering high-impact initiatives quickly. The leadership team settled on applying Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF). The practice of applying WSJF as the new prioritisation model and other lean tools enabled teams to continuously improve processes and enhance productivity. Second, a new role of Portfolio Manager was defined and piloted to bridge the gap between strategy and execution, ensuring that portfolio decisions aligned with the organisation’s vision and lean agile principles.
Launching the Dedicated Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE)
To sustain momentum, an in-person LACE kickoff workshop was facilitated. During this event, the team created a Team Canvas, agreed on a working cadence, and developed a high-level plan for the upcoming quarter. This lean and agile center, which included key facilitators, became the heartbeat of the transformation, fostering a culture of continuous delivery and empowering teams to collaborate effectively.
Delivering LPM Training
Recognising the need for consistent understanding of SAFe LPM processes, certified training was delivered to the LACE team, sponsors, and wider stakeholder groups. This training, conducted online, accelerated upskilling and supported change management efforts by embedding agile principles and lean thinking throughout the organisation. As one senior manager noted, “You really sparked a passion I didn’t know I had and paved the way for my future career – I’m excited!” Participants were also encouraged to provide feedback on the training to support continuous improvement.
Optimising LPM Practices
A digital Portfolio Kanban was introduced to visualise all portfolio initiatives and monitor work in progress (WIP). This transparency revealed an overabundance of simultaneous projects — peaking at 79 — which hampered flow and efficiency. By adopting a “stop starting, start finishing” mindset, portfolio leaders engaged teams to reduce WIP by 22%, improving throughput and enabling more predictable delivery. These actions were key to improving efficiency across the portfolio by streamlining processes and optimizing development workflows.
Value Stream Mapping
To further enhance the development process, a Value Stream Mapping workshop was conducted. This lean tool helped the organisation identify inefficiencies and challenge assumptions about current workflows. By creating a value stream map, the teams were able to visualize every step in the process and identify opportunities to minimize waste. Mapping the value stream gave a holistic view of how value flowed from concept to delivery, enabling targeted improvements that aligned with lean and agile principles.
Applying Change Management Patterns
As the LACE team accelerated delivery, managing organisational change became critical. A dedicated change management practitioner joined the team to focus on communication strategies and stakeholder engagement. By applying systems thinking, the team ensured that all aspects of the organization were considered in the change process, supporting a holistic and sustainable transformation. Using Prosci’s ADKAR model, gaps in awareness and adoption were identified, leading to tailored messaging that addressed the “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM) for different employee personas. The communication matrix, based on David Rock’s SCARF model, ensured that change efforts resonated across diverse groups, fostering buy-in and reducing resistance.
Extending Beyond the Portfolio
The success of the lean agile transformation within the portfolio inspired other departments to explore agile ways of working. To support this, bespoke internal agile training was developed and delivered to senior management and individual teams. Additionally, train-the-trainer coaching equipped select LACE members to sustain and scale agile practices independently, ensuring long-term organisational agility and helping teams to continuously improve their processes.
Outcomes
The lean agile transformation led by McKenna Agile Consultants delivered measurable improvements and enabled the organization to achieve results aligned with their strategic goals:
- Improved Portfolio Performance: Portfolio performance increased by 9%, reflecting better alignment of strategy and execution and more effective prioritisation.
- Reduced Work in Progress (WIP): A 22% reduction in WIP was achieved three months post-engagement, driven by enhanced flow and the adoption of lean tools like Portfolio Kanban.
- Achieving 100% Predictability: Digital ARTs maintained a 100% predictability measure, demonstrating the maturity of agile practices at the team and program levels.
Moreover, the transformation sparked interest across the entire organisation, with multiple departments adopting agile frameworks and lean principles to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction. This scalability underscored the strength of the tailored approach and the holistic focus on both people and processes.
Aaron McKenna, Enterprise Transformation Director at McKenna Agile Consultants, reflected, “This was one of the most challenging and rewarding engagements that I have been involved in. The level of enthusiasm from the people, the support from leadership and the focus on making the change stick were all instrumental in making this a success.”
These improvements help the organization remain competitive in a rapidly changing market.
Measuring Success
To truly understand the impact of Lean-Agile transformations, organizations need to measure success using a tailored approach that aligns with their unique goals. Key metrics often include team velocity, customer satisfaction, and lead time, which provide insight into how quickly and effectively teams are delivering value. Additional measures such as cycle time, throughput, and defect density help organizations monitor the health of their development process and identify areas for improvement. By regularly reviewing these metrics, teams can make informed, data-driven decisions that support continuous improvement and business agility. This ongoing measurement ensures that Lean-Agile practices are not just implemented, but are delivering tangible results that matter to both the organization and its customers.
Sustaining Lean-Agile
Maintaining the momentum of a Lean-Agile transformation requires dedication from the entire organization. Sustaining Lean-Agile means embedding agile principles and Lean-Agile practices into the daily routines of teams, fostering a culture where continuous improvement and eliminating waste are second nature. Organizations should establish a regular cadence of retrospectives, feedback sessions, and ongoing training to keep teams aligned and engaged. Empowering teams with the right tools, resources, and autonomy is crucial for nurturing innovation and adaptability. By making Lean-Agile principles a core part of the organizational culture, companies can remain responsive to changing customer needs and business requirements, ensuring that agility and efficiency are not just achieved, but sustained over time.
Common Mistakes
While Lean-Agile offers significant benefits, organizations can encounter common pitfalls during their agile transformation journeys. One frequent mistake is focusing solely on Agile methodologies without integrating Lean principles, which can limit the potential for reducing waste and maximizing efficiency. Another is failing to engage business stakeholders early and often, leading to misalignment and missed opportunities for customer satisfaction. Neglecting to establish a clear vision and roadmap can also hinder progress, as teams may lack direction and purpose. Additionally, sacrificing quality for speed can result in increased technical debt and diminished customer value. By being mindful of these challenges and adopting a tailored approach that balances Lean and Agile, organizations can avoid these traps, achieve greater business agility, and deliver lasting results.
Key Learnings
1. Understanding the Greater Vision
Successful lean agile transformation requires more than clarity on what needs to be done; it demands a compelling understanding of why the change is necessary. By employing the “Cover Story” vision template, the team crafted an engaging and inspiring narrative that united stakeholders around a shared purpose. Establishing this vision early on is crucial to motivating change and aligning the organisation’s efforts with business needs.
2. Change Management Is Essential to Make the Change Stick
While smaller agile initiatives can rely on sprint reviews to manage change, large-scale transformations require intentional change management strategies. Managing resistance and fostering adoption across hundreds or thousands of employees necessitates structured communication, stakeholder engagement, and tailored interventions. As one Digital Solutions Director noted, “In a large organisation, bringing a change to the cadence and getting the buy-in from employees is key to making changes stick … instrumental in helping us adopt a lean-agile mindset shift.”
3. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Transparency
Visualising work and workflows using lean tools such as kanban boards dramatically improves collaboration and alignment. Transparency forces teams and leaders to confront challenges, facilitates better decision making, and accelerates continuous improvement. By making work visible, teams are encouraged to challenge the status quo and seek new ways to improve processes. This simple step can revolutionise how teams work together and deliver value.
4. Remember That People Come Before the Process
Adopting lean agile frameworks and tools is beneficial, but without engaging the people who use them, transformation efforts risk failure. Understanding the human side of change, identifying required behavioural shifts, and tailoring communication and coaching to individual teams and personas are vital. Processes and tools should be designed to support people, not the other way around.
Ready to Adopt Lean Portfolio Management?
This case study demonstrates that building a lean-agile culture requires a clear vision, effective change management, transparency, and a people-first mindset. Organisations seeking to enhance their agile transformation can draw valuable lessons from this tailored, holistic approach that maximizes customer value, improves efficiency, and empowers teams.
Practices such as gathering customer feedback, applying Six Sigma for process improvement, and focusing on delivering working software are essential for sustaining lean agile transformation.
Get in touch today to learn how we can help take your lean agile transformation to the next level.
