Business agility offers you the opportunity to maximize value using the capacity you already have available. Hiring more people to do new work implies that the new idea is less valuable, or less strategically aligned, than those initiatives already in process using your current capacity.
The story follows; it ends like this… Business agility offers you the opportunity to maximize value using the capacity you already have available. Hiring more people to do new work implies that the new idea is less valuable, or less strategically aligned, than those initiatives already in process using your current capacity.
The story starts like this… You have a great product or solution idea! You understand your customer, you’ve studied market trends, you’ve run the numbers; and everything is suggesting this is something that should be implemented. And luckily for you, you’re in a position of authority and you can make things happen! However, your business is already struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of change and there seem to be countless other great ideas already in process. There is no capacity available to work on your idea.
So… you decide to hire more capacity. What does that imply?
If your enterprise has aligned with the work of the last few decades then you’re using some scaled agile framework, you’ve aligned teams to optimize the flow of value, and you’re maximizing value in the shortest time possible with economic sequencing. Or, you’re still using management concepts from yester-century and making big bets on huge projects hoping to one day see lagging indicators prove the year’s old ROI estimates.
The implication; of course, depends on how your enterprise has decided to explore great ideas. Let’s acknowledge the widely known limitations of yester-century management for knowledge work. This article won’t go on about that.
The Implication
Most enterprises have adopted some lean-agile practices, and some have scaled using a popular scaling framework. If you’ve adopted SAFe and have achieved some level of maturity then your enterprise has a few characteristics such as:
- investments are aligned with Strategic intent,
- priorities and decisions are based on economics,
- implementation uses the idea of an MVP to test hypotheses,
- you use leading indicators to provide early feedback for your pivot-or-pursue decisions, and
- people are aligned with the flow of value. Additionally, your
- demand and capacity are balanced, and that
- the capacity you have can pivot to work on the most promising ideas. That’s the beauty of business agility: you have many opportunities to pivot and pursue the current best value!
If all the above is true and you have decided to expand capacity to work on something new, then there is only one conclusion that comes to mind… the new thing is less valuable than everything else the enterprise is currently working toward.
Yet, it may be okay to add capacity, if
- each valuable idea already being implemented with current capacity should be done,
- there are no indications the enterprise should pivot on any of them, AND
- the value of this new idea justifies the additional capacity.
Otherwise, especially when you have business agility, you should not be hiring new people because Business agility offers you the opportunity to maximize value using the capacity you already have available. Hiring more people to do new work implies that the new idea is less valuable, or less strategically aligned, than those initiatives already in process using your current capacity. Nothing in life is an absolute. We can have other reasons to hire, but I hope you get my point that SAFe with business agility eliminates some of those needs.