Governance

There might be different names we use to explain what is needed to run a business, to not make the same mistakes, to have a sense on expenses and revenues, and so on. Even organizations that are seen as models of freedom of structure and product management like Valve, have governance. The difference is that for them is light and purposeful.

Make People Awesome and Governance

When governance is heavy in rules, is complicated and makes it hard to get things done with quality and speed, we have a place where people are seen as objects. By designing processes with our people in mind, by have an employee experience approach on how we run the business and prioritize work, by creating services that are really to bring value to customers, we allow our people to feel they have a voice and their skills are being used to a high purpose.

Continuous Delivery and Governance

Kaizen practices have taught us that we must keep improving, even when we think we are doing ok. Sometimes we make small improvements, sometimes we start longer transformations. No matter where you are, an approach of continuously applying better agile processes, prioritizations methods, funding models, use of collaborative tools, we build a culture that always evolves and changes face less and less resistance.

Make Safety a Prerequisite and Governance

To allow changes to be easier to propose, try and apply people need to feel safe mentally and physically. If safety is not in place, all practices we put in place for improvements (like Retrospectives) are just mechanic movements our teams do without benefiting from the real value behind them. You will not hear what the issues really are and you will not get to try and adopt better practices

Experiment and Learn Rapidly and Governance

Governance is not something you can copy and install in your organization because this is what your completion is doing. Using frameworks that promises silver bullets and 10 steps to become agile have shown over and over to be a big spend with a little value in return. Having the right governance in place is a process of test and learn that goes through many cycles and iterations. It is a process that you and your people will continuously improve and always find better ways to use. Only by experimenting and learning from these experiments, you will find what is best for you, your people and your customers.