Agile

transformation
of the (IT)
Operating
Model
Cross-industry observations
and lessons learned

kpmg.ch 
1
Digitalization forces organizations to place flexibility and time-to-market
at the core of their business model. Companies like Spotify have been
doing this from the start, with the ability to quickly introduce new
products and services tailored to changing consumer needs. These
companies are shining examples for the more traditional players, who
are struggling to respond. In order to keep up, many organizations are
experimenting with agile in their (IT) Operating Model. This goes beyond
applying agile IT development methods such as Scrum, but instead
moves towards adopting agile principles throughout the entire
organization. Embracing agile at an Enterprise level is widely believed to
lead to the much-desired increase in flexibility, time-to-market and
customer satisfaction [Cullum17].

However, organizations that decided to radically change their (IT)

Operating Model have proven that agile cannot be regarded as a silver
bullet. The traditional world is often faced with rigid organizational
structures and legacy, making it difficult to successfully implement agile
at scale (see for example [Bishop15]). Different frameworks are adopted
(e.g. SAFe, Spotify) in various ways and at different levels in the
organization often leading to suboptimal agile transformations. What can
we learn from these transformations in practice and what are considered
to be common pitfalls when trying to incorporate agility at an enterprise
level?

This article shares the agile transformation stories, observations and

lessons learned as experienced by KPMG at clients across a variety of
industries (Telcos, Corporates, Financial Services, and Public Sector). We
will outline how agile is changing the (IT) Operating Model by sharing our
observations related to each element within the model. We will also
share our main insights regarding agile transformation pitfalls and
lessons learned. These insights are a reflection of our own experiences,
as well as gathered insights based on interviews with business and (IT)
management.

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 Performance Management Organisation & Governance
— The demand/supply model is replaced
— Performance evaluation is team- by integrated business IT value streams
based or organization-wide — The (temporary) rise of hybrid/bi-modal
instead of individual IT as a result of differing needs of
— The measurement framework and business functions
metrics enable continuous — Scaling of agile teams to project,
feedback and value initiative, program, portfolio or enterprise level
transparency, and honest and using new types of organizational
direct feedback models or scaling frameworks such as
— Funding of change is based on SAFe and LeSS (Huge)
capacity (of teams) that is pre-set — Empowerment of a limited number of
mandated POs

Culture, People & Skills Capabilities & Processes

— Multi-disciplinary teams requiring Operating — Customer orientation through

intrinsic motivation and initiative customer journey and value
with the ability to work across the
boundaries of traditional
Model mapping drive product definitions
and client validation
departments — Lean at the core of Agile; start with
— Introduction of profiles that value optimization and look integrally into
both specialisation and looking chains
across disciplines (i.e. “T-shaped”) — Processes have less rigid
— A culture of cooperation that handovers across domains and
stimulates experimentation and functions and are characterized by
learning by doing, and leadership flow and cadence
that facilitates and values — Agile tools and working methods
empowerment drive processes (e.g. visualisation,
— Continuous agile coaching on kanban, stand-ups, definition of
multiple levels (board to done, backlogs on various levels
management to operations) and scaling practices)

Sourcing Technology
— Rise of multi-sourcing models with — Simplification and rationalisation of
increasingly fluid relations and the application landscape as a
which allow for flexibility in adding sound basis for agility
and removing suppliers from the — A modular architecture that (where
ecosystem needed) supports micro-services
— Establishing effective metrics to — Automation and tooling to provide
drive performance and collaboration continuous delivery (e.g. build,
in renewed contracts test, integrated, deployment)
— Assessment of supplier relations — Cloud and on-demand self-
and capabilities on agility: how can provisioning of environments as
they help, stimulate, or where are enablers for high flexibility and
constraints that can be dealt with scalability

Figure 1. The (IT) Operating Model incorporates all structural elements necessary to maximize the business strategy,
including the added value of IT within business value streams.

A shorter time-to-market of new ideas demands a change of the (IT) Operating Model,
increasing speed and flexibility. This requires new ways of collaboration between the
business and IT. In the old model, the IT function is purely supportive of the business with a
traditional demand-supply set-up. As we move further into the digital age, the divide
between IT strategy and business strategy is fading. The introduction of agile at scale
means intertwining business and IT. This implies a fundamental change of the entire
operating model.

Organization & Governance

To enable a higher involvement of the business in IT development, it is essential to have the
right governance and organizational structures in place. A change in roles, responsibilities
and collaborations between functions also means a different focus on decision making. In
an agile environment, this becomes increasingly decentralized, empowering selected
domains.

Observations:
• Organizing Business and IT in value streams under the business removes impediments
and constraints in handovers across silos and leads to a greater sense of shared
responsibility for solutions;
• Differing needs of business functions often result in the rise of a hybrid IT organization,
frequently called “bi-modal” or multi-speed [Gart 16]. When increasing agility and
changing the operating model, anticipate the need to govern multiple speeds and
consider ways to synchronize the length of the teams’ development cycle;
• Be aware of governance and function changes only adopted in name. We frequently see
the change of existing functions to new names (e.g. the project manager becomes scrum
master). This leaves existing hierarchies and working practices in place resulting only in
incremental improvements on the old instead of defining the new;
• We frequently see the introduction of multidisciplinary teams in IT, but only limited
business involvement or a product owner from IT. When these teams are not involved
enough or managed by the business, the agile transformation will not reach its goal as
existing old demand-supply constructs stay in place.
• Agile requires careful board involvement. Self-steering teams require empowerment, trust
and sponsorship from higher management. This sometimes conflicts with senior
management need for traditional control mechanisms. 3
Capabilities, Services & Processes
To successfully increase the agility of the organization, new capabilities are required, and
services and processes need to change. The organization must learn to focus on value
through end-to-end value chains instead of optimizing a specific activity as part of the
optimization of silos. Building on Customer Journeys as a leading concept helps to drive this
change and identify which products teams should focus on.

From a technology perspective (described later in this article) the organization requires a
strong architecture function driving modularity and enabling continuous delivery through
automation of IT for IT. Additionally, new capabilities should be built based on agile tools and
working methods. Examples are stand-ups, Kanban, visualizations, definitions of done, epics
and user story definition. Many of these capabilities can be drawn from scrum and lean, but
the most challenging aspect is to start scaling these practices. When scaling across more
than just a few teams, organizations must adopt means to manage integrated backlogs and
align teams. Frameworks such as LeSS and SAFe provide examples on how to organize
these capabilities (e.g. PI meetings, integrated backlogs across areas etc.).

A lean approach is a good starting point at a process level. Learning to identify and remove
impediments in processes to enable teams to work smoothly drives agility. These
impediments are frequently encountered in traditional service management processes.
Organizations should be willing to change traditional service management processes when
agility increases.

Observations:
• When empowering teams and actively supporting the removal of constraints, the speed
at which teams adopt new practices often surprises organizations. It turns out adoption is
frequently much faster than expected. This requires organizations to think about scaling
from the start;
• Service management processes are difficult to change. We see many organizations
struggling with these processes. Organizations that successfully change service
management, typically invest heavily in automation of IT for IT and introduce new tools to
this end;
• When impacting service management processes, compliance and security are often
involved too late. When starting the agile journey, organizations should involve their
security and compliance functions to help redesign processes. We frequently see these
functions being involved too late, leading to resistance rather than support;
• Projects are no longer the way of working. IT and business are integrated in one chain and
therefore less complicated within teams;
• Start learning quickly through experimenting and pilots. Learning by doing and finding
constraints by experience are the best ways to pave the way for agility;
• In the ideal world, no coordination mechanisms are required as teams self-organize and
find each other in case of dependencies. However, coordination mechanisms are
important when starting the transformation. We have learned that this is underestimated
by most organizations. As teams grow in maturity, control mechanisms can gradually be
reduced. In practice, managing functional dependencies between the agile teams is
challenging and leads to additional functions, frequently resulting in the survival of the
“project manager” function;
• Agile is not the Holy Grail for everything. Specific changes such as asset heavy (e.g.
infrastructure, construction, etc.) projects with fixed deadlines still require a project
management approach.

People & Skills

The behavior of people will eventually determine a successful change to agile. Agile teams
require people with intrinsic motivation and the ability to work in flexible teams across the
boundaries of traditional departments. Profiles that value both specialization and looking
across disciplines (T-shaped profiles) are highly valued in these environments. It is important
to acknowledge that working agile is not for everyone. Only teams with the proper mindset
who are supportive of the new working model can make an agile transformation successful.
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Observations:
• Agile can only thrive in an environment which promotes transparency and involvement.
People need to have room for their own initiatives without being punished for mistakes;
• Acknowledging and managing the difference between (technical) knowledge and
competences (like collaboration skills) is important to enable successful teams;
• New employees who were not part of the regular way of working of the organization can
accelerate the agile transformation as they are often more adaptive towards new working
models;
• We see many organizations introducing agile coaches. We stress the importance to
recognize the need for agile coaching on three levels; (1) coaching board level on
leadership in an agile environment, which is something completely different from (2)
operational and project management, and (3) team level application of scrum practices;
• Although agile coaches must be independent from the teams and are frequently external,
having champions in your organization promoting agile prove to be a great accelerator of
the transformation.

Performance Management
Performance and the way we measure it has changed in the agile environment.
Performance evaluation is team-based or organization-wide instead of individual.

The measurement framework contains metrics that are data driven and real-time and focus
on value of epics and capacity instead of activities. Progress velocity becomes a key metric
to show team performance and predict the extent to which epics and user stories are
completed.

Budgeting is in line with agility principles and focuses on capacity, rather than trying to
completely specify the outcome and assign budget accordingly. The business manages the
IT budget and determines priorities within IT. In the end, this drives higher cost transparency
on IT spending.

Observations:
• Involving board level management in how progress and budget exploitation remain clear
and even become easier and better to govern, is essential and crucial for accepting the
new way of working;
• We frequently see organizations starting to change the performance metrics for their
employees too late resulting in discrepancies between team goals and individual
performance. HR should be involved in any agile transformation from the start;
• Organizations are experiencing difficulties to manage metrics like team velocity, instead of
knowing in detail when things are finished This requires proper understanding of concepts
and effective coaching on the three aforementioned levels in the organization;
• To actively support the change, it should remain clear who is responsible for the budget;
• Planning and control cycles within the overall organization frequently do not fit the new
structure. We see discrepancies between long cycles versus short iterative approaches.

Technology
The technology domain is essential to successfully drive and support an agile way of
working. To enable teams to work in short cycles and frequently deliver value.

Observations:
• Automation and digitalization of the environment should (already be) a key attention area.
We see that organizations that have successfully transformed their operating model can
usually build on an environment that has been the subject of rationalization and
digitalization in recent years;
• The features and components they are working on should be small, requiring architecture
to be modular and easily interconnected (e.g. micro-services, APIs). Although
conceptually easy to grasp, this is very difficult to attain as it frequently requires
rationalizing applications and replacing legacy, including middleware;
• IT service management processes should be responsive and quick. Among other things,
this requires the strong automation of IT for IT and a vast focus on tools for aspects such
as testing, continuous integration and continuous deployment. 5
Continuous Delivery should go hand-in-hand with Devops

High
Mature Continuous Delivery and high business –
Organizational agility can not be used
IT agility
FRUSTRATION
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

The model enables fast identification and The business functions that are high in both
development ideas, business and IT work speed and flexibility and have a strong
integrated but will experience strong delay underlying Continuous Delivery capability will be
Organizational Agility

towards bringing ideas into product able to continuously bring new functionality from
ideation to production

Traditional focus on stability: Limited use of full technical capabilities

TRADITIONAL FUNCTION WASTED POTENTIAL

Although technically the platform are ready

There is no direct need for increase of speed
for fast deployment, development of new
and flexibility has this technically been enabled ideas is comparatively slow
Although not every business function requires the same extent of maturity in the
aforementioned
Low
items, the relation between organization agility and the technological
capability (continuous
Low
delivery)Maturity
is shown below:
of Continuous Delivery capability High

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Figure 2. Agility
Internationalrequires balance
Cooperative (‘KPMG International’),between technology
a Swiss entity. All rights reserved. and organization.

Observations:
• The need to digitalize the organization and modularize architecture is frequently
overlooked. Organizations quickly build agile capabilities in their teams, but are
subsequently bound to quarterly release cycles and manual activities proving constraints
on their speed;
• From an architecture point of view there is no one-size-fits all model. Depending on the
length of the development cycle that the team works in and the speed at which the
release of value is required in the business, architecture should be adopted accordingly.
Although frequently positioned as the holy grail, we do not regard an architecture
completely based on micro-services to be the most suited end-goal for all organizations;
• We observe a strong focus on test automation, which is usually regarded as a no-regret
move. However, testing is only one element of Continuous Delivery and sufficient focus
should also go to continuous build, integration and deployment;
• Adoption of the cloud, especially on an infrastructure level provides the required flexibility.
However, we see organizations moving to the cloud without clear business cases or
acting on the assumption that the cloud is always the economically most sensible route.
Although cloud is a strong driver for agility, we urge organizations to build a sound
strategy on the cloud, not only driven by economic factors.

Sourcing
A transformation to agile also implies an assessment of your supplier relations and
capabilities: how can they help to stimulate your agile transformation, or where are
constraints that need to be dealt with? Likewise, the internal skills to collaborate effectively
in agile partnerships need to be assessed and the manner in which the supplier is part of
integrated chains should be designed and implemented.

Observations:
• It is important to look at current supplier contracts for constraints and impediments to
your agile journey. We see that organizations are usually afraid of opening up contracts
and changing the manner in which the cooperation is shaped. However, organizations that
do engage on this journey proactively prevent complexity at a later stage and typically
state that this change is key to their agile transformation;
• We see the rise of multisourcing models with increasingly fluid relations between the
business and suppliers. Although this allows for flexibility in adding and removing
suppliers from the ecosystem, it is frequently challenging for IT to guarantee quality and
continuity, and difficult to manage the supplier base. Sufficient attention on how to
organize supplier management in an agile environment is important to prevent ‘supplier
spaghetti’;

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 • Not only technology partners need to be assessed, partners are also required to
strengthen agile organizational skills;
– For example, we see organizations leaving their culture and leadership programs
unchanged, while engaging agile coaches, and implementing training programs such as
SAFe, and business scrum. This easily leads to discrepancies;

High quality agile coaching, based on consistent approaches is the key to success. Agile
coaches should be independent from operations and therefore acquiring external agile
coaching is a logical choice we continuously see in the market.

Lessons learned
1. Clearly set your ambition and create a compelling vision
In line with market views, KPMG recognizes various levels of agile maturity and ambition.
This ranges from agile at IT to scaling towards business functions and agile at the enterprise
level. Not every organization will be completely digital, requiring agility at the enterprise
level. We urge organizations to set a clear agile ambition at the start of their journey and
clearly articulate their vision and mission based on an understanding of their current
Agile ambition model
position.
eye
to
pick up

IT / Unit enables agile transformations Business enables agile transformation

Agile at
enterprise
Agile at 05
selected
functions — IT is strategically integrated
04
into the business
Agile at scale
— Agility at an enterprise level,
03 — Organisational units close to
also outside of IT and into the
Agile at core of IT consumers start working agile
business, becomes a focal
development due to changing customer
— Agile methods and principles point of attention
02 expectations and Digitization
are scaled beyond projects — Organisations are
— Frequently commerce
Agile pilots and increasingly applied on a fundamentally changing their
01 — Agile is a core philosophy for departments start with agile
program level operating models
IT development and matures in and use frameworks with broad
— Pilots are performed to — Various scaling approaches — Organisational cultures are
selected domains applicability such
experiment with agile are used such as Scrum of redesigned
— Software is developed based as Scrum and Kanban to
— Pilots can range from basic Scrums — Drastic assessments of fit
on iterative and incremental redefine roles and introduce
development to DevOps and — Potentially broader with the new company culture
development agile ways of working
differ in the extend of business frameworks such as SAFe and way of working
— Requirements and solutions — IT is strategically integrated in
involvement and LeSS
start to evolve through multi-disciplinary teams
— Agile proved it’s value as a
collaboration between self focusing on commerce
software development method
organizing, activities
cross-functional teams

Figure 3. Agile maturity and ambition levels.

2. Choose a fitting transformation approach

Unfortunately, there is not one approach guaranteeing a successful agile transformation. The1
© 2018 KPMG Advisory N.V., registered with the trade register in the Netherlands under number 33263682, is a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG
International Cooperative (‘KPMG International’), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved.

right approach is (among others) dependent on the organizational context, maturity level and
ambition of the agile transformation.

The approach is based on clear choices that jointly determine the agile transformation
journey. For instance, a big bang approach is the best option in case of a relatively high
urgency, or choices
Implementation when an elaborate cultural shift is desired and top management is completely
eye
to on board. When only certain business domains are within the scope of the transformation
pick up

and when aiming for a gradual increase, an incremental approach is better suited.

Big bang vs. Top-down vs. Value-driven vs. Change vs. Functional vs.
Incremental Bottom-up One-size fits-all Greenfields Value streams

Figure 4. Agile transformation approaches.

Where bottom-up approaches are often a catalyst for change, driven by (peer to peer) agile
enthusiasm, DevOps and continuous delivery, a focus on a top-down approach becomes
essential when introducing agile at scale. 7

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International Cooperative (‘KPMG International’), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved.
 Next Gen Operating Model – What is Next Generation Operating Model?

3. Experiment and learn by doing

Any agile journey starts with experiments and pilots.
Following agile principles, the best way to learn a new
capability is through experience and failing fast.

Learning by doing makes this model work. It’s not just

another way of working but also another way of
delivering results. Starting in one part of the business by
experimenting can be helpful to understand the new
way of working but this should all be based on a clear
Agile journey enterprise wide defined vision.
© 2018 KPMG Advisory N.V., registered with the trade register in the Netherlands under number 33263682, is a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG
International Cooperative (‘KPMG International’), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved.
4

eye
to
pick up
By having pilots in the organization and experimenting with the challenges in each domain of
the operating model, the constraints become visible. These are key input and determinants
for the agile journey.

SET UP STRUCTURE TO
IMPLEMENT AGILTY
ASSESS THE CURRENT LEVEL OF AGILE
MATURITY AND DEFINE AN
MPLEMENTATION PLAN

3
1 4
2
Start agile
journey
INITIATE EXPERIMENTATION
AND PILOTS ITERATIVELY EXECUTE
START DIRECTLY AND TROUGHOUT THE THE AGILITY CYCLE
JOURNEY BUILD UPON LEARNING FROM ITERATIVELY EXECUTE CYCLES
AGILE PILOTS TO GROW MATURITY TOWARDS VISION

DEFINE AGILE AS IMPORTANT AND

REALIZE ENGAGEMENT
AGREE ON THE OVERALL VISION, IMPORTANCE
AND SCOPE OF AGILE WITHIN THE ORGANISATION
AND INCLUDE EMPLOYEES IN THE JOURNEY

Figure 5. KPMG view on a typical agile journey – start with experimenting.

4. Commitment of Senior Management 6

© 2018 KPMG Advisory N.V., registered with the trade register in the Netherlands under number 33263682, is a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG
International Cooperative (‘KPMG International’), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved.

A transition to agile can be driven by the strength and enthusiasm of employees in teams
and their management. However, when the transition starts to require scaling into larger
initiatives (projects or programs) or into business functions, support from senior
management is required. This is not only valid for IT (where initiatives frequently start), but
especially within the business. The business needs to increase responsibility for IT, budget
and priorities. Also, the required change in culture, performance management and
governance structures can only be driven by strong business leadership.

Self-steering teams require empowerment, trust and sponsorship from higher management.
Promote autonomy of co-workers and let them take responsibility for their work and
delivered outcomes. Nevertheless, there must be a clear and concrete agreement on
targets, results and new methods to stay in control.

Lack of management commitment to change to a new working environment will lead to half
implemented solutions and processes resulting in frustrated co-workers. In our experience,
agile transformation really starts to gain traction at the moment senior business
stakeholders start to embrace the concepts and drive the transformation across the
boundaries of IT.

5. Place sufficient attention on Architecture

The journey to agile can provides a challenge for the architecture function. From a function
perspective, architects used to be part of larger change initiatives and build upon bigger
designs. The transition to agile requires architects to divide their attention among many
different teams with potentially differing missions. As such, architects will need to connect
with or be organized close to those teams.

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From a principle perspective, architecture remains crucial to prevent agility leading the
organization into complexity and chaos. Standards are required to provide boundaries and
ensure consistency in the overall technology landscape. As such we have seen the
architecture function becoming more important, reporting directly to the board to govern
teams in an agile environment.

Working in self-steering, autonomous and multidisciplinary teams within boundaries set by

Enterprise Architecture requires communication and determination of group-wide policies
and standards on architecture, focusing on:

• Development of standards and procedures to drive architectural integrity and simplicity.

Ignoring technical debt may be helping the business to launch the necessary applications
in the short term, but will in the long run lead to additional costs for maintenance and
support, eventually reducing flexibility.
• Drive modularity and far stretched automation of IT for IT to enable autonomous teams.
• Stimulation of interoperability, connectivity and sharing of resources. A strategy and
centrally governed platform for code revision control exists to allow scaling across
functions and combine development capabilities.

6. Take responsibility and clearly define roles

Ensuring enough autonomy for co-workers is key.
Besides giving them their own responsibility, it is
necessary for them to take ownership.

An unclear definition of roles and responsibilities

usually ends in frustration and uncertainties. The
poorly defined role of the Product Owner is
exemplary for this.

Successful adoption of agility frequently goes hand

in hand with a strong simplification of functions to
provide clarity. We have seen implementations
where the number of IT roles alone was reduced
from over 60 to under 10.

7. Change competences and behavior

Changing existing processes and standard procedures is difficult. Working in an agile
organization requires T-shaped profiles where co-workers are obligated to work outside their
job description.
Hybrid (bi-modal) Teams formed around a common goal might motivate people to step outside

KPMG recognizes that combining two worlds is most

their usual boundaries. Transition to an agile environment requires other profiles than the
existing ones. Holding on to old habits will lead to suboptimal results, e.g. “scrumfall”,

cases necessary
instead of agile working.

CLEAR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CLASSICAL AND DIGITAL WORLD

CLASSICAL WORLD

Waterfall project Mainly focussed on IT Document focused

Strategy is formed in clear The process that results in Traditional IT strategy

phases and is ready for an IT strategy is performed focuses on producing a set
implementation after by the IT department with of strategy documents that
completion of the final stage. only limited business set out the direction for the
involvement. years to come.

DIGITAL WORLD

Continuous process A collaborative process Gives continuous insight

The IT strategy is first set Although IT strategy The process generates key
initially after which it is contains technical IT parts, performance indicators than
continuously reviewed and strategy formation starts off can be continuously tracked
updated. with collaborative sessions in a dashboard that gives
with IT and business the opportunity to steer upon
together. resulting initiatives.

WHEN TWO SPEEDS CO-EXIST TO SUPPORT THE ORGANIZATION WE CALL IT HYBRID

Figure 6. Processes and behavior in the classical or digital world.

© 2018 KPMG Advisory N.V., registered with the trade register in the Netherlands under number 33263682, is a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG 3
International Cooperative (‘KPMG International’), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved.

9
8. Choose a framework, any framework or a combination of frameworks. In any case,
make a clear choice and remain consistent
The transition to agile requires a renewed look at the operating model of which various
aspects were discussed in this article. Various frameworks exist that can help in
understanding how to organize for agility and scaling, and which roles and functions to
create. In practice we see that various frameworks

Agile/ lean method/ framework with high visibility

Agile/ lean framework with lower visibility

Non agile framework

Enterprise

Management

Large-Scale Scrum
Portfolio of Portfolios
(MoP)

(LeSS) Huge
Scaled agile Framework (SAFe)

Managing
Successful

Spotify
Program Agile PgM Programmes
Scrum of Scrums (SoS)

XSCALE

(MSP)

Scrum @ Scale

Scrum Nexus
Disciplined agile

Agile PM
Delivery (DAD)

Scrum (LeSS)
Large-Scale

PRINCE2 Agile
Kanban

Project PRINCE2

DSDM

Programmer
Agile PF

Anarchy
Team
ScrumBan
Scrum

Development/ Lean Software Development / Lean Manufacturing / eXtreme

Delivery/ Programming (XP) / eXtreme Manufacturing (XM) / Mob Continuous Delivery Water
Deployment Programming / Refactoring / Test Driven Development Continuous Testing (CT) / Continuous Integration (CI) / (Scrum)Fall
(mostly IT (TDD) / Feature Driven Development (FDD) / Behavior Driven Continuous Delivery (CD) / Continuous Deployment (CD)
focused) Development (BDD)

Source: Inspired by Agile PMG by Miroslaw Dabrowski , 2015.

Expanded based on KPMG insights and market analysis
Figure 7. Agile and lean frameworks and methods – inspired by ‘Agile PMG’ by Miroslaw Dabrowski, 2015. Expanded
based on KPMG
International insights
Cooperative (‘KPMGand market
International’), analysis
a Swiss entity. ([Dabr15]).
© 2018 KPMG Advisory N.V., registered with the trade register in the Netherlands under number 33263682, is a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG
All rights reserved.
2

are in use and organizations frequently combine elements of methods and frameworks that
best suit their organization. Make a clear choice among frameworks and how they relate in
order to prevent overlap. Also, avoid flooding the organization with new terms and ensure
consistency of agile terminology and concepts during the transformation.

Conclusion
A transition to agile helps organizations to stay relevant in our increasingly digital world.
Current structures and the traditional role of IT simply do not meet changing business
requirements, focusing on flexibility and time to market. However, realizing the benefits of
agile and successfully transforming the (IT) Operating Model is not without its challenges.

The road to becoming agile is not clearly laid out and implies a specific journey for every
organization. Throughout this article, we have shared important attention areas of this
journey by taking the (IT) Operating Model as a leading perspective. The impact of agile on
all of the elements within the model provides structure to the agile transformation and can
help guide decision making. The sequencing and prioritization of activities remain dependent
on specific contexts. When helping organizations with their agile journey, it is our aim to
guide the most important transformation decisions while always allowing enough space and
flexibility to adapt and learn.

In any case, the urgency to change and impact on the structural elements mentioned in this
article are high. Therefore, organizations are forced to act fast and change in the right
direction. Making smart choices when transforming the (IT) Operating Model is essential to
achieve and maintain business results. Changing to a new model cannot be realized
overnight. Transformation usually starts small with experiments and pilots in the appropriate
business functions. Successfully expanding the transformation should be the gradual result
of a responsive, learning organization, willing to break with traditional structures and provide
empowerment and trust to its employees.

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About the authors

Thomas Woollcombe-Adams works as a senior manager within the KPMG

Digital Transformation Advisory. For over 9 years, he focuses on the design
and transformation of strategic change covering IT Operating Model and
Service Management, including the management and execution of related
enterprise agile transformation programmes.
[email protected]; M: +41 795 732 732

ir. T.C.M. de Koning works as a senior manager at KPMG Digital Advisory. For
over 10 years, he focuses on strategic change and effective use of IT,
particularly on the review and design of (IT) Operating Models and the
management and execution of the related (agile) transformation efforts.
[email protected]; M: +31 6 21393579

Just Coolen MSc works as a senior consultant at KPMG Digital Advisory. His
recent engagements include supporting the digitalization of a large oil and gas
company and the operational redesign and (agile) transformation of a Dutch
asset manager.
[email protected]; M: +31 6 83156384

Literature / sources
p.2 : [Cullum17] Stuart Cullum, Howard Bagg, Deven Trivedy; 2017; Achieving Greater Agility,
the vital role of culture and commitment; KPMG 2017

p.2 : [Bishop15] Matt Bishop, Bob Hayward, Lisa Heneghan, Marc Snyder, Glenn Tjon; 2015;
Moving agility to the CIO agenda; KPMG 2015

p. 3: [Gart16a] Gartner, Bimodal IT, IT Glossary, 2016, http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/

bimodalp.11: [Dabr15] Miroslaw Dabrowski, DSDM Agile PF – Agile Project Framework –
Foundation, Slideshare.net, https://www.slideshare.net/miroslawdabrowski/dsdm-agilepf-
foundation-en-ip, 2015.

Quote suggestions
Page 2: The traditional world is often faced with rigid organizational structures and legacy,
making it difficult to successfully implement agile at scale.
Page 4: The behavior of people will eventually determine a successful change to agile
Page 7: ‘We urge organizations to set a clear agile ambition at the start of their journey and
clearly articulate their vision and mission based on an understanding of their current
position’
Page 11: ‘Choose a framework, any framework, or a combination of frameworks. In any
case, make a clear choice and remain consistent’
Page 12: ‘The road to an agile organization is not clearly laid out and implies a specific
journey for every organization’

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