Delivering Quality

Work with Agility

Practice Guide
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

About this document.

This Practice Guide will help you to develop and apply the skills and behaviors required to deliver
high-quality work.

The guide is divided into the following sections:

Section 1: Determining an action plan.

In this section, you will go through a worked-out example that will help you experience the
five-step process for delivering quality work in action.
Also, there are three exercises that will help you to prepare, research, and come up with an
action plan to accomplish your assignment.

Section 2: Implementation and feedback.

In this section, you will:

• Implement your action plan.
• Gather feedback from clients to identify what’s working and what’s not in your action plan.

Section 3: Next steps.

In this section, you will have the opportunity to seek expert coaching advice and insights on your
action plan, experiences, and feedback that you have recorded.

We strongly recommend that you complete all the sections in this guide.
The guide also has a Resources page containing additional reading material that you can use to
continue learning about delivering high-quality work products with agility.

2
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Table of contents.

Section 1: Determining an action plan. .......................................... 4

Scenario: Using the five-step process to deliver a request. .................................. 4

Applying the five-step process at work.................................................................. 7
Exercise 1: How do I prepare for my assignment? ............................................... 8
Exercise 2: How do I research my assignment? ................................................... 9
Exercise 3: How do I choose my solution? ......................................................... 10

Section 2: Implementation and feedback. .................................... 12

How can you implement your action plan? ......................................................... 12

Section 3: Next steps. .................................................................... 13

How can you grow and refine your skills? ........................................................... 13

Resources. ...................................................................................... 14

3
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Section 1: Determining an action plan.

Here’s the five-step process for your quick reference:

Scenario: Using the five-step process to deliver a request.

Max is a IT Service Desk executive with GTS. Rafiq, his manager, informed him that the UK client
will be coming over next week for a meeting with the team. The client wanted to discuss the
common pain points Service Desk executives experience, and ways in which they address them.
He requested Max to take up the responsibility of creating the presentation deck.
How will Max deliver the request with the help of the five-step process?
Let’s work through all the steps to find out.

Step 1: Do your prep.

The first step in the process to deliver quality work is – how to prepare. Max needs to explore the
territory of the assignment and create an action plan for it.
He needs to ask questions like:
• On what date is the client visiting?
• Who will attend the presentation?
• What should the focus of the presentation be?
• Why does the client want to discuss the pain points?
Once he gets answers to his questions, he needs to create an action plan with the due date, key
stakeholders involved, key milestones, contacts, and resources.
Step 2: Do your research.

The second step deals with researching. Max needs to research all the information he requires to
complete the assignment.

Here are some things that he needs to research and collect information on.

• The roles of the people attending the client meeting

• The top five pain points faced by the Service Desk executives

4
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

• Ways to deal with the pain points effectively.

• Ways in which the team benefitted from eliminating the pain points.
• Methods of delivery – slides, videos, open discussions, and so on.

Step 3: Decide what to do.

Now, it's time to move to the third step where Max needs to decide what to do. He can seek help
from someone who has already dealt with this topic, either from his team or other teams. He can
request his manager for guidance, too. He should select the plan of his action after comparing the
strengths and weaknesses of each solution.

Max should come up with more than one solution and choose one from them. Here are some
examples.

• He can send the presentation deck to the clients beforehand. During the meeting, he can
elaborate on the main points and throw it open for discussion.
• He can do away with the deck completely and organize a discussion on real-life case
studies, with the intent to gather potential solutions to common pain points.
• He can use props and flipcharts instead of slides.

Step 4 and 5: Do it and Deliver it

The fourth step deals with how Max can execute the plan. The fifth and final step is delivering the
request.

Implementing the action plan is a simple two-step process:

Step 1: Execution.

For this step, Max needs to keep the following guidelines in mind:
• He needs to identify the core message he wants to present to the client.
• He should leave out the "nice to know" information so people can focus on what they
"need to know".
• It is a good idea to get his draft reviewed by his peers and be open to iterations.
• He should choose a suitable medium for presenting his work. It could be a presentation,
or videos, or discussions.

5
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Step 2: Delivery.

In the last step, Max will deliver the presentation and gather feedback from his clients. Here are
some tips he should keep in mind before the final meeting.
• He should make sure that he has covered all the common pain points and the way they
are addressed.
• He should be able to anticipate questions that the client might have and be prepared with
the answers.
• His presentation should be clear and succinct.
• He should be prepared to handle any disagreement without sounding defensive.
• After the presentation, he needs to gauge what went well and what did not. Can he
confidently ask for approval or “next-step” action based on the presentation?

6
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Applying the five-step process at work.

A very important aspect of our work, as professionals, is to deliver work that exceeds client
expectations. This section contains three exercises that will enable you to work through the first
three steps of the process to deliver high-quality work. The remaining two steps will be addressed
in Section 2 of this guide.

Before you start working on the exercises, you need to choose an assignment. An assignment can
be anything from a simple 10-minute task to a complex, long-term one. It’s important to remember
that you can apply the quality work process to any task.

If you’re about to start work on a new assignment, that’s great. These exercises will guide you as
you work through it.

If you’re in the middle of an assignment, use these exercises to assess the work you’ve done so
far. Retrospection is an effective way to determine if you took the right approach, and it will also
help you make course corrections.

Once you’re ready with your assignment, work your way through the exercises given below.

7
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Exercise 1: How do I prepare for my assignment?

This exercise will help you prepare for your assignment. Read the instructions below to complete
the exercise.

Think about what you learned in the course about developing a thorough understanding of the
requirements of your assignment. To clarify your assignment, you need to ask generic and
specific questions.
The questions in the table below will help you to not only clarify your understanding but also
develop a preliminary action plan. If there are other questions you could ask, even better!
If your assignment is already underway, did you start with a clear outcome in mind? Think
through the questions given below as they might provide additional insights that you could
consider.

Questions Responses

What is the client asking for, what is the

client’s objective, and how can I explain
this request in my own words?

Why is the client asking for this?

Who are the other stakeholders?

Should I be the one doing this? If not

me, who should be doing this?

By when is this needed?

What materials, resources, access, and

other things will I need to complete this
assignment?

What are the key milestones I need to

accomplish?

Who are the key contacts I can reach out

to for help?

8
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Exercise 2: How do I research my assignment?

You’re clear about the outcome of your assignment. Next, you need to collect information about it.
Researching your assignment is a two-step process (as outlined below).

If your assignment is well past the research stage, review the steps below to identify insights you
might have gained from doing research.

Step 1: Research.

Here are some ideas to help you research your assignment:

• Is there someone who has worked on a similar request?
(Think of colleagues, do a search on Connections or IBM Expertise Locator, and so on.)
• Can you leverage solutions from outside IBM?
(Do a Google search, post a question on Twitter or on a LinkedIn forum.)

Step 2: Analyze.

Collecting information alone won’t contribute to the success of your assignment. You need to
derive meaning from that information. Use the following questions to analyze the researched
information:
• Is the information reliable?
• Is it complete?
• Does it meet the requirement or need?
• Have I looked at it from the perspective of other parties involved?
• Do I understand it well enough to explain it to someone else?

9
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Exercise 3: How do I choose my solution?

You’ve researched and analyzed your information. Next, you need to start planning your actions.
This exercise will help you identify an action plan to accomplish your assignment. There are two
parts to the exercise. Read the instructions to complete both parts.

Part 1
Think about what you learned in the course about coming up with solutions. You need to come
up with several solutions to accomplish your task. Use the table below to identify solutions that
would work for you.
If your assignment is past the solution identification stage, think about the solution you chose.
Was it the best one for your assignment? Were there others you could have considered? Use
this exercise to think through other possible solutions that would have worked.

How can you come up with Responses

multiple solutions?

Explore several alternatives and 1.

list three different ways you can
deal with the work request. 2.

3.

Identify someone you admire 1.

who has skills in this area and
list three things that he or she 2.
would do.
3.

Ask folks with experience in this 1.

area what they did when they
encountered something like this. 2.
List three ways how their
actions were successful. 3.

You now have potential solutions to address your assignment. Let’s continue.

10
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Part 2
You’ve created a list of potential solutions that might accomplish your goal. Now you need to
evaluate each solution. Use the table below to identify the best solution.

How can you evaluate Responses

solutions?

List the strengths and Strengths

weaknesses of each solution.

Weaknesses

List any risks and future What could go wrong?

opportunities associated with
each solution.

What could improve?

List unpredictable actions for 1.

each solution.

2.

3.

Which solution appears to be the most workable?

11
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Section 2: Implementation and feedback.

How can you implement your action plan?

You’re clear about your assignment, you’ve done your research, and you’ve chosen your action
plan. You’ve made a good start. Now you need to see your action plan through. This is where you
use the last two steps of the five-step process “Do it” and “Deliver it.”

Implementing your action plan is a simple two-step process:

Step 1: Execution.

As you carry out the last two steps of the five-step process, keep the following guidelines in
mind:
• Pay close attention to how your client responds.
• Respond specifically and succinctly to issues brought up by your client.
• Handle any disagreement without sounding defensive.
• Be open to feedback and iterations.

Step 2: Feedback.

Gather feedback from clients who were impacted by the actions you took. For the action plan
you implemented, ask for feedback and categorize it in the following sections:
• What worked.
• What didn’t.
• What could you do differently?

If you’ve been doing retrospective analysis so far, think about how using the five-step process
would have helped you approach your assignment more effectively. Would the process have
helped you in:

• Having more clarity?

• Doing optimal research?
• Identifying several solutions, and picking the best one?

12
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Section 3: Next steps.

How can you grow and refine your skills?

After you’ve implemented your action plan and gathered feedback, you’ll have a more definitive
idea of where you stand in terms of the quality of your work deliverables.

At this point in your developmental journey, you will have the opportunity to discuss your action
plan, experiences, and feedback with an expert coach or your manager. You will use these insights
to write Checkpoint goals that will help you to advance your career.

Enrolling for a coaching session.

In the optional coaching session:

• You will share your experiences of implementing your action plan and the feedback you
received and categorized.
• Your coach will help you to identify meaningful areas of growth and development.
• You’ll have a clear idea of how you can write relevant Checkpoint goals to build and
advance your skills in a focused manner.
Select register to enroll for the optional coaching session.

If you choose to opt out of the coaching session, it’s strongly recommended that you engage with
your manager.

Discussion with your manager.

Use the engagement sessions with your manager to:

• Share your experiences of implementing your action plan and the feedback you received
and categorized.
• Identify meaningful areas of growth and development.
• Determine relevant Checkpoint goals to build and advance your skills in a focused
manner.

13
 Delivering Quality Work with Agility | Practice Guide

Resources.

Here’s a useful resource to help you widen your knowledge of how you can deliver quality work
with agility.

Resource Description

Leadership academy: Being agile means being able to navigate complexity with speed and
Agile clarity. This resource contains tips and guidance to help you
understand how you can focus on what matters most to your clients.

14