BT

Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development

Write for InfoQ

Topics

Choose your language

InfoQ Homepage Podcasts Steve Milligan on Agile Finance and Finding Synergies

Steve Milligan on Agile Finance and Finding Synergies

Bookmarks

In this podcast recorded at Agile 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Steve Milligan about his work in Agile Finance and bringing the back-office along on the agile transformation journey.  

Key Takeaways

  • The funding of agile initiatives has been largely left outside of the scope of transformation efforts, which results in dysfunction and cross purpose
  • Agile finance introduces structure so that financial aspects (target setting, budgeting, expenditure and reporting) become synergistic and add to the positive impact of transformation 
  • Attitude changes need to start with the agile coaching and transformation change agents – they self-constrain and are biased against working with finance groups
  • The need to move from static budgets to activity-based budgets and investigate ideas like Beyond Budgeting 
  • The authoritative bodies (SEC, AICPA) have issued guidance for the accounting profession regarding investigating and determining the applicability of concepts like Beyond Budgeting

Show Notes

  • 00:24 Introductions 
  • 00:46 Bringing the viewpoint and background of a finance person looking at agile ways of working
  • 01:00 Breaking down the silos around finance and other back-office functions
  • 01:16 Agility has largely been focused on product development
  • 01:43 The funding of agile initiatives has been largely left outside of the scope of transformation efforts, which results in dysfunction and cross purpose 
  • 02:06 Exploring the back-office functions
  • 02:16 Understanding the difference between local impediments which can be resolved through collaboration and true roadblocks which may need, for example, legislative change
  • 02:40 Agile finance introduces structure so that financial aspects (target setting, budgeting, expenditure and reporting) become synergistic and add to the positive impact of transformation
  • 03:11 This is contrary to the common perception of finance as a constraint
  • 03:29 Fixed thinking is an even larger constraint – the need to move beyond thinking of finance as a blocker and explore how to be collaborative and synergistic 
  • 04:00 Advice for finance people – don’t be left out of agile transformations, learn and find ways to better assist and enable business agility 
  • 04:38 Agile processes have a batter fit with the stewardship and compliance responsibilities of finance than traditional approaches 
  • 05:42 It’s possible to improve the finance processes without destroying them – there is no natural antagonism between agility and financial compliance 
  • 06:10 Change needs to start with the agile coaching and transformation change agents – they self-constrain and are biased against working with finance groups 
  • 06:38 The importance of communication with areas of the business that are often ignored – eg the PMO 
  • 07:01 This also results in the need to put financial metrics into the outcome measurements for agile transformation 
  • 07:40 The authoritative bodies (SEC, AICPA) have issued guidance for the accounting profession regarding investigating and determining the applicability of concepts like Beyond Budgeting
  • 08:00 The need to move from static budgets to activity-based budgets 
  • 08:19 Explaining the difference between activity-based budgeting vs traditional static budgeting 
  • 09:38 Agility is about moving from the pretence of predictability towards more scientific forecasting with self-correcting approaches
  • 10:00 The comparison with self-driving cars able to respond to more complex environments as the technology improves 
  • 10:14 A learning system does not guarantee certainty (nothing can) it generates improved feedback which enables more effective course correction 
  • 10:30 Introducing and explaining OKRs – Objectives and Key Results 
  • 11:05 An example of how a high-level objective cascades through OKRs 
  • 11:28 Start with why 
  • 11:43 OKRs can evolve over time
  • 12:00 The environment we live in today is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous and we need to find ways to deal with this
  • 12:38 Advice for finance people in organisations adopting agile approaches – get involved, educate yourself, look for synergies, be open to new ways of working and achieving the compliance needs 
  • 14:01 Advice for agile transformation leads to engage finance people on the journey – tell the stories, communicate, educate and look for synergies 
  • 14:58 Advocating for regulation change to mandate agile processes as the default approach unless there is a compelling reason not to 
  • 15:32 If we assume we don’t understand each other, we miss valuable opportunities for conversation

Mentioned:

More about our podcasts

You can keep up-to-date with the podcasts via our RSS Feed, and they are available via SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast and the Google Podcast. From this page you also have access to our recorded show notes. They all have clickable links that will take you directly to that part of the audio.

Previous podcasts

Rate this Article

Adoption
Style

Hello stranger!

You need to Register an InfoQ account or or login to post comments. But there's so much more behind being registered.

Get the most out of the InfoQ experience.

Allowed html: a,b,br,blockquote,i,li,pre,u,ul,p

Community comments

Allowed html: a,b,br,blockquote,i,li,pre,u,ul,p

Allowed html: a,b,br,blockquote,i,li,pre,u,ul,p

BT