Minimum Viable Bureaucracy- A Practical Approach to Scaling Agile Project Management

Minimum Viable
Bureaucracy- A Practical
Approach to Scaling Agile
Project Management
By Adam Rose
http://by.dialexa.com/minimum-viable-bureaucracy-a-practical-approach-
to-scaling-agile-project-management

Dialexa
We are on a mission to make every company
a great technology company.
We work with organizations to define and
execute digital transformation strategies to
improve business operations and customer
experiences. Our services include:
• Multi-Year Technology Roadmap
• Platform Engineering
• User Experience Design
• Custom Software Development
• Hardware Prototyping /IoT

Companies often talk about
minimum viable products.

But there’s one more “minimum viable” category
that these business should be considering…

… the minimum viable
bureaucracy (MVB).

MVB helps answer- how do we
maintain efficiency and
consistency at scale without
hindering creativity?

Easy to theorize about
implementing MVB..

…but practical
implementation is much
more challenging.

The following insights
into real-world MVB
implementation should
help to balance agility
and governance.

Most projects have idiosyncrasies, and adding
an agile approach makes company-wide
planning even harder.

The right set of planning tools can be hard to
pin down-

-and visualizing how your company
operates is your first step to help.

To do this, visualize the company in
terms of thick slices-

-one from a project perspective and the
other from a knowledge transfer
perspective.

The project slice offers granular information- which
teams are involved (sales through executive) and
the individuals working on specific projects.

The knowledge transfer slice shows
how teams and individuals interact
throughout a project.

As you scale,
communicating with
60 team members
wont be the same
as when there were
only 10 on a project.

Visualizing this slice of the
business can help you
identify current and future
bottlenecks in both quality
and quantity.

2016 Knowledge Transfer Map: Larger circles mean more frequent connections, more
circles mean more channels for connections.
Data collected from minimal employee survey (n=5).

Once you’ve identified trends in
the project and organizational
sides of the business…

…you can start
thinking about
how to
implement
minimum
bureaucratic
processes.

But be careful not to create additional tension
between governance and agility.

Minimum Viable
Bureaucracy calls
for guidelines, not
doctrines

You can get an
idea of how
valuable your
bureaucracy is by
evaluating its
benefits and
costs.

Like MVB, you want to minimize the
following equation (minimize effort while
maximizing benefit).

Where:
• N: the number of people who are required to take action. The fewer people required, the
better.
• F: how frequently they need to take action to keep this request current. The less often this
needs to happen, the better.
• E: how much effort each person needs to fulfill this request. Faster is better.
• B: the value the business will gain from this request. Try hard to put an honest value
here.
• D: the duration that this business value will last. Is this something that lasts?

Think of this in terms of bike racing…
extra weight on bike should be
minimized.

While weight on moving
parts like the wheels is
even more important to
reduce because it is
harder to start and keep
moving.

Your project teams are the same way- the
more pressure you put on employees with
bureaucracy, the harder it is for them to keep
the project moving.

Practical MVB means
you have minimal,
precise reason for each
individual process
requirement.

Scorecard to help
point to places
with too much
effort relative to
their costs

3 time-step examples of practical minimum
viable bureaucracy:

Using chatbots to automate simple
discussions such as daily tasks can
keep standups lean and focused on
problems that have to be addressed.
This can free the team to focus on
clearing blockers while also providing
a basic written project history.
1. MVB on a
10-Minute
Level:

Cut out the non-actionable pieces of
your status updates and focus
specifically on what needs to get
done, when it needs to be done by,
and who needs to do it. Striving for
actionable updates will minimize the
amount of time spent in meetings
while also improving the value of
those meetings.
2. MVB on a
Weekly Level:

We’ve created a bucket system
where we separate all projects into
Tier 1 and Tier2 based on variables
such as estimated project
complexity, project timeframe, teams
involved in the project, and more.
Each project is rated according to
each variable and sorted into its
appropriate bucket. Using a RACI
approach to responsibility and
accountability, we can determine
critical success factors for each role
needed on a project.
3. MVB on a
Long-Term
Level:

These general MVB guidelines ensure staying
on top of all project requirement and
maintaining consistent knowledge transfers
through execution.

Scaling your business up means
scaling bureaucracy back

Scaling agility requires a shift from direct
relationships between business and
bureaucracy to indirect relationships.

You should be
minimizing your
bureaucracy...

…so that there are only as many requirements
in place as necessary

…Maximizing project team creativity and
productivity in the process.

P R O P E R T Y O F D I A L E X A L L C © 2 0 1 7 - C O N F I D E N T I A L & P R O P R I E T A R Y
If you are looking to undertake a digital
transformation initiative we would love
to see how we can help make your
company a great technology company.
Doug Platts
VP of Marketing
marketing@dialexa.com

Minimum Viable Bureaucracy- A Practical Approach to Scaling Agile Project Management

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