Is your organisation ready for agile?
Why it matters
If you look at an organizational chart, it won't look like how your company actually works. Many organizations are changing to agile ways of working to better reflect the work that needs doing and improve productivity.
How social network analysis is used
Social network analysis helps you see how people actually work together and how they could be organized better with mission-dedicated squads.
Template for the study
The following three questions are the type of questions you would ask in survey and analyze the responses to in a social network analysis.
- How often do you work with this person?
- Would you be more productive if you could work more with this person?
- (Open ended) How would you describe the purpose of your job?
What to look for in the analysis
Contrast formal structure and actual work
Looking at the network generated for the first question, how does it compare to the departments people are actually in? (Note you can have a separate question for people to self-identify department or other types of groupings)
Oftentimes, the departments people "belong to" reflect the role and skill set more than the work they do.
This should inspire you to rethink how you are organized and how think through how it can be optimized.
Clusters, for instance, would often be good candidates for squads and existing departments would be skill-based chapters.
Make valuable connections
For the 2nd question, identify the connections that would make people more productive. How can you
Finally, combine the network from the 1st and 2nd question: how would the squads identified earlier look different?
Note: squads will have to work together too. For this,
A sense of purpose...
This last analysis is important. Is it clear to people what their purpose and objective is?
Do they better describe jobs and activities than company critical missions?
Finally, are these statements more similar within clusters or formal departments?
Next steps
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