The People Runway of the ART

by
Fabiola Eyholzer, Co-Founder, Executive Advisor
Michael Stump, SAFe^® Fellow, SPCT, Executive Advisor

Organizations face a widespread and often hidden crisis of their own making, one that can no longer be ignored: People Debt.

People debt is the implied costs and risks of neglecting the human aspect of agility and forgoing the necessary investments in people and Human Resources (HR) topics.

People debt is often dismissed (e.g., people development) or not recognized as an impediment (e.g., MBOs that undermine innovation, meritocracy with pay-for-performance practices that lead to inequality and lack of opportunities). But if ignored, people debt will erode the organization’s resilience and survivability, and significantly, slow down your agile transformation.

Tackling people debt takes an unwavering focus on people. Even though we have many invested parties on a Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) Agile Release Train (ART), no one has the explicit mandate and full authorization to have people as their prime focus. We need a people authority to ensure the ART has a robust people runway that will:

• Accelerate business agility
• Increase creativity and innovation
• Improve transformation lead time and success
• Boost employee engagement and experience
• Build a company fit for the human economy

The people runway consists of two things. The combined strengths, abilities, skills, and experiences of the current workforce. And its ability to fully utilize and leverage those for smooth and continuous delivery on current and emerging business initiatives. It takes a clear commitment and continual investment to build and maintain a people runway that will take your agile transformations to the next level and ensure your organization’s continued success.

And the time to invest is now. The future of work belongs those who are not afraid to take on the challenge.

„We understand the importance of employees in achieving outstanding business results. Our LACE [Lean-Agile Center of Excellence] prioritized and invested in people topics to successfully accelerate our agile transformation – and we continue to push the envelope.“

Malene Krohn, SVP Product Division of SimCorp

If you are interested in learning more about the People Debt, the People Runway and the People Developer, download and read the full whitepaper!

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