Month: April 2025

I was reading this blog post by Emily Webber last week, which nicely compliments the Team Topologies book, and is something I think might add some value in my organisation. It puts enabling teams on a more level footing, defines who they enable, and also records whether a team is long-lived or temporary. This would allow organisations to record project teams in the same way as long-lived teams, and might better help highlight people who are in too many teams, as well as teams that don’t have a clear purpose.

I think mapping existing operating models in this way would be a good first step towards designing new operating models.

I would like to get my personal profiles idea off the ground soon. It’s like team charters/APIs, but for individuals. I think it’s really important to understand how each person in a team works, especially if you are in that team, and so much friction that I see between individuals would likely be reduced if each person had something written down about what they are responsible for, how they like to work, and how best to get in touch with them. I think this is likely something I will just have to try myself to see how it works, before suggesting that other people adopt it, but it definitely works for me on a theoretical level.

I work in IT Service Management, but also help lead my organisation’s Agile Community of Practice. I don’t see these two things as being different, so much as just being two distinct lenses through which we can observe and influence how work is done. One thing I have noticed is that I come across very few people who are familiar with both the ITIL v4 Guiding Principles and the Twelve Principles of Agile Software Development. This leads to assumptions that they are very different, and in many ways polar opposites, but there is actually a lot of synergy, and even the differences are not that different.

The ITIL guiding principles and the Twelve Principles of Agile Software Development share some common themes, such as a focus on value, collaboration, and continuous improvement. However, they originate from different frameworks: ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is primarily concerned with IT service management, while Agile focuses on software development methodologies, but both are definitely usable with all sorts of different types of work outside what they were originally designed for.

Comparison of ITIL Guiding Principles and Agile Principles

ITIL Guiding Principles	Twelve Agile Principles	Comparison & Key Differences
1. Focus on value	1. Customer satisfaction through early and continuous software delivery	Both emphasise delivering value to customers. ITIL applies this broadly to IT services, while Agile focuses on delivering working software quickly.
2. Start where you are	12. Regularly reflect and adjust behavior for effectiveness	ITIL suggests building on existing resources, while Agile promotes frequent reflection to refine practices.
3. Progress iteratively with feedback	3. Deliver working software frequently	Both advocate incremental improvements, though Agile focuses more on frequent product releases.
4. Collaborate and promote visibility	4. Business and developers must work together daily	ITIL emphasises collaboration across IT teams, while Agile insists on daily business-developer cooperation.
5. Think and work holistically	6. Face-to-face conversation is the best way to communicate	ITIL promotes a systemic, interconnected approach, while Agile emphasises direct, personal communication.
6. Keep it simple and practical	10. Simplicity—the art of maximising work not done—is essential	Both stress simplicity, but Agile focuses on minimising unnecessary work, while ITIL emphasises practical solutions.
7. Optimise and automate	8. Sustainable development should be maintained indefinitely	ITIL advocates automation for efficiency, while Agile promotes sustainable work practices to maintain long-term efficiency.

Key Differences

• Customer Interaction: Agile emphasises continuous customer collaboration, while ITIL is more about delivering service value holistically.
• Speed & Adaptability: Agile encourages rapid iterations and responsiveness, whereas ITIL focuses on stability, efficiency, and control.
• Communication: Agile prioritises face-to-face communication, while ITIL supports visibility across IT services.
• Automation: ITIL actively promotes automation, while Agile focuses more on human collaboration.

Conclusion

Both frameworks advocate for efficiency, value delivery, and continuous improvement, but Agile is more developer-centric and fast-paced, while ITIL is more service-oriented and structured. Organisations often integrate both frameworks to balance agility and stability in IT service management, and that is very much the end goal I have for the work I am doing right now, and for my organisation as a whole.

Over the last few months I have been involved in building an Agile Community of Practice at my workplace. It’s up to over 150 members and is going well. This post attempts to collate some of the resources we used, and blog posts that proved insightful when deciding what we wanted to do.

We started with Emily Webber’s blog, and also her excellent book Building successful communities of practice. But there were a few other websites that we also found useful:

• https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/community-development-handbook/community-development-handbook
• https://opensource.com/open-organization/20/2/building-community-practice-5-steps
• https://communitiesofpractice.work/#tools
• https://hellotacit.com/building-successful-communities-of-practice/

I hope to add more to this list as I read up more on the subject.