Author: Mario Aiello

Hi, I’m Mario – a retired agility warrior from a major Swiss bank, beyond agile explorer, lean thinker, former rugby player, and wishful golfer. What frustrates me most? Poor agile adoption, illusionary scaling, and the lack of true business agility. I believe agility should fit purpose, context, and practice – and continuously evolve. Active in the agile space since 2008, my consulting journey began in 2012, helping a digital identity unit adopt Scrum at team level. That work led to the design of an Agile Operating System for the entire organization. Today, as an independent consultant, I help organizations unlock sustainable agility – guided by adaptive intelligence: sensing challenges, learning fast, and adapting with purpose.

Product Backlog Evolution

The Product Backlog (PBL) is an artifact, a collection of items (PBI’s) that describe the product value proposition and capabilities. It consists of large items that represent an idea (epics), other items that make the idea work (features) and value items that enable these to function (user stories).

The AOS: Right to Left

This analysis is inspired by Mike Burrows Right to Left thinking, which I found pertinent to apply it to the Agile Operating System (AOS) as the model is lean in nature and it focuses on the value outcome to the client.

Agile basics

Agile is about being able to adapt and respond to change quickly, and agility is constantly questioning how to improve the way you work and implementing incremental changes.

The AOS adoption pattern

The Agile Operating System (AOS) life span consists of three moments: learn and adapt; try and adopt; reflect and improve.

Ownership preferred to roles

It would be coherent that in an agile environment ownership is preferred to roles.

Setting up and agile project

In order to agilize a project we don’t need to decide what agile method to use, but to make sure that the project context is set up for agility:

Continue reading “Setting up and agile project”

AOS: agile organization and workflow

The Agile Operating System (AOS) promotes a model in which structure and workflow are the main components. Continue reading “AOS: agile organization and workflow”

Value chain completeness guide within the AOS

The Agile Operating System (AOS) value chain is composed of a series of backlogs, i.e. Enterprise BL, Product BL, Release BL, Iteration BL and Technical BL, all of these granting the cohesion of the value delivery. Continue reading “Value chain completeness guide within the AOS”

Bad Agile

I think that bad agile is the consequence of two main things:

a non-understanding of what agile is. Organizations and teams have a tendency to try and learn agile through the established methods – I want to do agile so I do Scrum …
a lack of consideration for the organization’s underlying structures, behaviors, values – we do agile to do things faster …

AOS Analysis

The Agile Operating System (AOS) is a global enterprise model, powered by continuous improvement approach to both the how and why things are done, and launched by a collection of alternative agile practices that drive the teams value delivery approach. Continue reading “AOS Analysis”

AOS description

The Agile Operating System (AOS) is about Agile Discovery, Agile Delivery, and Agile Facilitation. Continue reading “AOS description”

Agile transition through the AOS

The organization’s reasons and motivation to follow the agile way will shape the transition towards agility; which in general is driven by some sort of business outcome. The Agile Operating System (AOS) is a model designed to enable an organization’s agile evolution. Continue reading “Agile transition through the AOS”

Guiding the Enterprise Agility Transition

The organization’s agile transition is about evolving the ways of work. It’s not only about the delivery teams, it concerns mid-management and senior leadership as well. How will each actor contribute to the agile transformation?

The Agile Operating System – AOS

“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.” – George Box, 1976

The enterprise Agile Operating System (AOS) is an engagement model designed to improve the organization’s way of work by encouraging behavioral change in line with Agile/Lean principles. Continue reading “The Agile Operating System – AOS”