Ep. 106: Loreal Jiles - An Agile Approach to Finance Transformation

Contact Loreal Jiles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loreal-jiles-804648a1/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today I'll be kicking off episode 106 for you. As our series continues to grow and evolve, we try to target new topics and areas of interest for our listeners. In this episode, Loreal Jiles, IMA's Director of Research for Digital Technology and Finance Transformation joins us to talk about the popular topic of agile. In our conversation with Mitch, she talks about how management accountants can take an agile approach to finance transformation. To learn more about agile, scrum and project management, keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.

Mitch: (00:50)
So it seems like one of the trending things people are talking about these days is agile. Can you tell us a little bit exactly about what is agile and where did it originate?

Loreal: (01:00)
Sure, sure. So, while I'd say agile approaches to delivery date as far back as the 1950s. In the 1950s Toyota, kind of undertook this transformational introduction of lean manufacturing, and it hadn't really been done in that manner before. And so I'd say way as far back as the 1950s, it had been in use in general, but I'd say agile didn't really pick up speed for software development until maybe the nineties or so the 1990s. And so prior to the nineties software development was, was delivered largely in alignment with something they call the Waterfall Model. And so we'll talk about that in a few minutes, but, what agile is specifically agile methodology as a software development life cycle, and it focuses on iterative incremental delivery, and that delivery happens by self-organizing and usually cross-functional teams. So it's a people centric, results oriented approach to software development. And again, it's become recently popular and has been, I'd say proven adaptable for business teams, delivering products and projects as well. So it started to kind of broadly from a manufacturing perspective, it grew in popularity from a software development perspective, and now what people are seeing is that the same attributes and values that, that agile have, are applicable widely in a host of project management settings. And that can be for any type of project or any type of product as it's typically characterized. And I'd say the only other thing I'd call out as we talk about what agile really is, is there's this concept of being agile and demonstrating agility. And then there's another specific agile methodology, which is used for software development or project management. So, so we could talk through through both of those as we keep going here, but I'm just really excited to be talking through what agile is and then start kind of breaking down some of those barriers.

Mitch: (03:12)
Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about applicability to our listeners now. So accounting and finance professionals, what does an agile finance function look like and what role, or what role is really, does add agility play for finance transformation?

Loreal: (03:29)
Yes. So everyone's aware of finances going through probably the largest transformation in its history, and that's not limited to just the digital technology aspects that we've traditionally focused on, but it's also about how the finance function delivers value more efficiently supports strategic decisions of the businesses that they operate in. And so, as we think about agile finance functions, they're creating value by, I'd say employing scalable, efficient operations. They usually have transparent and accessible data and metrics. There's frequent inspection of, of the work product that's being produced and that's to ensure fit for purpose insights. The agile finance functions are also quick and, and responsible. They demonstrate quick and responsible adaptation to change, and so this concept of failing fast is really prevalent and agile finance functions, and I think lastly, I'd say they're empowered, and capable multidisciplinary teams. And so often we see teams operating in silos and that's not customary of an agile finance function. So there's much more collaborative environment where multiple people may weigh in on, on a certain decision, but it's structured such that there is increased transparency and, and everyone is working together for the same objectives. And so when you pair kind of those attributes with advancing technologies, position, finances, kind of position to streamline their day-to-day tasks, and then accelerate project delivery, and so when we think about agile functions, they're typically well-versed in, in one or more branches of agile methodology as well,and that can be anything from Kanban, all the way to the most increasingly popular scrum.

Mitch: (05:27)
Well, you just read my mind because I know I've done a little bit of research on agile and anytime you look at agile methodologies, often you come across scrum. So what exactly is scrum?

Loreal: (05:38)
Yeah, so scrum is a process framework, and that framework has been used to manage work on complex products easily since the early 1990s and probably a bit before that. So scrum is not a process. It's not a technique or, or a method. The way that it's characterized by its founders is scrum is a framework, and it's a framework within which you can employ various processes and techniques to, to get the outcome that's needed. So scrum is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. and so when we think about what the scrum framework consists of, there are scrum teams and their associated roles. there are scrum events. And so those are different, meetings or sessions that you'd need to have or ceremonies, they call them, in some instances, scrum artifacts are the, there could be things like a backlog where you've got a list of all the things that needs to be delivered for a product, and then there are some rules that, that kind of govern each of those aspects of scrum. Each component within the framework serves a specific purpose and it's essential to scrums success and usage. And so the one other thing that I'll call out is when, when agile became popular back in the nineties, there a group I'd say maybe a decade later of 17 people wrote something called the agile manifesto and that agile manifesto kind of outlined the p...