What is Amplio

How to learn Amplio

Amplio In a Nutshell

Amplio is a distillation of what it takes to be successful from an objectives point of view. This is different from Agile frameworks that come from a set of practices and structures that hope to be effective.

The challenge is that organizations are somewhat unique even though there are similarities in what needs to happen across them.

Amplio comes with a fairly complete set of tailorable practices which makes it powerful to use. It also includes a diagnostic so what we can decide on and implement the improvements that would be most useful.

For each essential objective, provides a playbook that enables you to apply it in different contexts for different stakeholders.

By being organized around playbooks, Amplio provides practices that best fit your organization. Amplio also is modularized to enable the edition of additional playbooks. It can be used as a way to improve your current approaches to value delivery (including framework adoptions you may have made or as a standalone system. As a standalone system it can provide you starting points as simple as Scrum or enable you to create your own.

Amplio takes the attitude that it is better to be simple to use than simply designed. So there is a little more responsibility given to an Amplio coach than the rest of the people involved. But this investment is small and reaps great rewards in being fit-for-purpose and avoiding a great deal of resistance you see when people are told to “follow to understand.”

Amplio uses a “Value by Design” approach to eliminate waste and speed up delivery. The value by design approach suggests to design your system so that you can apply your resources (including your capabilities, time, and budget), efficiently, to create as much value as possible so that you meet your business objectives. Scope may change from its original statement to deal with competitive and constraining forces consistent with the stakeholders’ values, success criteria, and constraints. This, however, should be in line with the original objectives of any particular project.

How you can use Amplio

Since Amplio is based on the physics of flow (a fusion of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints) it can be used anywhere to make incremental improvements by those using it at the pace they want to. However, it can also be used to set up your own approach that is configured for your organization. It has a diagnostic tool that identifies key challenges your organization is having and suggests improvement methods.

Amplio also has tracks specific to improve those having challenges with Scrum, Kanban or SAFe. Amplio’s creator, Al Shalloway, was a thought leader in all three of these approaches and knows how to improve them. 

Amplio’s flexibility allows for more than just bringing it to bear in a way that best suits your organization. This flexibility enables quicker and more effective adoption.

It also can be used to create leaders in the organization coaching others so not everyone needs to be trained in it, but can focus on their own skills and interests.

Amplio recognizes that

  • Organizations need a consistent way of working while enabling teams to choose their own fit-for-purpose way of working.
  • People need a defined workflow to create clarity on what to do and to get started. However, this workflow needs to be able to change over time as the team and the work they are doing changes. That is, they need to be given an adaptive framework.
  • People need to be given practices that will help them when they need it without overloading them with too much information.

While the need for these is self-evident, popular frameworks do not attend to them.  Instead, frameworks come from a pre-ordained solution that gets applied to the organization adopting it. These solutions also tend to ignore the aspects of a transition that are critical. These include the rate, depth, scope, how fit-for-purpose the adoption is, what support materials are included for new adopters, and any constraints put on the transition by its sponsors. See Adoption Factors to Attend To for more.

 

Amplio’s Collaborative Engagements

It should be apparent that pre-ordained practices will not be fit-for-purpose all of the time. Yet our popular frameworks are built on them.

Frameworks need to be tailored. 

If should also be apparent that people in an organization know more about it than any outside consultant will.

These two facts require us to combine the experience of an expert with the knowledge of those working in the organization.  

This means all of the work described above needs to be done collaboratively. Learn more about the details of this here.

 

The components of the Amplio System

Amplios components can be used individually or as a whole.

Amplio is a collection of 10 different components.  While designed to work together, each one can be applied to whereever you are to achieve improvement.  These components are:

  1.  The “physics of flow” which provides insights on what causes your problems and how to fix them.
  2. The Amplio Learn Kata which enables those trained in Amplio to teach it to others.
  3. Jobs to be Done Thinking which is an integration of the Jobs to be Done Framework with design thinking and how to go from strategy to deployment. This is a far more advanced product management approach than the common use of epics, features, and stories.
  4. Value by Design is a way to set up your organization to create more value in less time and with lower cost by focusing on the quality of the product. It mirror’s the Toyota Production Systems approach translated to product development.
  5. Using the values, success criteria, and constraints of key stakeholders to determine what to build creates a focus on eliminating rework.
  6. Amplio has quick starts if desired. But much of the time it is better to do a diagnostic, see where your problems are, and determine the best solutions for them. This enables Amplio to be used to improve frameworks you may be using.
  7. Effective management. Effective teams need to be working in an effective system. Amplio provides roles for management to create these.
  8. Value stream management and effective organizational structure. How to organize your people is not as simple as getting cross-functional teams or release trains. Amplio has a collection of value creation structures tht can create a structure fit for your people and needs.
  9. Attending to the cost of delay isthe key for quick delivery of value. Amplio’s approach creates alignment about what is of greatest value to the stakeholders involved. Alignment is both more effective and less expensive than coordination.
  10. Continuous learning and transition management is required to create improvement across an organization.

See The Amplio System to see more about what Amplio provides.

How the Amplio System Was Created

Most approaches to improvement are based on a particular theory or the creators’ experience. Amplio has taken a different path.

Over a period of more than two decades, Al Shalloway, the primary creator of Amplio, had over 10,000 conversations at conferences, seminars and at clients discussing with practitioners and consultants on what works and what doesn’t. By using the theories of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints as a baseline, he created a system that is flexible enough to work essentially anywhere. Amplio represents the third generation of this – the first being what Net Objectives consultants used and later it was used for the Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant workshop. Amplio takes these even further.

Amplio University is the means by which you learn how to do this. It uses advanced learning methods to enable coverage of the full system in an economical manner.

The Amplio Learning Center

Amplio is designed to not just be used, but to be taught. Amplio University also takes a “Jobs to be Done” approach – but this time for the people leading it. It integrates a coaching workshop and provides Lucid collaboration boards to assist. It also provides all of the PowerPoints used license free for people with an active enrollment in the learning center which is only $49 / month. You can learn more here.

The Amplio Success Strategy

Amplio starts with creating a vision for improvement. Part of this vision is deciding whether to create your own process or to use Amplio to improve a current, decided on framework. A this point a dianostic of your system is done to create clarity on what needs to be done. 

After an initial diagnostic is created with key leaders, the potential path is discussed with thove involved to both refine it and to get buy in.

Amplio’s improvement path consists of implementing proven,  practices tailored to your context. This enables adopters to not have to re-invent the wheel.

Amplio also provides an extensive an extensive set of consulting, training, and support materials so people do not have to re-invent the wheel.

Amplio is based on a scientific approach to success management. These foundations provide guidance on how to choose the best practices for your situation.