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

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


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (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...