Personal Profile

Denis SunnyOgranisational Design Trainer and Consultant
Lisbon, Portugal
Mentor

Denis is an Organisation Design trainer and consultant whose Agile journey of working with product companies spans over 15 years. He participated in multiple organizational experiments while working at companies of various sizes from small start-ups to gigantic BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Deutsche Bank. His previous career started more than 20 years ago as a software developer, project manager, and Head of PMO (PMP, Prince II). Most companies he worked with as a permanent employee and an external consultant were in Banking, Fintech, Automotive, and Digital industries.

He worked in and observed various framework adoptions out of which, so far, he directly worked within two cases of LeSS adoption. One of them definitely stands out of the crowd as it was a LeSS Huge at BMW Autonomous Driving. All these experiences helped him gain knowledge of the most common mistakes made by organizations during Agile adoption. One of the most common mistakes leading to critical consequences is the misunderstanding of the criticality of setting and promoting Optimization Goals as the Nord Star in systems thinking for all organizational decisions.  

The key learning from his experience is that no practices, methods, or tools will make organizations Agile. The needed change of culture and mindset requires people to step out of their comfort zone. Many don’t like it and won’t go for it unless they need it themselves. Therefore, one should design the organizational system in a specific way that creates conditions in which Agile becomes useful for people. And vice versa, an inappropriate organizational structure may put out all sparks of Agility. Denis observed both these scenarios a lot, analyzed them deeply, and is keen to share his expertise.