Right to Left is the third book by Agendashift founder Mike Burrows, doing for Lean and Agile in digital delivery what his 2018 book Agendashift did for change and transformation. Do you see in digital technology the opportunity to meet customer needs more effectively? Do you recognize that this may have profound implications for how your organisation should work? Do you want to help bring that about?

Regardless of whether you consider yourself a technologist, if your answer to those questions is “yes”, you are what we refer to in this book as a digital leader. If you are a digital leader, aspire to be one, or think that sometime soon you might need to become one, then this book is for you. Whatever your current level of knowledge of Lean and Agile, you will find here both an accessible guide to the Lean-Agile landscape and a helpfully challenging perspective on it.

The book is organized into six chapters. The first four have a strong right-to-left theme, which means consistently, deliberately, and even provocatively starting with outcomes - with needs being met - and working backwards from there, keeping outcomes always in the foreground:

• Right to left in the material world - introducing Lean, the strategic pursuit of flow
• Right to left in the digital space - introducing Agile and Lean-Agile
• Patterns and frameworks - popular Lean, Agile, and Lean-Agile frameworks and how they combine and complement each other
• Viable scaling - the Agile scaling frameworks, organisational viability, and the challenges of change

The last two chapters approach questions of organisational design and leadership from angles complementary to that core theme:

• Outside in - strategy and governance in the wholehearted organisation
• Upside down - Servant Leadership and the supportive, ‘intentful’, customer-focused organisation