What is Amplio?

Amplio In a Nutshell

Amplio is an expert system that guides people in increasing their ability. to create value, specifically in knowledge work. It integrates what hundreds of consultants and practitioners have found useful. It is based on the theories of flow, Lean, the Theory of Constraints, and Human-Centered Development. Individuals, teams, and organizations can use it.

Amplio provides a set of capabilities for teams and other capabilities for organizations that are necessary to accomplish this effectively.

It includes a diagnostic system to identify where improvements are needed and creates a path to make them.

Each capability has an associated pattern to enable deciding which way of working would best the situation at hand. This enables Amplio to be pragmatically complete without being prescriptive.

It is based on the leading minds of the last century, including W. Edwards Deming (management), Russell Ackoff (systems thinking), Christopher Alexander (system design), Eli Goldratt (complexity), Don Reinertsen (principles of flow), and Tom Gilb (value creation).

It can be used on its own or to enhance any of the popular Agile methods.

Its mindset consists of the following:

VALUE FIRST: The primary purpose of all activity is to delivery measurable values to critical stakeholders.

DIAGNOSTICS: Relevant system diagnostics about stakeholders, values, costs, constraints and current systems is continually necessary.

VISION: Create and maintain a clear vision about a system’s balanced but effective future in both the value delivery and the means to achieve it.

VALUE STRATEGIES: We must continuously create and test efficient means to improve towards both efficient product and organizational visions. Amplio provides a set of capabilities and a means to achieve them required for most organizations so that they do not need to reinvent them.

KNOWLEDGE: We apply all efficient means of sharing useful knowledge within our organization, including coaching, leadership, databases, AI, and personal experience. Amplio includes effective insights on dealing with the complexities of knowledge work and organization improvement. This enables efficient improvement with lower risks.

PEOPLE: Understanding human behavior which contribute and impedes the engineering of our systems will be taught and practiced at a master level. You must attend to how people listen, learn, filter information, react and resist. Otherwise improvement will not take place efficiently.

SUPPORT: Amplio provides a tailored set of artifacts and tools which help us apply the knowledge to our efficient value principles. Even experienced coaches and consultants require a support system to avoid missing key steps. Amplio provides several supports systems to help them.

Amplio is a system for improvement

Amplio means “improve” in Latin. Amplio is a well-defined but very flexible approach to improving an organization’s ability to deliver value to customers and to support them over time.

You can use Amplio to improve where you are in a kaizen (“small change”) approach or can create your own approach for improvement. 

Amplio provides a GPS to see what your challenges are and to create an improvement path.  diagnosis of your challenges based on what you are trying to accomplish. You can use it as a way to do incremental improvement regardless of where you are or to create a tailored approach that provides a jump start.

Amplio is based on an integration of the theories of Lean, Flow, the Theory of Constaints and Human Centered Development. It incorporates an analysis of what it takes to be successful at both the organization and team levels.  Amplio can be used as a quick start that is as easy as canned frameworks while growing as the needs of the adopters change.  

Amplio is based on a two decade study of what works by interviewing hundreds of consultants and practitioners in both successful and unsuccessful Agile adoptions. Many of the concepts required are not found in most Agile methods. See The Genesis of Amplio to learn how Amplio was created and what many of these concepts are.

Since part of the analysis dones as the basis of Amplio was seeing what worked and didn’t, Amplio includes approaches to improve popular Agile frameworks that are bogged down.

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.

How Amplio 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 Success Strategy

Amplio starts with helping create clarity on what you are traying to do. Then it helps you identify what challenges you are having with its GPS and helps you create an improvement path which you tailor to your needs.

While starting with a diagnosis may appear obvious, popular frameworks start with pre-ordained practices. Amplio includes 

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.

This approach is spelled out in more detail on the following page:

The Amplio System

The Amplio System

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 can be readily accomplished by using templates to decide the specifics of an adoption path.

Learn more about collaborative engagements:

Collaborative Engagements