examine change from three standpoints: financial, technology, and people.
by jody padar
from success to significance: the radical cpa guide
today we’re going to ask the agility expert. donny c. shimamoto, cpa, citp, cgma, is managing director of intraprisetechknowlogies llc.
more on radicalism: introducing the fifth radical tenet: the business model | the value of new ideas | the radical road to (business) transformation | the radical cpa: always changing
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jp: can you describe what your firm does?
ds: we help transform cpa firms in a couple of ways. one is to help them embrace the cloud in a reasonable manner. the second is to embrace new approaches to working. you could even maybe say that we help them become radical firms.
jp: who is your customer?
ds: a typical customer for us will be any small to midsized organization that’s going through a lot of change and transformation. what we often bring in is the innovation piece, which is the technology piece, but we do it from a cpa perspective. meaning that a lot of our focus is on enterprise risk management – enterprise meaning holistic, not big. it’s about policy and controls and the balancing of risk with reward and looking at the concept of bringing internal controls around a change that’s occurring. not just from a financial standpoint but also from a technology standpoint. then also from a people standpoint.
jp: how would you apply agile principles to the work that you do?
ds: transformation is a long process. it’s normally a two- to three-year process. agile helps us balance the long-term vision of where the organization wants to go while showing incremental improvements and changes all along the way. through agile, we’re able to demonstrate the benefit of the changes back to the client, as well as validate that the long-term vision is where they actually want to go. sometimes we’ll see as we start to work with them and they realize the implications of certain types of changes that they’re asking for, they may decide, “well, maybe that might not be for us, or maybe that needs to be a little later and not now.” it allows us to more quickly adjust and ensure that there’s value delivered all along the transformation that we’re leading them through.
probably the biggest advantage that we get from agile is the fact that even within an engagement, that we can adjust and ensure that we’re achieving the client’s objectives, and that we can also still provide the value that we think we should provide within that engagement while staying within budget. that’s where, if you’re working with a set checklist and a non-mutable way that you’re always doing the same thing over and over and over, that’s not going to allow you to adjust as the client’s needs change.
jp: i know you have an it background. have you studied agile or have you just seen it as far as a business application?
ds: i’ve seen it, and done it, and reviewed it, and audited it, and whatever else.
jp: how does each principle below apply to a firm engagement?
principle: our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
ds: the concept behind that is really looking at what they would conceptualize as incremental delivery of product. rather than defining the entire thing up front, it’s about really looking at how do we do it piece by piece as we go along. if you look at the audit from a fundamental standpoint, that is the audit. we do the risk assessment, we start to do some testing around controls. we then, based upon the results that we see from testing of controls, you go in and you do substantive. based upon whether it passes or doesn’t pass, you go do additional substantive. then you pull everything back together again. the audit process in and of itself is designed very nicely to follow that principle.
jp: to me it’s kind of working in collaboration with a client to create the deliverable as opposed to doing it all and then saying, “here it is.”
ds: you are correct. it’s about validating along the way rather than it being this black hole of, “okay, give us all your information,” and we disappear for several months and then, “oh, here’s the output. that wasn’t what you were expecting? well, let’s go back and revisit the whole thing.”
principle: build projects around motivated individuals, give them an environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
jp: how do cpa firms currently not achieve the above principle and what is something that maybe they could do to help them meet those goals?
ds: that’s where your whole message around the old-school versus new comes in. the new concept would be that you’re basically empowering their staff to service the customer or client, versus the old-school version would be, well, the partner is the primary client conduit and everything flows through there. also from an old versus new perspective, just follow the checklist and do what the checklist says, compared to, let’s figure out whether the checklist actually makes sense and what things do we need to adjust in the checklist as we go along.
principle: continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
ds: it’s about making sure that you’re balancing the overall architecture and construct of what you’re building versus being locked into individual steps. it’s keep in mind the end and it’s about not taking shortcuts, and about making sure that even though we’re building this piece by piece, that each piece has a strong sense of quality around it. that’s what that principle says.