Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
to Collaboration
& Commitment
From Low Expectations
to Forecast-Topping Results
A Success Story
Agile launch
The Challenge
Train and launch agile teams for the credit group of a financial services company
with nearly 250,000 employees worldwide.
Launch pilot program and scale so that teams can delivery more quickly and
with greater predictability. Increase understanding of leadership/management role
on an agile project.
Assess the current situation, plan customized training & coaching, start sprinting
with a pilot team. Adjust the plan, scale, and offer suggestions to sustain results.
What We Delivered
The successful launch of 10 agile teams, some co-located and some distributed.
A culture of continuous improvement and team input into decision-making.
By working directly with both leadership and teams, our BigVisible coaches were
able to create an atmosphere where real change and sustained success were
possible. With help from our agile coaches, the group quickly scaled to 10,
coordinating and collaborating agile teamsand from complete skepticism to total
buy-in to an agile way of working.
Research
conducted at the
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology
(MIT) suggests
that agile firms
grow revenue 37%
faster and generate
30% higher profits
than non-agile
companies.*
Abstract
Not too long ago, a financial services company called on our agile coaches to
work with both leadership and development teams as they transitioned to an agile
process. Through a combination of training and coaching, BigVisible coaches helped
a 120-person group successfully launch 10 agile teams and institute company-wide
practices for sustained success with Scrum. By the time our coaches left, features
that used to take more than a year to build and release were complete and ready for
production every month. Teams that used to work in silos, unaware of how their work
impacted others, became a cohesive group, working together toward a common vision
and achieving previously unimaginable results.
Overview
Agile is nothing but a passing fad, a lot of hype that ultimately wont make any
difference. That was the opinion of most of the team members when we arrived at
this financial services company for the first time. Most of the people in the group had
seen several management theories come and go and were understandably skeptical
that this latest initiative would be any different. To say they had low expectations was
an understatement.
What this group did have was an innate curiosity, a willingness to try a new way of
working, and a tremendous amount of management and leadership support. Company
leaders had called BigVisible in originally to help them understand where they fit
into a system of self-organizing teams and what appeared to be a plan-as-you-go
philosophy. After some initial training, these leaders and managers soon became
some of agiles biggest advocates. Managements willingness to not just invest in a
new methodology but also to give it time to develop, to delay forecasting until they had
real data, and to work directly with teams to truly understand the challenges at that
level were instrumental to the groups ultimate success.
We began by training the managers about agile, Scrum, and the leaders role in an
agile organization. In doing so, we were able to work directly with everyone from
project managers to the executive director of the division. After this initial training,
management agreed to kickoff one pilot team and see how it went.
95% of BigVisible
clients extend their
initial engagements
based on the
strength of our
results.
Through a series of informal conversations with the chosen pilot team members, we
customized a training program to fill in the gaps in their agile and Scrum knowledge.
We then worked with the pilot team for 2-3 sprints, from creating an initial project
backlog through working as a team to releasing working software. Throughout the
process, we documented our efforts so that we could create a repeatable process to
launch other agile teams.
Start
The teams began by using Scrum. They were able to identify several improvement
opportunities during the first sprint and, with the help from our agile coaches, were
soon able to tweak the Scrum process to one that worked well for their particular
product and environment.
As they began producing and showing off new features, their excitement levels grew.
They had never before developed anything tangible so quickly. A buzz began to
develop throughout the other teamssoon all the teams wanted to be launched at
once so that they could enjoy the same success.
Scale
Our agile coaches wanted to create the same sense of camaraderie on a distributed
agile team as the co-located team. They knew they would need new tools and tactics
to bring team members in far-off countries together with those in the US. Our agile
coaches started with a remote kickoff via video conferencing. With a panoramic screen
and a 24-hour-a-day dedicated connection, the tool made the participants feel as
though they were all in the same room, even though they were separated by many
miles and time zones. The coaches used the video conferencing tool to deliver the
initial training and left the connection open continuously for the first 3-4 days of the
sprint so that they team went through release planning, creating team rules, and their
first sprint planning meeting in an room surrounded by their teammates, even ones
who were far away.
Agile Principle
#6: The most
efficient and
effective method
of conveying
information to
and within a
development team
is face-to-face
conversation.
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Before Agile
After Agile
The effect of the panoramic video conferencing surpassed our coaches expectations.
I was expecting that face-to-face release planning would be significantly, measurably
better than remote planning, said one of the agile coaches. I was surprised with how
natural it became to spend the day in front of a camera. Im not sure if it was the fact that
the screen was so large that everyone felt life-sized or what, but we felt as though we
were all in the same room. And our results, at least for this first team, were shockingly
similar to the co-located team.
After 4 months, the client had successfully launched 10 agile teams, some co-located
and some distributed. Though they did not all match the success of the first two teams,
they did all produce and release features at a rate that they could never have imagined
when the project began.
Sustain
With 10 agile teams working on new features and products, the client began to
look for ways to coordinate the efforts of the teams and also share practices across
teams. One innovative solution the client instituted was the cocktail hour, a series of
meetings where team members, functional groups, and management could all gather
to share what they had learned. These happened daily at first, and then became more
of a weekly occurrence as the teams became more used to an agile way of working.
One key factor for this groups success was the agile emphasis on releasing working
software. Being able to see and touch what the teams were creating gave management
early confirmation that the agile teams were building the right things, with better quality
than ever before. As the teams received more and more positive feedback, they gained
confidence in their new delivery method. The team members expressed that they felt
more motivated and had a new sense of camaraderie.
Game Changer:
Cocktail Hour
Management also worked to clear obstacles that stood in the way of improvements.
For example, when multiple teams reported being blocked by a dependency on a
separate database analyst group, management took steps to incorporate DBAs into
agile teams to the extent possible within the larger constraints of the organization.
Working with our agile coaches, they created a temporary, improvised interface that
allowed the DBAs to be part of the extended agile teams by attending sprint planning
and daily meetings. They also worked through capacity problems to help reduce time
teams spent waiting for a DBA to be free to work with them. As a long-term project,
they began to work outside the group toward the goal of removing the DBA silo and
creating embedded DBAs.
When our coaches left, they felt confident the client had not just the right skills and tools,
but also the right attitude for sustained success with agile. The teams and leaders had
made the mindset switch from throwing problems over the wall to deep conversations
and collaboration. They were continuing to scale using the lessons learned from the
pilot teams and were consistently delivering the right features with the right quality
at a predictable monthly rate. The
The results didnt stop when our
coaches give all the credit to the
clients commitment to collaborative
coaches left. The client continues
decision making and willingness
to scale using the lessons learned
to take the leap of faith toward an
from the pilot teams and still
agile way of working.
consistently delivers the right
Want to be
the next
success story?
Contact us now to
learn more about
partnering with us
to successfully meet
your business goals!
Email:
Info@bigvisible.com
BIG Wins:
Successful launch of 10 agile teams, both distributed and co-located
Commitment to leadership, management, and team-level agile training
Collaborative environment with regular cross-team sharing
Improved delivery time, features that had previously taken a year or
more and still werent quite right, are now delivered each month.
Phone:
1-800-675-1757
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