Building a successful agile company people first

In this talk I want to

1. Inspire you to focus on your people in your agile adoption 2. Give you some practical techniques you can take away

Topics
Empowering agile teams Agile project reporting Creating a continuous improvement culture Agile line management

Topics
Empowering agile teams Agile project reporting Creating a continuous improvement culture Agile line management

Product Mgr

Project Mgr

UX specialist

Developer

Tech Author

Tester

The goal
Creativity

Passion

Energy

High-performing team
Technical skill Domain knowledge

Intellect

Commercial insight

Two principles of ownership

Own the product

Own the process

Two principles of ownership

Own the product

Own the process

Clear goals Access to information The whole product

Encourage adaption Pragmatic not dogmatic

Clear Goals Why?

Empower team Clarify limits of responsibility/exchange of value Ensure work is valuable relative to other opportunities Encourage creativity - what not how Provide context for team decisions

Clear Goals Examples

Reduce the occurrence of customer reported errors to 1 per 100 downloads by the end of Q4 Make the commit process so easy that 90% of usability test candidates can do it in less than a minute by the end of Q4 Automate enough of our manual release tests to reduce our manual regression cycle to 3 days

Own the product: Information

Own the product: Information

Own the whole product

First user contact to happy user For Red Gate that means
Web pages, download/evaluation experience, meeting experienced product users Visibility of support cases and feedback

Proxies:
Customer visits Usability tests

Own the process

Educate teams agile, lean, techniques, practices Adapt to context, continuously improve Pragmatism not dogmatism! Focus on outcomes not implementation
Continuous improvement not retrospectives Effective forecasting not estimating in story points

Own the process

Own the process

Topics
Empowering agile teams Agile project reporting Creating a continuous improvement culture Agile line management

Why do we need reporting?

Teams are stewards of our investment Anticipated exchange of value Not command & control keeping expectations clear Optimise delivery of value across the company

Our reporting principles

Frequent and regular Low impact on teams Reinforce values and culture Written clarity and working software Feedback loops and recognition

How
Toyota-inspired A3 reports Go and see whiteboard tours

A3 reports

Example

A3 reports

PLAN

ACT

Example

CHECK

Goals

Progress against goals

Expanding planning horizons

Reinforce continuous improvement

Encourage risk analysis

Self-assess team morale

Escalate impediments

Self-assess

How we use them

Division management team Project manager/development manager 1-to-1s Development management team Summaries up to senior management team

Whiteboard tours
Go and see 10 minutes every 4 weeks Senior management team Team area Talk through plan, status, issues Includes demos Feedback and recognition opportunity

Topics
Empowering agile teams Agile project reporting Creating a continuous improvement culture Agile line management

Building an improvement culture

Company
Open, transparent culture Request input Accept criticism

Team

Retrospectives

Individuals

1-to-1s Development plans

Functional communities
Software Eng UX Test Eng Software Eng UX Test Eng Software Eng UX Test Eng

Project Mgr Product Mgr

Project Mgr Product Mgr

Project Mgr Product Mgr

Tech Author

Tech Author

Tech Author

Software Eng UX Tech Author

Test Eng Project Mgr Product Mgr

Software Eng UX Tech Author

Test Eng
Project Mgr Product Mgr

Head of Software Engineering

Functional communities
EXCELLENCE

Infrastructure/tools Improvement projects Innovation What is best practice? Consistent achievement of it Training, dojos etc. Conferences Social events Peer review, knowledge sharing

CRAFTMANSHIP

SKILLS

COMMUNITY

PEOPLE

Best use of people Recruitment

Topics
Empowering agile teams Agile project reporting Creating a continuous improvement culture Agile line management

The bad old days

Annual performance reviews Panic! What happened? Useless goals Everyone unhappy

A better way
Short monthly one-to-ones
Achievements (including feedback) What hasnt gone so well (including feedback) Training needs SMART Goals What can I do as your line manager to help? (ask for feedback)

Write-up 8-12 per year Hugely popular Personal development plans

8 Techniques to take away

Empower your teams
1. 2. 3. 4. Create clear goals (collaboratively) Give them access to information Give them ownership of the whole product/system Give them ownership of the process educate and encourage adaptation

Build an agile project reporting process 5. Design a basic A3 report 6. Introduce whiteboard tours Create a continuous improvement culture 7. Create functional communities of practice 8. Introduce regular one-to-ones

Get in touch mark.wightman@red-gate.com