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Adopting ‘Agile’ in Fast-Growing Startups Successfully
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Adopting ‘Agile’ in Fast-Growing Startups Successfully The Why, the How, and What to Avoid at all Costs © Stefan Wolpers • Berlin, January 3 rd , 2017
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Transcript of Adopting ‘Agile’ in Fast-Growing Startups Successfully
Adopting ‘Agile’ in Fast-Growing Startups Successfully
The Why, the How, and What to Avoid at all Costs
© Stefan Wolpers • Berlin, January 3rd, 2017
Berlin Success Story: Zalando
“Over the last year and a half, we have doubled the technology team from around 800 in 2015 to over 1,600 currently.
In addition to changing our business model, we also implemented a unique culture within the technology team called Radical Agility:
This has seen monthly technology applications grow from 500 to over 2,000, and allows to ensure that we are hiring only the best quality.”
Matteo Bovio, Zalando SE
Source: Business Insider [email protected]
There’s Plenty of ‘Agile’
Source: lynnecazaly.com
How come then that ‘Agile’ is so hard to master in practice?
Fallacy #1: ‘Agile’ = More Bang for the $$
Typically named reasons for doing “Agile”:• Become more efficient• Deliver faster• Improve predictability
Actual benefits of becoming “Agile”:• Outperforming competitors by creating learning organizations• Creating a great culture by providing room for autonomy, mastery and purpose• Mastering continuous product discovery & delivery• Minimizing risk, improving ROI
Fallacy #2: No or Limited C-Level Sponsorship
Source: Why Agile Turns into Micromanagement
Change needs to be fundamental:• Learning organization:
• Running experiments• Embracing failure• Abandoning the “heroic inventor”
mental model
• Self-organizing teams lead to…• … a ‘team of teams’ structure• Futile: Bottom up approach
Fallacy #3: Everyone Loves ‘Agile’
What’s-in-for-me syndrome: • Middle management’s inherent inertia
to change• Taylorism pays well today:
• Personal agendas• Career & CV optimization
• Self-organization needs a different kind of management layer:• Teachers• Coaches• Mentors
Source: https://memegenerator.net/instance/23491837 [email protected]
Fallacy #4: We Know what to Build
Strong cognitive bias:• Reaffirming tendencies if things work out:
I was right and I will be right in the future (Chance is ruled out)• If things don’t work out:
Something else was wrong I could not foresee… (Rationalization of failure)
Consequences:• Micromanagement• Ignorance toward opportunity costs or cost of delay as strategic concepts
Fallacy #5: Scale Like Spotify
Henrik Kniberg:
“…wasn’t a big re-make, more like a continuous stream of small iterative improvements to our organization and process.
We have been growing for three years, and the way we work today has evolved naturally over time.”
Source: Don't Copy the Spotify Model [email protected]
How to Make ‘Agile’Then Work?
Processes & Tools
Practices
Principles
Values
Mindset
Sales-, Product- or Tech-Driven?
Source: What Is Agile?
This can be adoptedC&C style
This requires cultural & organizational change
Move to a learning organization
Less powerful,more visible
More powerful,less visible
How-to #1: Culture
Culture:• Don’t let culture “evolve” by growth• Culture by committee is useless• Culture follows structure• Critical:
• Diversity• Education
How-to #2: Win Hearts & Minds w/ Education
App building w/ new arrivals:
• Works for sales, marketing, customer care, finance, HR…
• Workshop takes about 6 hours• Have them built a clickable
prototype• No budget, no time available?
Probably run…
Source: App Prototyping with Absolute Beginners [email protected]
How-to #3: Hire the Right People
Hiring principles:• Hire for mindset & cultural fit, not for skills• Look for intrinsic motivation: People care for what they help create• Hire for the best possible team (moneyball for engineers)• Diverse teams are more innovative
Peer recruiting: Let the teams choose their teammatesBrace yourself for impact: HR will not like it…Transparency: Don’t advertise a “Product Owner” position if you need a project manager.
Source: Peer Recruiting [email protected]
How-to #4: Team Building
Team building:• Team building objectives:
• Self-managing• Cross-functional• Co-located
• Proper onboarding• Tuckman is still valid• Don’t shuffle team members around• No line managers as teammates• Use delegation poker to outsource tasks
from teams to the management
Source: Zappos’ Outrageous Record For The Longest Customer Service Phone Call Ever [email protected]
How-to #5: Workspace
Modes of creative work:• Focus• Collaborate• Learn• Socialize
Out of sight, out of mind:• Whiteboards• Information radiators…
Source: Agile Workspace: The Undervalued Success Factor [email protected]
How-to #6: Sound Engineering Practices
You build it, you ship it, you run it:• Micro-service architecture• Test automation• Continuous integration/delivery• Keep technical debt/liability at bay
Don’t let Salesforce just “happen”:• Parallel IT universe => Frustration on engineering & product side• People w/o software competence will end up “defining” your back-end
How-to #7: Feature v. Component Teams
Feature teams over component teams:• Holistic product view• End-to-end feature delivery• No code ownership• Cross-functional & co-located
How-to #8: Agile Metrics – Good, Bad & Ugly
Good metrics:• Lead time• Cycle time• Ratio of fixing work v. feature work• No. of bugs on production
Bad metrics:• Velocity
Ugly metrics:• Story points per engineer
[email protected]: Agile Metrics—The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
How-to #9: Scaling–Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Source: Large Scale Scrum
How-to #10: Find Your Own Way
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
Karl R. Popper
Source: Goodreads on Dogmatism [email protected]
Contact Information
Stefan Wolpers
Email: [email protected]: Age-of-Product.comNewsletter: https://age-of-product.com/subscribe (Join 5,581 peers)Slack: https://hands-onagile.slack.com/ (Join 437 peers)Twitter 1: @StefanWTwitter 2: @AgeOfProduct
