WHOLE-TEAM, DYNAMIC ORGANIZATIONAL MODELING

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1 WHOLE-TEAM, DYNAMIC ORGANIZATIONAL MODELING AGILE MONDAY AUGUST 13, 9 AM Why model? To plan and execute complex product development, we believe in whole-team, dynamic organizational modeling, and that's what we're sharing with you in our workshop today. TEST IDEAS FAST We use models to experiment and explore organizational pretotypes that are easy for people to understand, and can be changed fast. TEST ASSUMPTIONS Discover how Legos can be used for organizational modeling and questioning (testing) of initial assumptions. GET RAPID FEEDBACK Create a lightweight model of the organization that we can Information you need to model Consider the following inputs to developing large scale agile organizational Product X while improving cross-training and maximizing time to models. market.) DESCRIBE CURRENT STATE OF ORGANIZATION: The goal, (e.g. we want to create an Agile organization to develop # of developers, use to get rapid feedback. (Continued on p. 2) Facilitators: CATHERINE LOUIS (PRODUCT OWNER, CST) - Principal and owner of CLL-Group. Contact: cll@cll-group.com - Web: cll-group.com - RAJ MUDHAR (CSM, PRODUCT OWNER) - Chief Agilist - Wireless Alcatel-Lucent Contact: raj@ripnet.com - Web: rajile.com -

2 testers, project managers, functional managers, ScrumMasters, Product CATHERINE GENERAL SKILLS As principal of CLL-Group, Catherine focuses on clients in the large and complex product development space which include clients in military, power systems, telecom, and other regulated industries. Skills: # required per technical domain, e.g. Mobile, CAD, UI, DBA, callp Catherine s business philosophy is a train the trainer model where she enables her clients to become autonomous and independent as quickly as possible. Layer 1 etc.) Catherine is a tacit culture hacker from way back. Owners, Customers, other roles... SCARCE SKILLS Skills which are in limited supply which are preventing your enterprise from achieving its goals. DISTRIBUTION Distribution of roles/skills across time zones and geography. RAJ As Chief Agilist of the Wireless Division at Alcatel-Lucent, Raj is focused on leading a large-scale Agile transformation across multiple global sites, supporting 9000 employees across all business functions. Raj s transformation philosophy is to enable teams and their leaders to facilitate their own change. Raj is a tacit culture hacker from way back. CONSTRAINTS Constraints such as unions, 3rd party suppliers, physical presence required in a country or you cannot sell there, others outside the firm with whom you work, skills shortages other than scarce skills, test equipment shortages, etc. SCOPE Scope of the model (e.g. development through product support, marketing through development, etc). Why Model? (continued from p. 1) REDUCE HANDOFFS Use the models to find ways to reduce handoffs associated with collaboration and communication. SAFE AND FUN Provide a safe way of visualizing possible organizational change without naming people specifically.

3 1 LearningBots Inc. LearningBots Inc. is a small company that builds learning robots for children aged 5 and 13. The robots come in different configurations, are voice activated and can be controlled remotely using a SmartPhone. The newest models are under development and are targeted for older children. LearningBots wants to get feedback from these older users and their parents as they develop a new version of their product. The robots plays educational games in math, physics, and literature. THE SCOPE OF THE AGILE TEAMS Development to Operations, Project has been initiated (through Marketing and Sales), and budgets have just been allocated across the HW and SW teams. Project will finish when Operations takes over after development. DISTRIBUTION OF EMPLOYEES: All teams are at located at the same site. Establish three cross-functional, multi-disciplined teams. Board layout skills need to be expanded across all 3 teams. Prototyping needs to happen very quickly to keep the customer engaged. Show how board-layout skills might transfer across 3 teams. Show 3 teams cross-functional, multi-disciplined. Show a reduction of reporting structure. H/W Developers: 12 S/W Developers: 17 Testers: 5 Project Managers: 3 total: 2 H/W & 1 S/W The hardware teams and the software teams report to 3 different silo d areas of management. The SW Director and the HW director are competing for the same budget for the project. Supply management is currently not part of the team, and waiting for parts could impact the hardware schedule. Managers: 4 Supply Managers: 2 total (1H/W & 1 S/W) Other: One system tester who could become a PO. Constraints: Insufficient skills in board layout to support both teams.

4 2 Acme Athletics The Acme Athletics company makes software for sports clubs to organize their team rosters, schedules, statistics, and training plans for their athletes. The software takes the statistics and training plans of the athletes and uses an algorithm (heuristic) that computes the probability of success or defeat of athletes and S/W Developers: 12 their teams. Customers are demanding more flexibility in the model to tune the output depending on local conditions. There is only one modeler who know how all this works. And now, we need more of them. Testers: 10 Project Managers (PMs): 3 Managers: 3 Marketing staff: 3 Sales staff: 3 (USA, UK, Australia) Deployment staff: 3 Product support staff: 3 Other: 1 HR, 1 Finance, 3 product managers (2 in USA and 1 THE SCOPE OF THE AGILE TEAMS Scope is from Concept to Cash - because customers want to be heavily involved in tuning the algorithm for their needs. This involves sales, marketing, R&D, and the deployment and support team. Deployment and support teams are separate from the developers and testers. They are located on the same sites as the customers. Marketing staff are at the same locations as the product managers. (we did not list these people in the original scenario) DISTRIBUTION OF EMPLOYEES: 1.PMs are on one site and the rest are elsewhere. 2.Developers and testers are spread across different sites (each team has developers and testers-co-located) but the critical skills are only in one of the three teams. Show how the model reduces reporting structures. Show how the developers and testers can interact more easily. Show how customers can be involved in feedback loops (e.g. tuning the algorithms). Modeling skills are lacking. PMs demand lots of reports and documentation. A budget cut is forcing you to remove at least 5 people from the project or cut salaries by 10%. You are limited to how much test infrastructure you can replicate in different locations. You can only add enough additional test equipment to enable one more site. (Tied to #2 from Distribution of employees from above.

5 3 GammaGenome You ve just been hired at GammaGenome as a ScrumMaster. This company does genetic research to increase crop production in the US. There are 8 designers in Research Triangle Park. The company is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Basel HQ has decided that ALL development must happen in Egypt. The development currently consists of high level algorithms which are then used by the medical staff to prove out their hypotheses. When they go into production, the code will be used by universities in North America. THE SCOPE OF THE AGILE TEAMS The teams currently take 2 weeks to plan a sprint of 2 weeks in length, and they begin with a backlog that has been prioritized and estimated by the BA s. So the scope is very narrow: someone else has done the requirements analysis, user story writing, prioritization and estimation. They hope for a single-piece to flow through to unit testing before being complete. DISTRIBUTION OF EMPLOYEES: There are 17 people located in RTP, NC and 12 are located in Cairo, Egypt. Designers: 8 in RTP Developers: 12 in Cairo, Egypt Testers: 2 in RTP ScrumMaster: 1 in RTP Product Owners: 0 during development Project Managers: 0 - she just left Managers: 0 - Nobody seems to know what s going on Other: 5 BAs, all doctors holding multiple degrees, 1 production stream owner (although not in production yet) 1. Have 3 cross-functional, multi-disciplined teams, able to deliver to one customer (University) in the next few months. 2. Show how the model can reduce reporting structures. 3. Show how product owners, developers and testers can more easily interact. 4. Show how customers can be involved in feedback loops (i.e. hypothesis testing.) 5. Show how we can stop this ScrumFall The BA s never seem to agree to anything, prioritize anything (everything is P1) and they are always arguing over what should go in the backlog. One of the BA s seems to be able to get them to agree. One of the designers in RTP just found a contracting agency and wants to hire developers locally (seems he has figured out a way to hire 3 people under the Basel HQ radar.) The velocity of the team in Egypt is very low; their last Sprint review was a demo of an ordered linked list. The whole team is concerned that the stories are being written without the User in mind. One developer recently said, All of our stories start with As A User and we don t know who the user is!

6 4 Webtastic Webtastic is a local start-up developing everything from small brochure sites to largescale custom software solutions. Their services include: Web design Web hosting User Experience Programming Internet marketing Web strategy THE SCOPE OF THE AGILE TEAMS Development to Operations, Just R&D, from Marketing through to final customer delivery, finance...etc. DISTRIBUTION OF EMPLOYEES: All 47 employees are located in Grapevine, Texas. Executives:: CEO, CIO, COO Other Management: 1 Creative Director, 1 HR, 1 Strategic Relations Manager, 1 Marketing Director, 1 Director of Client Consulting Services Marketing: 1 senior marketing specialist and 2 internet marketing specialists Designers: 8 web designers Developers/Testers: 10 Associate Programmers, 1 senior Associate Programmer, 2 Programmers, 1 Mobile Apps developer, 1 front-end developer, 1 Quality Assurance Specialist, 3 Associate S/W Developers, 1 UX Developer, Technical Support: 2 technical support specialists Project Managers: 6 1. Have cross-functional multi-disciplinary teams wherever possible. 2. Show how the model can reduce reporting structures. 3. Show how product owners, developers and testers can more easily interact. 4. Show how customers can be as close to development as possible to improve feedback. Currently, Webtastic is without process, and managing in a hierarchical fashion where each morning the CXO s meet and then dictate the day. Developers are thrashing with this turmoil. Their venture capital firm will not replenish their funds for 2012 until some order can be seen in the organization focusing on producing value for the customer. One programmer who thought he would have been named senior associate programmer is considering leaving, and he is a key programmer working on their next (Big!) client project.