Case Study of Successful Global Agile Transformation

1. Sujal Shah
Director – Software Lab
Global Organizational Agile Transformation
Journey
Ashutosh Rai
Coach - Agile

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3. A global technology partner ... continuing to evolve
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ENTERTAINMENT ENTERPRISEHEALTHCARE

5. Transformation goal
Maximize Business value Every Release
Predictable System Delivery
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Centers involved in this phase of transformation
GER
BEL
IND
• Product organization
• Having multiple centers
across globe – e.g. USA,
Canada, China, Belgium,
Germany, India

7. Partnership: Barco & Xebia
Initial Assessment
• Team understands Scrum & doing scrum
ceremonies
• Leadership was clear with Agile transformation
goal and aligned.
Discovery Phase
• Teams are busy and work hard for the goal.
• Technology Teams
• Reporting Structure (QA, Dev(UI, Backend)
• Individual team meetings with Product team
• Infrastructure for integration
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8. Challenges
Organization
Structure
Collaboration
with
Business
Involvement
of Product
Management
Team
Challenges
• Hierarchy in team
• Members of one product team
were reporting to different
people (functional team)
• For conflicts always involve
multiple managers
Empowering team
• Technology specific teams ->
focusing on individual
achievements -> not on
product goals
• Unable to challenge PM
• Strong alignment among
geographically distributed
was needed to enhance focus
on product goal
• Focused on how – not why• Discussions in silo with
different teams for
product
• Customer exposure
lacking
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9. Approach
Flat
organization
structure
Partnership
with
business for
product
roadmap
Empowering
Teams
THE THREE STEP APPROACH
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Portfolio
THREELEVEL
System
Teams

10. Organization Structure - before
Functional Structure with Hierarchy
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Director SW Lab
Software Development Advance TechnologyTesting Architecture SolutionsAdvance Technology

11. Current Organization Structure
Flat structure focused on business divisions
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Director Software Lab
TECHNOLOGY TO CROSS FUNCTIONAL
Entertainment Enterprise HealthCare

12. Concept
Centered aroud the Scrum team
• Product owner or technical lead
• Scrum master
• Team
R&D Lead
Mentor
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Basis
Points addressed while designing structure:
One person – one role
Product Owner shall not have
reporting of scrum team
Do not distribute team for one
product development to multiple
people managers

13. Empowering Teams
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14. Empowering Teams
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Educate Teams
Teams themselves
decided composition
Encouraged teams to
discuss business value
Teams moving towards multi-
skilled individuals e.g. full
stack, dev & test automation
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2
3
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15. Challenges
Succession plan
Breaking hierarchy
mindset
Showing career
growth to people
• For existing people
• For new positions
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16. Partnership with Business
PARTNERSHIP
• System Goal - based on
business value in alignment with
PM and PO
• System sprint demo
• Team members visiting
customer & trade shows
CHALLENGES
• Unable to demo at system
level initially
• Strengthen CI and TA for
efficient & timely integration –
business value??
• Cannot send all team
members to meet
international customer
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17. Outcomes of first phase
ACHIEVEMENTS
• Team Level Predictability
• Team decided to have Quality as
part of DoD
• Quick Feedback Implementation
Cycle
• Business Alignment at System
Level
• Scrum master sync to share
best practices across globe
• Focus on CI / CD CHALLENGES
• Aligning product management
vision for incremental releases
• Organization level
prioritization
• Common teams across
systems
• Product managers
collaboration
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18. Consideration for Portfolio level scaling
Frequency of deployment in Market
Number of global teams involved for system development
Dependencies on common teams
Prioritization across systems in a portfolio
Scalable and iterative Architecture
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2
3
4
5
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19. Scaling at portfolio
COACH COMMUNITY + BARCO TEAM
Involvement of Leadership
Business + Engineering
Leadership + PMs + POs +
SAs + Coaches
Leadership + PMs + POs +
SA + Teams
PORTFOLIO
ALINGMENT
SYSTEM
RELEASE
PLANNING
Business value across systems
Must go features
Improving architectural runway to improve performance
Business goal for each system for next quarter
PO's picking highest priorities items for respective
teams
Understanding on high level system business values
Clarifying all doubts/ question
Identifying and mitigating all risks and dependencies
Forecasting for release goal
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20. Achievement from scaling
Teams working closely
to resolve
Transparency among
each other
Quick and actionable
collaboration
Value focused
Confidence of collective
delivery
Capacity based forecast Happy Teams
Leadership resolving
impediments
Quick product priority
decisions
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21. What’s next?
What's
Next?
Creating a culture of innovation
Community Involvement
Thought Leadership
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