As technology leaders, we spend endless hours on solution design reviews, costing, project management & vendor contracts... yet we rarely spend enough time on the thing that has the biggest multiplier impact: your people architecture. This presentation is a worked example of how restructuring an organisation to address a significant Theory of Constraints issue achieved results beyond what was expected, and used architecture concepts to get the technology teams on board and help improve autonomy and engagement.
4. Healthdirect Australia designs and delivers innovative
services for governments to provide every Australian with
24/7 access to the trusted information and advice they need
to manage their own health and health-related issues.
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY 4
9. Our Focus
9
You were hired, & you hire your people, because someone in your
organisation believes you can make a real difference
… to your customers.
17. Healthdirect’s Challenge Opportunity …
Online Services
Aged Care
Directories
Other Projects
Architecture
/Security
/Compliance
Reviews
Operations
Readiness
Operations
Ownership
DevOps DevOpsDEV / TEST UAT PROD
18. Healthdirect’s Challenge Opportunity …
18
Fully automated, zero-downtime deployments.
...requiring manual approvals & then only performed by ‘DevOps’
Only Ops & Infrastructure staff had visibility of live environments
21. Healthdirect’s Challenge Opportunity…
21
There was a Theory of Constraints limit & the impact to the
company at that limit was severe
From the customer’s perspective it was
Premature Organisational Optimisation !
Our structure and governance was designed for compliance,
control and local efficiency. Not for customer outcomes.
24. “ leaders and designers are often one and the same,
it is important for leaders to recognize their challenge
Nelson, H.G. and Stolterman, E., 2003. The design way
…as that of a designer ”
25. Our Guiding Principles
25
1. Service groups, with customer-connected product teams
2. Demystify & delegate Compliance & Governance
3. Make Autonomy & Accountability best friends
4. Every team in the organisation needs a defined customer interface
5. Teams needed a long term mission to own their delivery
26. Service Alignment
26
We put customer service before functional hierarchies
Created autonomous product teams within groups of related services:
Consumer
Services
Directories &
eHealth
Gateway
Services
32. Understand Governance Performance
32
Decision authority needs to be moved to where the information is.
Governance performance can be measured by delegating decision
authority & then reviewing the outcomes (out of cycle).
33. 33
Each team provides a
real service to a real
customer.
Teams are grouped by
purpose
Defining our people architecture
34. Defining our people architecture
34
Each team has a “1-page team” document that’s reviewed every qtr:
- Team Purpose
- Our People
- Our Responsibilities
- How we Know
- Our Delegations & Authority
- Our Customer Interfaces
- Rolling 1 year plan, by quarter
37. Healthdirect’s people architecture
37
In practice: Autonomy & Accountability needed to go together
Like the sysadmins of old, product teams were given :
Visibility, Ownership, Autonomy, Responsibility
39. The Hard Parts
39
Rock stars are a problem : Collaborators aren’t
Hire for a ‘full-stack culture’ over tech skills
Change leadership 101 : light ! to your platform if you need to
Operational responsibilities don’t grow overnight
41. Autonomy & Accountability impact
41
What would happen if you gave your teams permission to create
infrastructure without asking $someone_important ?
43. … Reprise ...
43
We gave teams at Healthdirect customer interfaces
We see org structure & governance as scalability power tools
Teams release as often as the Product Owner needs to
Teams have autonomy over how they deliver
Each team measures performance at the customer interface
45. Join the transformation conversation
Culture & Transformation
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