The document describes the journey and evolution of Srijan, an agile software development company, from 2002 to present. It discusses how Srijan started with no clear vision and grew through experimentation. Key factors in Srijan's success included developing a strong set of values focused on customer experience, continuous learning and improvement. Srijan also emphasized consultative sales, agile development processes, and empowering self-managed teams through coaching and transparent performance reviews. These changes helped Srijan achieve steady growth and high customer satisfaction.

1. BUILDING AN AGILE
CULTURE
www.srijan.net | business@srijan.net
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EXPERIMENTS AT SRIJAN

2. A LITTLE BIT OF
HISTORY

3. The Journey :: 2002 - 2003
● Estb 2002
● No grand vision, no grand ideas!
● Simple personal pursuit of ‘making meaning out of
my own life’

4. No Grand Vision!

5. The Journey :: Mar - Jun 04
● Srijan was doing custom PHP and ASP -- hand-
coded CMSs; later open-source Postnuke
● Came across TYPO3
● My jaw dropped on reading the feature list -- all open
source and free! Yikes!
● June 2004 we had an incoming lead from a 200-
chain retail store from Germany

6. The Journey :: 2004 - 2007
● Small Team 10-15 people
● Short-term projects
● Fairly Profitable
● Mostly incoming leads
● Nearly all TYPO3, Germany + Netherlands

7. The Journey :: Our Values
and Culture
● Chance meetings with coaches and well-wishers --
values started evolving -- mine and as a result Srijan’
s
● Team oriented
● Take on challenges
● Work very hard
● Nimble, Responsive, Responsible
● Less processes (chaos + processes)

8. Books that defined culture
● Chance meetings with coaches and well-wishers --
values started evolving -- mine and Srijan’s

9. 2002 - 2011
● Short-term projects
● Fixed Cost
● Incorrect estimations (nearly always)
● Tail of the projects always dragged (endlessly)
● Each time we bore the brunt (of such cost over-
runs)
● Change requests were “difficult to capture”, “scope”
and estimate
● Fingers pointing all over (sales -- developers)

10. 2002 - 2011
● Financial constraints led to staffing developers on
new projects (before completing one at hand –
endless project tail!)
● One-person-team staffed on a project, was not
unusual
● Low developer morale
● Low leadership morale
● Poor financial health (even after a lot of hard-work
for years)

11. WHERE ARE WE
NOW?

12. 2015-2016
● Financial Year closing we should be touching 30 Cr
in revenues
● 150-175 people
● Fairly high people happiness index
● Low attrition
● High EBIDTA margins
● 70% business from Enterprises
● We’ve grown 50%+ each year over prev 3-4 years

13. SO WHAT WORKED?

14. “Learn to live life,
and you shall learn
to write” Shama Futehally

15. ● A certain ‘Authenticity’ and ‘Integrity’
○ with people
○ with customers
○ with finding the purpose of your own life as
well as the business
Sense of Purpose, Authenticity

16. Role of Luck & Serendipity

17. Role of Luck & Serendipity
“Lucky people have an openness, an authenticity, and
a generosity towards embracing people - without
overthinking ‘what’s the value exchange?’”
~ Anthony Tjan,
Co-author of “Heart, Smarts, Guts & Luck”

18. ● With support of a business coach we started
setting financial goals in 2011-12
● 10 Cr, 15 Cr, 30 Cr
● Darts on the board
Impact of Business Coaching

19. ● ‘Articulated’ our internal values
○ Authenticity
○ Responsibility
○ Respect
○ Sharing
○ Equal Opportunity
○ Learning (Continuous Improvement; Growth)
○ Excellence (we’re low on this metric)
Impact of Business Coaching

20. ● Defined a sense of purpose
○ External : ‘We run our company like a
hospitality business’
○ Internal : “What comes from the people
must go back to the people many-many
times over”
Impact of Business Coaching

21. Focus on
Customer
Experience
Focus on
Customer
Education
Consultative
Sales
Solution
Selling
Free Half
day
workshops
Paid
Discovery
workshops
Early
Customer
Engagement
Leadership
training
workshops
Focus on
Continuous
Improvement
Coaching
English
Training for
Associates
Empowered
team
members
Appraisals
promote
team
behaviour
Shares/Stock
ownership
Independent
decision
making
Deep sense of
ownership of
client success
Profitability
transparency
Encourage
dissent &
self
expression
Talks,
Blogs,
Community
work
Employee
brand
development
Agile & LEAN
Delivery
process
Customer
deeply
involved
Rapid
Prototyping
Split
contracts
Focus on
project
outcomes
Seek repeat
business
High
developer
time &
utilization
High
profitability
Constant
Dev/Training
of Staff

22. ● Central to Srijan’s strategy is “Customer Experience” -- focus on
delighting our customers; we try and embed ourselves into the
client’s business
● It is around this -- Customer Experience -- that all other core
activities emerge:
○ Agile & Lean development processes
○ Consultative Sales process
○ Continuous Training & Development of Staff, Managers, &
Leadership
○ Empowered Teams
○ Clients with repeat business potential
Impact of Business Coaching

23. ● Consultative Sales process
○ Early client engagement; free 1-2 day workshops;
understanding client’s business
○ Solution selling; we do not have pure sales (saelu) in our
company; sales is focussed around solving customer needs
● Continuous Training
○ at all levels in Srijan -- from CEO to interns, a lot of people at
Srijan are constantly some sort of a) training, b) leadership
development & c) self-development programme/initiative
(internal or external)
Impact of Business Coaching

24. Hug Your Customers
● Talk by Anand Deshpande,
CEO - Persistent Systems
● Long-term contracts with a
few clients -- we’ve “hugged”
them
● Our customers love us!

25. Agile Teams
● Deeply “motivated leaders” -- to uphold our core
values
● Org Structure
○ Group Leader (across 3-4 teams)
○ Team (SM, Dev, CSS)
○ Architect (across 2 teams)
● Bring ‘projects to teams’, as opposed to assembling
team for projects

26. Agile Teams
● Tying “Performance Management” to Customer
Happiness (Balanced Score Card)
● Setting up ‘goal sheets’ for developers, scrum
masters, group leads
● Quarterly 360 appraisal process, including bonus
payouts

27. Agile Teams
● For our delivery teams
○ Ongoing trainings -- agile and otherwise
○ Constant coaching -- agile and otherwise
● Basically, constant investment in
○ people’s growth
○ creating alignment across the organisation

28. In Closing
● “Being Agile! cultures” require an integration of the
○ organisation’s values, purpose
○ delivery (agile)
○ team structures
○ appraisals
○ sales processes

29. THANK YOU
www.srijan.net
Rahul Dewan
in.linkedin.com/in/rahuldewan
@rahuldewan