Kirstin Donaldson (Powershop)
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Kirstin Donaldson is an Agile Coach at Powershop, an online electricity retailer with 62 developers working in 12 teams. When Kirstin first started a year ago, Powershop used centralized control and meetings without outcomes which led to delays and disengagement. Kirstin made several changes including observing sprint ceremonies, devolving technical approval, and ongoing training for new employees to improve engagement and reduce delays. Powershop now assesses team behaviors and health using a model based on assessing engagement, collaboration, autonomy and learning. Initial assessments showed issues which improved after two months as Kirstin helped the teams adopt best Agile practices. Current work includes faster releases, more education, and strategic road
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Kirstin Donaldson (Powershop)
- 1. How to win friends and influence people Kirstin Donaldson Agile Coach – Powershop
- 2. Kirstin Donaldson - Agile Coach at Powershop - 5 years experience as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach and Agile trainer - 62 developers working in 12 teams - 3 Scrum Masters - 3 clients: NZ, AU and UK About Powershop - an online electricity retailer
- 3. Where we’ve come from Agile practices at Powershop one year ago: - Centralised control - Delays in the system - Meetings without outcomes - Disengagement - Opposition to change
- 4. Then:
- 5. Talking point (10 minutes talking in group, 1-2 minutes each group reporting back): Form groups of 2-3 people Discuss the process detailed in the handout and identify any waste or delays you see in the system Each group will present 1- 2 points back to the wider group
- 6. Delays:
- 7. Where we are now:
- 8. First steps: - Observation of sprint ceremonies - Open conversations - Assessing tooling - Persuading and influencing - Suggestions on best practice
- 9. How we moved from centralised control and reduced delays: - Made meetings valuable - Devolved tech approval - Created greater engagement - Improved- feedback- test loop - Implemented new team initiation process - Ongoing training of newbies as they arrive
- 10. Measuring effectiveness: Assessing behaviours - Why use behaviour assessment rather than velocity or cycle time? What did we use - Using a model based on Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd’s Agile Welly talk ‘Assessing and improving team health’.
- 11. Assessment made at outset of engagement:
- 12. Assessment two months on:
- 13. Exercise and discussion point (10 mins): Plot your organisation or team’s Agile maturity on a timeline. Note the behaviours shown by your organisation or team that have lead to your assessment. Discuss with the person next to you.
- 15. What are we working on now? - Faster, more frequent releases - Further education on Agile practices, for example, Kanban - Making sure newbies are trained and aligned on our Agile practices - Strategic roadmaps
- 16. Thanks for listening Any questions?
Editor's Notes
- Group of three people approving every tech change Delays in getting started on work Bad retros and sprint planning – frustration at meetings Lack of team autonomy
- Explain what deliverables were Point out that tester signs off
- Story re sitting down an influential manager to show him these drawings and what happened next. Also spent time with PO’s and organised for them to attend a 2 day agile fundamentals course so they could see why I was suggesting changes Changed mobile team by stealth, with PO and dev mgr blessing
- Proposed new way (ie scrum) Mainly to solve issues such as disengagement with work – disconnect from story teams had skipped following the rules and gone straight to making the rules.
- Talking with dev managers, Po’s, team leads, team members. Looked at beetil elaborate problems with current system) and assessed rally and jira Demonstrated issues through activities like the rope game
- Meetings were agendaless and didn’t have outcomes. Retros had become more of a how are you feeling - what went well, what didn’t go well. People were unengaged staring at laptops and phones Asked people to leave laptops at their desks Engaged them through creative activities Timeboxed properly - firm hand to achieve intended outcomes Suggestions to teams around possibilities, for example story re nan and the gst story Encouraging people to speak - not just senior tech (ie gst masters) Training for all new people – ie agile 101, scrum in 10 minutes, coaching in first few sprints.
- Healthy behaviours are leading indicators of success A lot of the healthier behaviours entail the team taking more responsibility and greater collaboration
- Assessed with team leads, PO’s and managers
- Assessed with team leads, PO’s and managers
- Working with test practice lead to look at testing practices Re kanban and current story Better project planning with story mapping, timeboxed release planning Training of newbies and hopefully our customers, greater transparency