Once upon a time …. this multinational corporation was looking for IT methodology specialist (awful name by the way). I was looking for a job, and given that I knew some stuff about RUP, UML and CMMI, and interestingly I also knew some stuff about a methodology that is called Agile (Agile might be good, it sounds like doing the same stuff faster, that might have been a plus) ING decided to hire me for that position. So, tree years ago, I started working as level 8 employee in a 11 levels organisation with more than 1000 employees that would have never imagined the impact of that hiring. After tree years they have more than 23 kanban boards, near 200 people from business, IT and contractors, every product building starts with an Agile inception and is continuously delivered in sprints by Scrum teams and the portfolio is visualised in taskboards their to properly manage the product flow among much more exciting things. The virus spread also outside IT: business people are familiarised with Scrum, Kanban, user stories, continuous integration and delivery, daily standup meetings, retrospectives, etc. Even the top management participate in retrospectives, and use Agile inception and visual thinking techniques. Cooperation and collaboration between IT and business drastically increased and the organisation decided to reinforce it, re-structuring the organisation to create a multi-disciplinar (business+IT) structure, which fits better with the new Agile way of working. Many things happened in ING Direct Spain in this two years that I’m passionate about and I’d love to share with you. I hope you’ll enjoy this story full of achievements, mistakes, successes, lessons learned, key factors, steps forward, steps backwards and much more about this long road.

1. MY STORY AT ING
DIRECT
By Angel Diaz-Maroto
@adiazmaroto

2. MOUNT BANKLIMPUS
Hundreds of projects in
progress
Tons of unfinished work
RUP Methodology + UML
Big gap between business
and IT
Unhappy business
…

3. THE SPARTAN

4. GETTING INTO MOUNT BANKLIMPUS

5. THE CHALLEGE

6. THE JOURNEY …

7. … H A D J U S T B E G A N …

8. . . . T H A N I E X P E C T E D …

9. EPISODE 1 : THE CHAINS OF STATUS QUO

10. TO IMPROVE, REMOVE!

11. AWARENESS

12. VISUALIZATION

13. DRASTIC REDUCTION OF PROJECTS IN
PROGRESS AND UNFINISHED WORK

14. FIRST SCRUM PROJECT

15. WHAT I DID RIGHT
 Strong message Eliminar “To improve, remove!”
 Soft landing
 Respect the existing methodology
 Brutally manage impediments for change
 Lots of communication
 Visualization

16. WHAT I DID WRONG
 Trying to be right
 Trying to do it alone
 Being too aggressive
 Not looking for a reason for the people to change
 Using buzzwords and complex concepts
 I took trust for granted and I was a newcomer

17. EPISODE 2 : THE PHANTOM OF CHAOS

18. L IMIT WIP FOR AL L CLASSES OF SERVICES

19. PROJECTS WHERE DEVELOPED ITERATIVELY,
PRODUCT FLOW WAS MANAGED WITH
KANBAN

20. DRASTIC REDUCTION OF UNNECESSARY
ACTIVITIES & DEATH OF RUP

21. REORGANIZATION OF IT DEV & BUSINESS
ANNAL ISTS ORIENTED TO BUSINESS
DEMAND

22. AGI LE PORTFOL IO MANAGEMENT

23. WHAT I DID RIGHT
 Hiring some help
 I developed empathy for others and started working for them
 Finding allies in top management
 Creating a global community
 Training, Training and more training
 Gather some metrics
 Simplify the message

24. WHAT I DID WRONG
 It was still MY change not THEIR change
 Not finding a place/role/purpose/goal for management in
the future organization
 Don’t let people to do things “the wrong way” if they need
to
 Focus too much in the Agile practice rather than in the
“whys”
 Not properly manage the generated conflict

25. CHAPTER 3 : THE SHADOW OF FEAR

26. THE AGI LE WAY OR NO WAY

27. COMBINING AGI LE WI TH DESIGN THINKING AND
LEAN STARTUP APPROACH

28. HIERARCHY AND BUREAUCRACY REDUCTION

29. REORGANIZATION INTO A CUSTOMER
CENTRIC STRUCTURE
Reorganization of change
management in “Event in the life of a
customer”
Multidisciplinary Streams:
Marketing
Strategy
Business process
Business Operations
PO
UX
Developers

30. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT AND
OPTIMIZATION

31. AGI LE IN NON IT PROJECTS

32. AND MORE …
 From detailed plans to hypothesis and experiments
 From annual to incremental budgeting
 From keeping up with congestion to manage Flow
 From project focus to continuously deliver value
 Form hidden progression to radical visibility

33. WHAT I DID RIGHT
 Involving business
 Expand Agile beyond IT
 Seeing Agile from the customer perspective
 Organizing 2 Open spaces (Management, Gemba)
 Going outside of the picture
 Coaching coaches
 Getting trust
 Build a committed change coalition
 Develop competences and evangelists

34. WHAT I DID WRONG
 Not properly understanding my role in the Agile coaches
team
 Not accepting that my job was done
 Not being proud enough of the effort of all my colleagues
 Focus too much in other Business Units / Countries

35. THE END

36. SUMMARY
 Yes, It’s possible
 Yes, It takes time, effort an courage
 It’s not about you
 Don’t do it alone
 Think from the business perspective
 Give people a reason to change as people

37. NEW LIFE
God of War is a registered trademark of Sony Computer
Entertainment

38. TRANSITIONING TO
AGILE IN A BANK, MY
STORY AT ING DIRECT
Angel Diaz-Maroto
@adiazmaroto
www.agilar.org
@adiazmaroto