A in depth look at Moonpig as a company, and their journey to transform through agile.

1. Lean Agile Transformation
The Moonpig Story (so far)

2. About Me and the Mooni-verse
About Moonpig
About Me
★ Agile Coach at Moonpig
★ Successfully introduced agile and lean to
engineering and product development
★ Now leading a lean, agile transformation
across the wider business
★ My background is in TV
★ Moonpig - we’re in the business of Joy
★ Photobox - largest personalisation
business in Europe

3. Today’s talk
What I’ll talk about
★ What we want to achieve
★ Our journey so far
★ What we’ve learned
★ Our next steps

4. Our vision
What are we trying to achieve
★ We are aiming to be: Better, Faster, Cheaper, Happier
★ Bigger emphasis on lean than agile
★ Guided by principles rather than specific frameworks
★ Transformation across the whole business, not just
product engineering
★ “Scale” is relative - we are still small scale!

5. The Journey Begins
“Let’s try this Agile thing”

6. First Steps
It all began in 2013...
★ A “real” product team
★ Product Director reporting directly to MD
★ Developers & QAs practicing Scrumban
★ Introduction of Jira and actual backlogs

7. Transforming Tech
Applying agile technical practices
★ Investing in tech - reducing tech debt, re-architecting
★ Continuous integration and delivery
★ From developers and QAs to cross-functional engineers
★ Emphasis on XP and software craftsmanship
★ Improving team maturity, moving from Scrum to Kanban
★ Empowered engineering teams

8. Alignment
The Honeycomb Framework

9. Why we needed to change
The problems we faced (circa 2015)
★ Tactical over strategic
★ Top down HIPPO prioritisation
★ Lack of focus
★ Value unclear
★ Output dominant
JFDI!

10. The Honeycomb Framework
Honeycomb principles
★ Cross-functional “honeycomb”
★ Dedicated engineering team
★ Clear focus and goals
★ Autonomy and empowerment

11. Pros & Cons of Honeycombs
Worked Well
★ Cross-functional collaboration
★ Clear focus and goals
★ Autonomy
★ Alignment around product
priorities
Didn’t Work
★ “Two jobs” for some
★ Too many goals
★ Conflicting goals
★ Lack of alignment
★ “Do-ers” and “Deciders”

12. Evolving Honeycombs
Introducing Lean and Agile beyond tech

13. The case for change
Benefits of cross-functional teams
★ Organise teams by goal, not function
★ Removes dependencies
★ Optimise for flow efficiency

14. Making the change
Reorganising around goals
★ Identify key long term business goals
and metrics
★ Reorganise people around the goals
★ Spotify model of squads and tribes for
inspiration
Strategy
Goal Goal Goal

15. ★ North star metric - long lived mission
★ Autonomy to decide how to achieve the
goal
★ Resourced to achieve goals
independently
★ Leadership, sponsorship
Setting up squads
Key principles
North Star
Metric

16. Feedback
Working Well
★ Great communication and
collaboration
★ Better engagement
★ Improved cycle times
★ Great progress towards goals
Not Working
★ Some squads are squads in
name only
★ Squad composition isn’t quite
right
★ Command and control
★ Resource gaps

17. Future Challenges
Next steps...

18. WORKING PROCESSES
Improve cycle time
Embed culture of
continuous
improvement
Steps to organisational change
REORGANISE
Alignment around
clear goals
EXPERIMENTATION
Lean, data driven
experiments
Fail fast
CULTURE OF LEARNING
Learning from others
T-shaped skills
1 2 3 4

19. On our backlog
To Do In Progress Done
Lean and agile training for
senior leadership
Leadership and organisation
aligned around a Clear strategy
Tweak current squads and tribes Goal setting and prioritisation
process
Review squad and tribe leadership Avoid squad silos
Limit WIP Build strong functions

20. engineering.moonpig.com
@moonpigtech