This document summarizes T-Mobile's journey to achieving business agility through HR continuous delivery. It discusses three initiatives between 2012-2020 to implement agile and DevOps practices within HR technology and processes. The most recent initiative from 2017-2020 focused on business and technology alignment, prioritizing value and outcomes, improving flow from idea to feedback, and establishing a collaborative culture. Metrics showed improvements in areas like lead time, deployments, and business satisfaction. The document advocates for empathy, resilience, and joy in change efforts through listening, empowerment, and continuous improvement.

1. Lean&
BizDevOpsJourney
ToHRDigitalExperience
AtT-Mobile

2. Shaaron A Alvares
Sr. Agile Transformation Coach, Product & Technology
T-Mobile in 2015 and since 2017
DevOps Evangelist & Community Leader, DevOps Institute
News Reporter and Editor, InfoQ
Speaker: Product School, DOES, ADDO, DOI, etc.

3. 52,000Employees
$43.3Billion
Revenues2018
BestWorkplace
#49 F500
Women #30
Millennials #47
32.3 Million Invested
in Communities
79.7MillionCustomers
#1
CustomerSatisfaction
J.D.Power 2019
DisruptionIsOurDNA
FirstToOffer
Un-Carrier
2013
Founded
in 1990
16,400StoresNationwide

4. 2012 2016
2015 2017 2018 2019 2020
Legere
CEO
Sandford
CIO
Grassroot
Scrum & DevOps
1st Agile DevOps Initiative
Technology Led
2nd Agile Initiative
Business Led
HR Continuous Delivery
3rd Initiative: Working Model
Business & Technology Led
Business
Agility
Taylorism – Conway law
Fordism – Invert Conway – Westrum – Cynefin
T-MobileJourneyToBusinessAgility

5. “We want to give you reasons why you wouldn’t
want to work anywhere else
and we want to create an environment where you
wouldn’t want to work anywhere else”,
Cody Sandford, CIO, 2019
“Listen to your employees, listen to your customers,
shut the f— up, and do what they tell you!”,
John Legere, CEO, 2018
HRConditionsforChange
EMPLOYEE DEMOGRAPHICS
Millennials & Gen Z
Inclusion
TALENT WAR
Candidate Market
& Demanding Competition
WORK EXPECTATIONS
Value and Experience Driven
TECHNOLOGY & PRODUCTIVITY
100% Digital & Seamless
Experience

6. HRDomainEcosystem
Organization
Management
Learning Payroll
Workforce
Management
Timekeeping
Talent
Management
Talent
Acquisition
Analytics
Benefit
Administration
Workday Cornerstone Kenexa Kronos ADP Vantage Alight Kronos WFAN
Workday
Broadspire
Workday
PRISM
Avature
WalkMe
Invenias HRDW
Kronos
SaaS Application
Hosted Application
On-premise Application
OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY
• Timely delivery of data to downstream systems
• Improve time to business value by re-using services
• Improve telemetry with logging and monitoring
• Always on with guaranteed transaction completion

7. On-premise
Waterfall
Agile
Scrum & DevOps
HRContinuousDelivery Journey
Before 2015
Episode 1
2015-2016
Lean
BizDevOps
Episode 2
2017-2018
90% Business Digital
2019-2020

8. Episode1–WeAre*Doing*Agile
•Misunderstood Principles leading to hybrid practices
• Change and Agile fatigue
•Different planning cycles
• Many roles overlapping and handoffs
• Mistrust
Planning
Agile Trainings
Product Teams
DevOps
•IT cross-functional teams
•Release from 12 months to 2 weeks
•Beginning of a Product Capability
BUT

9. TheOldTransformationalParadigm
Traditional Transformational Approaches:
• Enablers Driven: Agile & Technology
• Driven by Legacy Waterfall Thinking
Strategy
Org Structure
Process
People
Technology
Operating Model
Ref. McKenzie, 2018
Dimensions
Ref. Carmen DeArdo
So why is the Business Still Unhappy?

10. TheNew TransformationalParadigm
MODERN
TRANSFORMATIONS
Are Business Driven
Business Model Innovation & Value First
WHAT
Identify valuable outcome
for the business
WHEN
Ruthless prioritization
and flow
HOW
Value-driven enablers
ONLY
Organizational & Cultural Change: From Project to Product
Business
Benefits
Teams
Aligned to
Products
Risks
Baked-in
Prioritization
& Flow
Benefits
Realization
Manage
Product
Lifecycle
Business & Technology Synchronization
Product Innovation
Business Agility

11. One
Leadership
Product Team
Culture Value
From Good ToGreat: Business Agility
Episode2–OneTrueNorth

12. Continuous Prioritization
Continuous Planning
Continuous Feedback
Single HRIT Portfolio Intake
Shared Prioritization RoB
Quarterly Big Room Planning
Value&RuthlessPrioritization
Value & Outcomes Aligned to HR Business Drivers

13. Visualize the end to end Flow of Value from Idea to Feedback
Request/
Idea
Planning DevOps
Ideation/
Discovery
Design/
Feasibility
Telemetry
Feedback
Assessment
/ analysis
Requirements Mature
Launch
Operate
Meetings
Emails
Negotiate
Form
Teams
Approvals Funding Wait Issues Meetings Wait
Concept
doc.
Market
Research
Features
Impact
assessment
Spike
Prototype
Backlog Build Deploy
Ops
Feedback
KnowYourFlow&Lead Time
Technical Product Manager Product Owner
Project Manager
Product Manager
Domain Architect
SMEs
Managers Delivery Teams
UX Designer
Systems Analyst
Dev Lead
•People Interactions
•Tools Interactions
•RoB/ Reports/ Metrics
•SLAs, Vendors

14. FlowKeyImpediments
• People-centered work
• Work is uncertain
• Estimates are uncertain
• Outcomes are unpredictable
Product Design & Development Product Continuous Delivery

15. Visualize the end to end Flow of Value from Idea to Feedback
Request/
Idea
Planning DevOps
Ideation/
Discovery
Design/
Feasibility
Telemetry
Feedback
Assessment
/ analysis
Requirements Mature
Launch
Operate
Value&Flow-First Patterns
Idea – Assess – Features – BizDevOps – Value – Feedback
Value
Refinement
Lead Time
Empathy &
Feedback Velocity
Prioritization
Accelerate
*Cross DevOps Teams Story Mapping
*Breaking down Silos between Product management& Development
Inception & Discovery workshop
Value stream mapping
Feedback Velocity
Continuous Demos
Big Room Planning Gherkin Testing
Big Room Retrospective
Product Retrospective
SwarmingCommon Business Metrics
Continuous Improvements
Story Mapping
Big Room Training
Empathy Mapping
WIP limits
Small batch
MVP
Persona
YAGNI
Customer Journey
MMF/P

16. # Deployments
Throughput
Feature Lead Time
User Stories Cycle Time
Better Sooner Cheaper Happier
On-Time Delivery
Escaped Defects
P1 Incidents
Change Fail
MTTR
HR Business Satisfaction
Teams-Business Relationship
Alignment
Transparency & Trust
Consistency of Reporting
Tons of Fun
Cost of Delivery
Cost of Delay

17. …IntheBusinessOwn Words
“Big kudos for driving forward improvementsand building out a unified teamto
support HR Continuous Delivery. Great job enabling all our achievements, and
in moving us forward towards a collaborative cultureof delivery excellence.”
- HR Business Manager, 2018
“Awesome job leading HR domain Agile
delivery and scaling broader to
Corporate Service teams.
- HRCDSr. Manager, Product & Technology, 2018
“Thank you for the excellent job leading the HR
domain delivery, improving our agile delivery model
and building out a unified team to support HRCD and
deliver more with our HR business partners.”
- Corporate Services, Sr. Director, Product & Technology, 2018

18. SectionTitleSlides
The provided layouts should be used for sub-sections or individual chapters
within a presentation.
100% Empathy
Resilience
Joy
“It’s not What you do, it’s How you do it”,
- Bob Sutton, “The No Asshole Rule”

19. ChangeCatalysts &SuccessFactors
From Sponsorship to Commitment
From Certainty to Empathy & Curiosity
From Authority to Empowerment
From Feedback to Continuous Conversationn
& Appreciation
From Telling to Listening & Actively Improving
From Who and Why? to What and How?
Come In!
We’re Open
OurWestrumLeadership Everybody’saProduct &Culture Coach
Participative Change
Include Managers
• Lean Change Leaders
• Innovation & Product Managers
Leverage SMEs (Architects too) to champion
the change to Product
Enable Agile & Product CoPs (Product
Conference)
Offer Continuous & Just In Time Training

20. Demonstrate Value Early
Identify, measure and communicate
businesssuccess
Lean BizDevOps
Apply Lean Thinking & Lean Software
Development to deliver value sooner
Continuously Improve
Align org to the flow of value
Refactor your Value Stream
Embrace Complexity
Apply System Thinking
& Holistic Agility
Walk The Talk
Use agile to implement agile
Productize the Transformation
Everyone models Agility & Safety
Build In Knowledge
Rapid experimentation
& learning cycles
Continuous JIT Training
Recap&Takeaways
We Speed
Exploratory
Innovation
We Speed Value
Delivery
TIMELY RECYCLE FLOW WASTE & OLD PARADIGMS

21. Help,Research,Collaboration
Automate Agile (not Agility): Work artifacts,
reporting, impediment backlogs, ceremonies’
tasks, etc.
Map the Minimum Viable value stream processes –
future state. And develop a Playbook to get there
Models & Software for measuring business value
and impact: Lean OKR? Domain Product North
Star?
Refactor organizational & cultural Debt to achieve
an innovative Product Mindset at scale