Glen Morris of Vectren presents the company's journey towards agile transformation, merging agile and lean methodologies to enhance software development in a utility environment. His leadership faced challenges including initial skepticism from business partners and the necessity for a complete IT portfolio overhaul, ultimately leading to the successful adoption of agile practices across all IT applications. The ongoing focus is on expanding the transformation, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, and increasing transparency with stakeholders.

1. AT8
Concurrent Session
11/9/17 1:30 PM
Turn the Lights On: A Power Utility
Company's Agile Transformation
Presented by:
Glen Morris
Vectren
Brought to you by:
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2. Glen Morris
Vectren
At Toyota for the first fifteen years of his career, Glen Morris learned lean
software development and became a trainer of lean methodologies. Moving into
the utility industry seven years ago, Glen merged the worlds of agile and lean into
a comprehensive approach to software development. He now has assisted or led
two separate organizations through the growing pains of an agile transformation.
His blended approach ensures that IT remains faithful to the core agile principles.
Glen's role as manager of enterprise agility at Vectren Utilities includes designing,
messaging, and implementing the company's agile transformation.

3. 10/18/17
1
Turning the
Lights On
A Utility’s Agile Transformation
Overview of Vectren
0 Utility headquartered in Evansville, IN
0 1 million+ customers
0 Non utility subsidiaries (Miller Pipeline)
0 5,600 employees
0 2 electric power plants
0 22,000 miles of natural gas pipeline
0 No direct competitors

4. 10/18/17
2
IT Landscape (Prior)
0 Mixture of custom development and packaged software
0 Various programming languages (c#, Java, python, etc.)
0 Release methodology (big quarterly and smaller monthly)
0 Governance model of prioritization
0 Command/control organization
0 CEO, 3 Directors, 7 Managers, 2 Supervisors, 100+ IT
Members
0 Average tenure of IT members >15 years
0 Spread across three buildings
0 Big backlogs, slow movement off the backlogs
My Background
0 25 years in manufacturing/utility IT
0 First 15 years at Toyota as a senior IT specialist
0 Wrote/implemented/supported assembly line systems
0 SME in lean concepts
0 Trainer of SPS (Structured Problem Solving)
0 Moved to utility industry 6 years ago to help gas
pipeline move to lean/agile (2011)
0 Hired at Vectren on their leadership team to help
drive agile transformation (2014)
0 CSM, CSPO, PSD, PSM, CSP, LsS, CAL certiaications

5. 10/18/17
3
Why Agile at Vectren?
0 No competitors (direct)
0 Not a software company
0 Business model not dependent upon software
0 Why not make the current model better?
Utility Industry Changes
0 Customer satisfaction plays a major role in our rate
recovery model
0 We compete not with other utilities but with other
service models

6. 10/18/17
4
Further Utility Changes
0 Smart meter technology
0 Nest devices at the home
0 Time of Use rates
0 Regulatory changes
0 Changes in payment types and models
0 Prepaid electric
0 Electric cars
0 Solar
0 All of these fast growing concurrent changes
exasperated the governance model
Agile Transformation
(Beginnings)
0 Initial concept driven by a single manager/director pair
0 Slow adoption
0 Time of Crisis ushered in the airst team
0 Social Media
0 Dramatic business changes (routes, contracts, weather)
0 Allowed me to capitalize on the moment to form the airst team
0 First team – I was PO/Scrummaster/ Contributor
0 7 Team members under two managers (myself and another)
0 Although successful – still viewed with skepticism by
business (One more crazy IT thing)

7. 10/18/17
5
Agile Transformation (Selling
Agile to our Business Partners)
0 Be a purist and a realist
0 Link agile transformation to business concepts that
users are familiar with
0 Agile = Lean for IT
0 Scrum = kaizen
Agile Transformation (Selling
Agile to our Business Partners)
0 Be a purist and a realist
0 Don’t invalidate the past
0 Product Owners were a sticking point so we started
without them
0 Kept messaging over and over that although it is
working it could be better
0 Finally got momentum
0 After 2 years we were up to 5 teams
0 Then came the next big hurdle……

8. 10/18/17
6
Complete IT Portfolio
Overhaul
0 Partnered with Oracle
0 Signed up to replace our 5 largest systems with new
Oracle Utility Suite (mixture of pre-packaged software
and Java development)
0 Partnered with large SI on the project
0 Met with senior leadership to convince that a project
this complicated and this large could only be done in
an agile manner
0 A few tiny problems though…..
Complete IT Portfolio
Overhaul
0 I was only one at Vectren with large scale agile
experience
0 No one has ever tried to implement Oracle utility
software in an agile manner
0 SI has never implemented utility software in an agile
model
0 Our organizational model was not designed for large
scale agile
0 And on, and on, and on……..

9. 10/18/17
7
Agile Transformation
0 Two stories sold our C level team on the idea of
adopting large scale agile for this major
transformation
0 The story of how radios are installed on the assembly
line and how my father built his house.
Where we are now
0 All of IT applications is now agile (mixture of scrum, kanban, and
lean)
0 Leased a new “cool” building and co-located all of IT and the
product owners
0 Incorporated both IT agile and lean manufacturing principles
0 SI wanted SaFe, we wanted LsS so we ended up with SasS
0 SI has 40 individuals co-located on-site
0 Had to convince that the $$$ would be net zero different in on-
site agile model versus off-shore waterfall model
0 IT organization realigned to accommodate agile model
0 Centers of Excellence
0 Manager of Enterprise Agility - Agile Coaches

10. 10/18/17
8
Technology Acceleration
Center
Obeya Room

11. 10/18/17
9
Visual Management
Visual Management
(continued)

12. 10/18/17
10
What’s Next?
0 Success breeds success
0 Expanding portfolio transformation (8 largest systems)
0 Challenge teams to adopt continuous development /
integration approach
0 Create an agile leadership culture
0 Move agile to Infrastructure
0 Increase transparency to stakeholders
0 Always challenge ourselves to improve