Digital Operations is a department of 100 staff members at CBC who work in autonomous teams to build digital products using agile frameworks like Scrum and Kanban. They previously struggled with a lack of shared goals, collaboration, and trust between teams. To address this, they formed a leadership team, developed core values, introduced new cross-team meetings, and emphasized transparency. As a result, collaboration and engagement improved, they found more opportunities to work together, gained stakeholder trust, and created a more unified approach to problem solving. Their focus going forward is on continuous improvement and upholding their values of collaboration, learning, and helping each other grow.

1. From dysfunction to cross-function
in 8,593 easy steps:
Jade Stephen & Sam Lightowler

2. WHAT DO WE PLAN TO COVER?
● Who are we and what do we do?
● Our metrics and what they tell us
● Autonomy vs Interdependence and which wins
● Our successes and failures as a department
● What’s Next?

3. WHAT IS DIGITAL OPERATIONS
AND WHAT DO WE DO?
● 100 staff members with varying skill sets
● Autonomous, agile teams
● Stakeholders that represent content
areas and business units
● Work together to build CBC’s digital
products
● Serving 18 million unique visitors monthly
CMS
Web
Presentation
APPS
A/V
Ops
A/V
Events &
Extensions
Maintenance
Content
Distribution Analytics

4. WHAT DO WE DO WELL?
● We make use of agile frameworks like
Scrum and Kanban
● We have reasonable team sizes
● We focus on products, not projects
● We have persistent teams
● Most teams are colocated
● Most teams collaborate well internally
CMS
Web
Presentation
APPS
A/V
Ops
A/V
Events &
Extensions
Maintenance
Content
Distribution Analytics

5. HAVING AN OPEN DIALOGUE WITH STAFF
● Staff survey based on Gallup’s Employee Engagement Survey issued
quarterly
● Share results publicly
● Develop action plans together based on results
● Communicate updates frequently

6. ENGAGEMENT HAS IMPROVED
3.6
3.7
3.6
3.9
4.0
3.8
3.9
4.4
Sept Jan/15
3.4
3.4
3.4
Apr/14
3.8
4.0
3.9
3.9
4.3
May
3.8
3.7
3.7
4.1
Sept
4.1
4.0
3.9
4.3
4.1
4.0
4.0
4.3
Apr/16 Aug
3.8
3.8
3.9
Dec
4.1
6

7. WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM?
● Lack of shared goals within leadership team
● Lack of strategic alignment across teams
● Autonomy lead to lack of true collaboration and trust
● No capacity and support for learning and experimentation
● Disempowered, stressed staff

8. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE
GOOD CROSS-TEAM COLLABORATION?
● We find room to collaborate
● We gain stakeholder trust
● We save time by not constantly
“putting out fires”
● Creates a more unified approach to
problem solving

9. OUR CORE VALUES
All team members are expected to exemplify our values -
collaboration, learning and improvement. We design and
build better solutions through collaboration. We focus on our
audience's expectations to foster a learning mindset. We commit
to helping each other, both inside and outside of our respective
teams, to improve and grow in order to reach our full potential.

10. HOW DID WE GET THERE?
● Managers formed a real team
● Core Values were developed
● Modified our recurring alignment meetings
● Focused on transparency
● Developed a new mindset
● Emphasized the importance of relationships

11. OUR SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

12. WE TRIED TO SOLVE
THE PROBLEM WITH MEETINGS
● Product Platform Update Meeting
○ Product managers taking turns updating a group of stakeholders and staff
● Content Backlog Update Meeting
○ Product managers sharing team roadmaps
● Individual Stakeholder Meetings
○ Product teams meeting with stakeholders on product-by-product basis
● All-Staff Update
○ Digital Operations management updating Digital Operations staff on key
decisions or changes

13. THE INTEGRATED DEMO
● Meeting for all staff and stakeholders
● Teams discuss work from the last 3 weeks
● Cross-team tasks are given priority
● Each team has 5-7 minutes to present
● Preference is given to working software
● No questions, talk after the meeting

14. THE INTEGRATED SCRUM
● 15 minute daily meeting
● One developer attends from each team
● Developers address today’s possible dependency issues
● Takes place before all daily scrums

15. INTEGRATED STAKEHOLDER MEETINGS
● Bi-weekly
● All stakeholders and Product Owners working on a single product attend
● Everyone hears the same message
● Work together to make decisions and solve problems

16. TOOLS FOR TRANSPARENCY
● All teams use Git, Jira and
Confluence
● Product Owners meet quarterly
● Teams use visual task boards
● A dependency board is always
visible

17. TEAM OUTINGS & SOCIAL GATHERINGS

18. ONE-TEAM-ONE-PRODUCT MINDSET
DIGITAL
OPERATIONS

19. ● Management team formed a real team
● Employee engagement survey issued quarterly
● Developed “Core Values” statement
● Organizational priorities were communicated clearly
● Empowered teams
● Introduced new meetings with clear focus
● Transparency is mandated
SO WHAT’S CHANGED?

20. WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE?
● Are we perfect? no. We know that
● We are committed to upholding our values
● Continuous improvement
● Build, measure, learn
● Committed to each other and ourselves to constantly get better
● Adapt
● Be agile (experiment and learn)