3. How to Build a Guild
James Kitney – Guild Master @ IAG
May 2016@JamesKitney @IAGAust
4. Equipping
Ourselves for a
Digital Future
•Continuous Learning
•Increasing collaboration &
connectivity
•More autonomy
•Faster delivery, faster
feedback
•Fostering Innovation
•Automate, Automate,
Automate
5. • Page 500.00.2016
Enabling the QA’s of the future
Manual
Testing with
UI
Automation
Automate
close to the
code
Independent
“Checking” in
isolation
Pairing &
Collaboration
Centralised
Testing
Function
Cross
Function
Delivery
10. • Page 1000.00.2016
Guilds @ IAG
A Guild is a group of people that have
expert technical skills in a particular
subject matter. As a community we
develop our skills further, collaborate and
help to create a connected culture. In
doing so, Guilds share learning’s, drive
consistency, give people opportunities to
raise concerns and help raise visibility of
career paths. Guilds allow its members
to restore a sense of pride and
satisfaction within their work. Guilds are
an important building block for our
organisation.
11. How we got
started?
•Define the landscape
•Form a seed group
•Launch the Guild
•Lots of Lunchtime Learning
sessions
12. We hit some snags
•Not everything worked
•People provided valuable
feedback
•Culture impacts your approach
•Initial excitement from
launches wore off
•Purely organic approach lacks
alignment
•Not everyone understood
Guilds or their objective
So we pivoted…
14. Where we are now?
•Increase in motivation &
engagement
•Innovative ideas
•We are seeing our first
thought leaders publishing
and speaking
•People are excited to get
involved
•People are wanting to work
with us
We are in a world that is changing, a digital revolution
Traditional industries are being disrupted
We are in the age of digital– The way we interact with our environment, people, business is changing.
Because in this environment, insurers --who are a traditional conservative bunch – need a more contemporary and innovative approach to ensure we adapt and evolve to not only survive, but thrive in this new age
We have some of the biggest automakers in the world investing heavily in Autonomous cars, as well as technology companies such as Google, Uber and Tesla. We know that we will be seeing these cars on the road within the next decade.
So what does this mean for Motor Vehicle Insurance when cars can no longer crash?
Our NRMA Insurance brand has found that the Automatic Emergency Braking technology - which is fitted in cars like the Volkswagen Up, Subaru Liberty and Volvo V40 - has the ability to bring a vehicle to a complete stop in stop start traffic, which is where around 80% of accidents happen.
We must adapt to thrive in this new digital world.
Working on establishing 13 Guilds within Digital Labs since September 2015
For the next 20 mins I will be telling you about the journey we have gone on to establish Guilds and the lessons we have learnt along the way. Hopefully I will give you something to take back to your own organisations that can be applied in your own environments
There will be an opportunity at the end of the presentation to ask questions.
I spoke earlier about the digital revolution and how we need to adapt but how does that affect our people? How do we equip them to not only survive but embrace the future of digital and play a part in shaping the future world we will live in.
We want people to be able to learn continuously; by experience, through peers and mentors, and through reading and consuming content.
You can no longer rely on traditional ‘training’ - we need to be constantly curating and expanding our learning. As fast as we create it – it will be out of date
Connecting people together – Sharing ideas, sharing learnings, tips and tricks, increasing levels of collaboration to deliver better results
People need to be empowered to make their own choices and be autonomous, however we need to do this in alignment
We need to move fast, the consumer want things now – not in months or years time. As technology accelerates our expectations are shifting and we want things faster and faster. How do enable our people to deliver faster, recognise and learn from failure quickly and safely, get fast feedback
Everyone can innovate – We need to give people the space and the opportunity to create ideas, build on others and shape the future.
Automate – as QA’s you will know the benefits of automation, but automation isn’t just limited to testing – we need to automate as much repetitive processes that make sense in order to accelerate our delivery and enable you to spend time on the things that really matter.
Helping QA’s to build the skills required to enable faster delivery
Automation skills
Exploratory Skills
Collaboration/ Pairing
Understanding of the code (pair reviews)
Running Builds
Enabling our teams to deliver features to our customers faster
Building a culture of continuous learning for our QA’s to be able to see, test, and adapt to industry advancements and be able to push the bar even futher.
Talk about medieval history
Every organisations culture impacts what will work and what wont
People provided feedback that they wanted more high quality content that would focus on equipping them with the skills they need to do their job. Starting with the essentials – e.g. Agile, Automation, etc
Initial peak of excited people wanting to learn. Many people want to consume but weren’t yet ready to contribute
We hadn’t yet equipped our people with presentation/story telling training.
Be clear on your objective, what Guilds are, what they are not, what you are responsible for, what your not – Get skin in the game
Grow – Attracting, Growing, & Retaining the worlds top talent to ensure we have the right talent that will enable our digital future
Connect – More collaborative, more connected, more supportive – Connecting people peer to peer, across areas of our business, across regions. Connecting into external communities such as meet-ups, conferences, online forums.
Passion – Passionate people with the space to innovate and expand our horizons – Divergent/creative thinking – Innovation events, The capacity to get involved in Guilds, learning, innovation, supporting the team and their peers, Be part of helping to shape the future of insurance.
Creating the ultimate employee experience – HCD journey mapping
Integrating into P+C plus rest of organisation to make it scalable and ensure we have data to track how we are going.
Test and learn
Learn from your failures, move on
Be clear about what you are wanting to achieve, what you know and what you don’t – Don’t pretend like you know all the answers
Your dev guild is very different to your creative guild. What works in one place may not work in another.