2. This is a real story
All the examples are situations I was involved in personally
3. February 2019
I am called in to a client where a team (The Team) needed
new leadership
Timezones are not necessarily an issue, but we are not co-
located
4. Landscape
A mid-sized division within a large non-tech/IT enterprise
Large freedom of movement with a few constraints
Divisions operate powered by shared, foundational services
All the interactions happen via an ITSM-based process
5. Context
A successful cloud migration programme created a
completely new estate
Focus was fully on the migration effort, depleting The Team
of key people
After the migration it was time to clear the confusion and
get back to normality
The business was also accelerating, and The Team needed
to keep up
6. The Team
• The Team’s mission is to remove
friction and to enable a smooth and
simple interaction among
development teams, business users
and other areas of the organisation
• Size is small (8 to 12 people), but
The Team has got heterogeneous
skills – from service management to
technical SME ownership
• The Team owns the whole
operational lifecycle of the
division’s applications estate,
except for production support
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7. It’s not a DevOps Team
It looks like one at first sight, but The Team does much
more
Close collaboration with the Development Teams, which are
focused on value delivery
Deep knowledge of both the applications (end-to-end) and
the organisational interaction patterns
8. Cons (problems)
• Total control over the technical
resources
• The Development Teams trickle
down deep knowledge of the
custom products so that The
Team can be most effective
• Removing frictions for the
Development Teams means the
division can get things done
better and quicker
• Lots of context switch between
activities
• The ITSM process causes too
much overhead
• Internally things tend to be
dealt with a mix of formal
process, informal chats, 1:1s,
…
Pros
8
16. What did I do?
• Moving to collective responsibility and independent
ownership
• Clean and complete break from existing processes and
tools, trying to funnel every unstructured activities into
structured ones
• Start a daily, first-thing-in-the-morning huddle
• Creation of a flat, clear inventory where all the resources
are clearly identified
• Big technology changes to support new way of working
• Boards
• Chatrooms
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17. It was a total failure!
There was no buy-in from the team and possibly an
underlying trust issue
17
18. Too much, too soon
The extreme reliance on command and control made the
change to the operating model irrelevant and damaging
The huddle became a place where problems were piling up
rather than being discussed
18
19. You need trust
Change is inherently not welcome in the human nature –
promising a move to Agile is not enough to ensure success
without a shared commitment
Trust only becomes natural after the new team member
gets familiar
Don’t take willingness to change for granted, Conway’s Law
is always true
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29. Culture
It was the only item on the list, and all my efforts went in
that direction
29
30. What did I do?
• Tried to move away from emails into shared
communication mediums and to break the dependency on
1:1 chats by connecting people together
• First attempt at a new tool-based process for handling
requests, based on Lean – a few cards based on Activity
type, to move across lanes
• Changed the daily huddle from an unstructured rant to a
quick discussion of the state of the day and the
forecasted day ahead, facilitating fully-owned decisions
30
33. Partial success
The big win here is the culture shift starting up!
People were finally starting to network, The Team was
working as a unit
33
34. Why partial?
The safety net was the old habit, and going away for a short
break moved things back a fair bit
The tool experiment was weak – too much burden and too
many changes
34
38. What did I do?
• Third attempt at creating a new lightweight tool-aided
process to handle requests, removing all the possible
overhead
• Daily huddle twice a day to enable better information
sharing and re-aligning activities based on the priorities
shifting during the day
• SMEs are fully empowered to take decisions backed by the
common knowledge The Team has got – with final
approval during the huddles, if needed
38
42. People are fully
empowered
They are trusted to take the decisions they are supposed to
take
Decisions come from their direct hands-on experience, and
they are backed by full visibility of the business side
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43. Lean was the only way
A Lean tool and a Lean process fixed the issues and enabled
a smooth flow of delivery
43
44. How do you keep it up?
It’s not over, this was just the beginning
44
45. Getting it right, keeping it
as such!
Continuous Improvement is not a buzzword
45
46. What if someone leaves?
I lost the three most senior people – what did I do?
46
47. Fast forward to today
The Team has been on a continuous improvement path
since
47
48. From continuous
firefighting to
incremental delivery
Not only we managed to transform the way The Team
works, but now there is also bandwidth for internal
development initiatives
48
49. The Team can pick up
new work
Documentation, enhancements, automations…
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