Agile Transformation Case Studies

AGILE TRANSFORMATION CASE STUDIES
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AGILE
TRANSFORMATION
CASE STUDIES
BY
CHANDAN LAL PATARY

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Agile Transformation Case Study-1
Company “Power Auto” was under enormous pressure from its legacy power
products. The products are already cash cow products and dominating the European
market. They are expanding fast into the USA. With the current legacy product
portfolio, this company cannot expand in the USA market. The product maintenance
cost is becoming excessively high. Existing customer bases are very high, but with
the outdated technology the product was built on, product features are no more
extendable. Demanding customers were asking for more and more features. The
company has a development center in Germany with 35 team members and testing
center is in India with 20 team members. The product was 20+ years old with many
legacies outdated technologies and a few of the original team members are still
working with the product. With the new generation getting into the workforce and
the introduction of the mobile technologies, the organization has to improve with the
products.
Top management has determined to develop a similar type of product with cutting-
edge latest technologies within 2-3 years. The growing market demands a rapid
product lifecycle with the latest features and the shortest feedback time.
The company has team members who have been working with the company for the
last 20 years.

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Very few team members have expertise in the latest technologies. 50% budget goes
to maintain the existing products (Bug/issues/enhancement request from the current
customer base). New Development investment is always challenging.
The company has agreed to adopt the agile transformation for the product to address
these demands.
Challenges
1. How can we migrate faster to the latest technology for expanding the market?
2. What should be the strategy the company can take to address such a situation?
3. How can technology migration and up-gradation happen?
4. How to address the existing customer base?
5. How to motivate the team members to learn new technologies and apply at work?
6. The Competitor has already launched a similar solution with the cutting-edge
technology. How to beat the competition?
As an Agile coach, how can you help the team members? What will be the important
action steps that you will take initially? What is your engagement model and
strategy?
Agile Transformation Case study - 2
Company “Real Data” was already dominant in the real-time database market. Their
real-time database product was already ruling the market and the product mostly
used in the Industrial Automation segment. The management agreed to expand the
real-time database into other the IoT technologies. The company head office is in
Norway. There were ten developers in Norway, and 10 test team members in India.
Sales and Marketing office is in the US. The product is seven years old into the
market and a highly robust product. Highly configurable with excellent extensible

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product features, and it can be configured and adapted to any database
segment/Market. The company decided to enter the Wind turbine market,
Shipbuilding market, etc. There are similar types of products within the same
company as other units. Both the units are fighting with each other for its existence.
The other unit is in Italy. Both the product testing centers are in India with the release
management capabilities completely driven from India. The current release cycle is
too long. There are regional politics and built-in bureaucracy.
The company has agreed to adopt an organizational agile transformation to focus on
these challenges.
Challenges
1. How can we expand the product portfolio into the other IoT Markets?
2. How can we break the internal rivalry for existence?
3. How can we increase agility and enhance feature ready for IoT?
4. What should be the marketing strategy?
5. How can we reduce the hierarchies and make it a flat organization?
6. Today the current release cycle for both the unit products is around 1.5 years
action steps that you will take initially? What is your engagement model and
strategy?
Agile Transformation Case Study - 3
Company “Soft bank” was under pressure owing to the fintech world. Their existing
products are doing well, but due to virtual money, wallet and mobile banking, the
banks are rapidly losing the customers. The bank is also under threat from new small
entrants. The company is within the top three in Bangladesh, and it is supported by

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the Bangladesh government, dominating from last 50 years. There are many private
banks competing with Soft bank and they are already becoming famous in a short
time due to simple mobile based solutions. Also, there are many startup companies
which are coming up with similar banking, and mobile products and threatening the
Soft bank’s existence. Recently Soft bank acquired a few startup companies in
Bangladesh to get into the digital world. The company has 300 team members in
Bangladesh and 50 team members in India.
The company has decided to adopt organizational agile transformation to address
these solutions.
Challenges:
1. How can a company sustain in a volatile market?
2. How can we quicken the delivery process?
3. How can we help the bank which is running on a legacy system? To move into
the digital world?
4. How can we help a company to wed startup and legacy culture (Indian and
Bangladeshi culture)?
5. How can we improve innovation in the ecosystem?
6. How can we change the leadership mindset?
7. How can we bring business agility into the organization?
8. How can we handle PMP driven project managers who want the whole show to
be run in a waterfall manner?
9. How can we reduce the cycle time?
action steps you will take initially? What is your engagement model and plan?

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Agile Transformation case studies -4:
The Company “Super Health” has many products in the healthcare market which are
regulated by the government and compliance agency. The company brand is truly
loyal to the people. The present product delivery cycle is three years. Due to
regulatory issues, there are many entries and exit criteria have to be maintained for
the certified agency to give clearance for the products to sell. The company is under
significant threat from many low-cost products which are spread in the market. The
company headquarters is in Sweden and the offshore development center is in USA
and India.
The company has many legacy products and large teams to maintain these
monolithic products. The company has many layers in the organization and 20 years
of its existence. Within the company there are many silos, the teams are operating
as a separate company. There are many kingdoms dominated by different kings
within the organization. The quality of the product is very stable. Solutions are
remarkably robust. The company has 500 people worldwide.100 in Sweden, 150 in
the US and 250 are in India. Affordability of the product is becoming a question
mark. Product acceptances are slowly turning into a question mark (Easy to use
criteria). The primary market is in Europe and the US.
The company has decided to adopt organizational agile transformation to address
these solutions.
Challenges:
1. How can we speed up the delivery process by maintaining compliance?
2. How can we break the silos and make it a lean organization?
3. How can value stream help organizational restructuring?
4. How can we address distributed team conflicts?

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5. How can we address headstrong product owners?
6. How can we influence the team members to deliver large solutions which cut
across many departments?
7. How can we convince senior executives that the new change will work?
8. How can we reduce hierarchy, reduce the lobby effect, and convince the
compliance agency?
9. How can we look into the monolithic architecture and simplify the same?
10.People prefer to retire from here, but they have become obsolete and redundant.
What do we do? They have friends who are in influential positions within the
organization.
Kanban Transformation case study -5
Efficient Executive Health Checkup: Done by Kanban Way!
Kanban is two Japanese words put together: Kan, meaning visual, and ban, meaning
card. Put together, it becomes something like “visual card” or “signaling card.”
The Visual record refers to the card used to control the flow of production through
a factory.
Kanban is a pull system and Kanban is Less Prescriptive.
Kanban (sometimes lowercase k, sometimes capital K)—Sometimes refers to a
“visual process management system that tells what to produce, when to produce it,
and how much to produce”
Kanban executes the Lean thinking in practice (Becker and Szczerbicka, 1998; Chai,
2008). It is one of the key operational management tools in Lean manufacturing
(Liker, 2004, 176). It drives project teams to visualize the workflow, limit work in

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progress (WIP) at each workflow stage, and measure the cycle time (i.e., the average
time to complete one task) (Kniberg, 2009).
The origins of Kanban can be traced back to Taiichi Ohno and the Toyota Production
System. In its more modern form, David Anderson has identified five core principles
that support successful implementation of Kanban.
They are:
Visualize your work so that you can see the work and in the context of other work.
Limit the work in progress (WIP) using a pull system so that there isn’t an overflow
of work at any step along the way and the pace is understood.
Manage the flow of work and applying measures so that the team knows how much
work to commit.
Make the process policies explicit so that improvements can be made to
acknowledge the baselines.
Improve collaboratively so that there is an opportunity to improve the working
process and the workflow.
Last week I had completed my pending executive medical health checkup at one of
the renowned Hospitals in Bangalore where I have observed how efficiently the
Kanban practices have been followed and which has simplified my life. I have
provided the highest customer satisfaction rating because of the service I have
received. Of course, my health report was also good!
Practice 1–Visualizing your work
The first practice in Kanban is to visualize what you are doing. This includes both
the steps in the process and what work you currently have in each step.
In my medical checkup curriculum at the hospital, they have provided me, a list of
tests that will be done, the sequence has been provided, and the time, the room and

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places have been provided. They have a similar tracking on the system where they
can find the movements and happen. One person is in charge of the flow
management. She was guiding us all the time. The complete information has been
handed over in the morning when I had arrived at the location.
A complete sequence of the activities and the flow has been provided. Before a food
test, after a food test, where to take the food and all the information has been in a
single piece of A4 size paper. Including car parking!
The complete information in the checklist sheet has been handed over to us and each
item has been ticked when it is done, and next items have been triggered
automatically in the system. The next items people are also aware of the sequences
of execution, and they were ready.
Practice 2–Limiting work in progress
The second practice is about limiting work in progress, also called WIP. By setting
limits, you are not allowed to bring more work than you are able to handle. If the
persons working in the earlier process step works faster than the ones in the next
step, then the work stays in the column until there is available capacity in the next
step and they are ready to bring it in. Because of rule 2, the earlier steps are not
allowed to bring more things in than what its limit allows. This is to prevent you
from building queues of half-done work inside the system.
In Kanban, chaos is limited by directly limiting the amount of work in progress
(WIP)— Literally, the number of note cards allowed at each step. Simple, yet
effective.
The booking system for the health checkup does not allow one to take more than 20
patients in a day. I had to do the booking for my test one month ago to get the slot.

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Early in the morning twenty of us who will undergo the tests were assembled for the
test and which took four hours for the complete set of tests, including the doctor’s
consultation.
Practice 3–Managing flow
The third practice is about improving the flow of a process so the time-to-market,
also called lead-time is decreased.
The lead-time is from when we start working on the item until we have deployed it.
It would also make sense to measure the time from when the item was requested until
it was deployed.
Since the third practice tells us to optimize the lead-time, here is where we start
changing organizations and the way they work. This is not simply because a selected
process tells us to, but because we believe the change will decrease the lead-time.
Our belief is that the organization is more willing to change when they know why.
Last year, the whole day it took for me to complete these executive medical health
checkups because of too many patients were allowed, the report was not completed
on time, and the doctors were not available etc. But this time it was flawless.
Every time they approached us and checked how things were flowing and they
tracked the situation. There was good teamwork among hospital staffs.
Practice 4 – Making process policies explicit
The fourth practice is about being clear about the process and the policies and
principles behind it. This is to make sure everybody involved knows and follows the
process and can suggest improvements to it. The reason is that it is very hard to
discuss and improve a process unless you know the current process.

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Since morning, several times we have been educated about the flow and the
sequences and the team members from the hospital were guiding us regarding the
execution and the next steps.
So, we were relaxing and following the process flow as things were moving on its
own.
Practice 5 – implementing feedback loops
What the customers, and the end users think, and will decide how well the product
contributes to your company’s revenue and wellbeing. Here is where practice
number 5 comes into the picture, the need for getting feedback from people outside
of your system. There is also a need for feedback loops within a system to make sure
you deliver the expected functionality with the right quality.
We had to give feedback and improvement suggestion at various transactions about
the way things are going on and the results we are getting.
I have observed the below lean principle. The right process will produce the right
result: I have observed all these steps in the entire flow chain.
Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface
Use the “pull” system to avoid overproduction
Level out the workload (heijunka) – work like the tortoise, not the hare
Build a culture of stopping to fix problems to ensure quality right from the start
Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee
empowerment
Use visual control so that no problems are hidden
Use only reliable, and thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and the
processes

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Overall, I was quite happy as it took less time to complete all these process steps,
and it did not take my whole day like the last time! I felt it was only because of the
systematic way of applying Kanban practices. Hospital staff will be looking at all
these points frequently
Where are we now?
When will it be done?
Who is working on what?
What should I be doing now?
Cycle time and lead time was good, which means they were measuring how fast the
work is moving through the process and where it slows down.
By measuring lead time, they can see the actual improvement in time-to-
deliver/market and predictability. They can also see the due-date performance—
whether a certain item is on target against what you think it should be. With the lead
time captured, they can also analyze where the work item has spent its time and start
tracking lead-time efficiency to see whether the work item is mostly waiting,
blocked, being reworked, or actually being worked on. Cycle time refers to the time
a work item takes to go through a part of the process
Lean case study 6:
Lean-ification: Lean-ified everything at the restaurant (Lean Restaurant)
We have started a Lean initiative for my friend at his restaurant business. We looked
into the Lean philosophy and realized that Lean processes can maximize our
customer satisfaction and optimize the process.
Lean thinking emphasizes value-adding services which in turn helps us to achieve
high customer satisfaction and profitability.

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We have started with the famous quote from Taiichi,
“All we are doing is looking at the timeline, from the where the customer gives us
an order as to where we collect the cash. And we are reducing the timeline by
reducing the non-value-added wastes”.
– Taiichi Ohno
We have started this initiative as a batch of waves. The first wave focused on the
below steps
Specify Value: As we know, the value is defined by the customer in terms of specific
products and services. We have taken feedback from the customer what they want
as an improvement. Observe the customer and their expectations and brainstorm
with the team members for improvements. We came up with certain points which
defined the value for all of us and started implementing those points. Identify the
Value stream: Map out all end-to-end linked actions, processes, and functions
necessary for transforming the inputs to outputs to identify and eliminate waste. We
have tracked the flow of operation and figured out different wastes in the end-to-end
delivery cycle.
The different wastes we have identified after several observations and discussions.
We have used the VSM (Value stream mapping) tool to capture the flow chain. We
have several versions of it over a period with the improvements.
Make Value Flow Continuously: Having eliminated waste, make the remaining
value-creating steps “flow”: The order booking should seamlessly continue.
Customer satisfaction rates should be high. Let us design the service from
(understand the Current, as-is State as a precondition for the design of the Future,
to-be State). That was the key focus area.

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Let Customers Pull Value: Customer’s “pull” cascades all the way back to the lowest
level of the supplier, enabling just-in-time production: At a Restaurant, we do not
prepare upfront all the menu fully. All the general materials have to be ready so that
we can prepare the menu just in time. We observe the order pattern and predict which
items are selling more and those items are kept mostly ready, and other items
partially made ready and we prepare them when we get the order.
Pursue Perfection: Pursue continuous process improvement, striving for perfection.
Several areas we have got improvement ideas from the customers. A couple of ideas
have come from our friends as well. Though some ideas implementation cost was
high, like creating a parking place, creating more space inside the room, etc. We had
several introspective sessions each month to improve the current situation. Every
activity, all the teams performing we look for “makes it a world-class solution.”
After executing the above steps for a couple of months, we observe that our feedback
rating has improved, and the customer visit also had improved. Now we have one
baseline process which we can scale.
As the next step of the improvement, we thought about what other ways lean could
help. We are looking at Lean, which is about the focus on Customers, Energizing
Workers, Learning First, and Delivering Fast.
Are all these steps enough for the business? The purpose of business is to maximize
long-term shareholder value. Are we doing enough? What else can be done?
We decided to look at our below factors as kind of a second wave.
Let us analyze fast because of the first wave we did not have to spend much time
understanding the below steps.

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Customer: who are they? What is their profile? Do we have the right customer? Do
we have the right items to satisfy the customer? Do we have the right stuff to evoke
passion? Let us prepare a story about them.
Capability: Do we have the ability to deliver on the organizational and individual
promises? Infrastructure, tools, process, and skilled employee’s, etc. Do we have
enough? What can be done to improve? Let us capture the missing weak factors and
improve.
Control: Do we have a mechanism to measure and improve the processes, services,
and products? We created a few KPIs to start with and which we closely track.
Coordination: Do we have an efficient way of understanding the working model with
the suppliers and customers along the entire value chain? We have improved the
relationship with the supplier within a couple of months and become good vendor
list. A Couple of them, we eliminated.
Context and culture: Recognize the environment within which the restaurant is
operating, including the competitive forces (another nearby restaurant), the culture
of the restaurant (North Indian Restaurant), industry dynamics, and the economic
environment (e.g., at festival season order booking is high etc.).
We drove these five factors for a couple of months and checked the improvement
ideas. Learning in this process was very high. We are becoming smarter in this
process and the same thoughts are applied in different restaurants of the chain. There
is no negativity due to this initiative, and only positive returns. Employee satisfaction
is also improved.
During the Third waves in the fourth quarter, we looked from different angles for
deploying lean into the same chain of restaurants for additional improvement.

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Though the system was almost ready but slight improvement were expected in this
initiative.
We looked into the below initiatives.
Eliminate waste: - we are focused on these aspects, and we observed what else we
can do about this waste reduction.
Amplify learning: - what can be done for our cook and waiters and cleaners,
accounts, and security guards. We ensure they learn, and we all learn.
Decide as late as possible: - do not jump into any small decision, let us discuss every
purchase, investment etc.
Deliver as fast as possible: - We were capturing the time taken from order booking
to delivery to the table and which steps we can automate, and which steps we can
optimize further.
Empower the team: - all the team members are trained well so that they can decide
and later we analyzed the decision if it was the right decision at that moment and we
help them to learn better. We appreciate our team members frequently. We build a
culture of trust; in whatever possible way it is possible. Let us decentralize the
decision-making process.
See the whole: Focusing only on some areas cannot make the process flow. We have
to check end to end. We have used visual control systems to make problems visible.
The entire flow is displayed where we are taking maximum time.
The challenges are many and sustaining all these initiatives with the changing
population who are part of this system in the restaurant was very high. We observed
our entire process like a Zoologist and improved by doing plan-do-check-act. We go
to the happening place and see the thing happening and improve (GEMBA walk).

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The Lean initiative helped us to run the business efficiently by knowing what we are
supposed to do. We have also used A3 thinking where we are able to see the
problems (which is an art) in the first place, and in their apparent absence, to make
problems visible, on the general assumption that there are always problems to solve.
Understand the problem correctly and the solutions can be readily identified. The
second critical aspect, of course, is actually doing something about the root causes,
they are the potential wastes. We remove those wastes from the system.
Improvement is a journey and continues to improve and share the best practices in
the next venture.
Case Study on Agile Teams-7
I have two teams to work with and my job is to spread agility or coach agile process.
At the end of the day, success, or failure to deploy agile process are going to me and
my team’s responsibility. Both the teams are unique in the way the team has been
structured, the business these teams are working for and the customer, the market
they are serving, all are different. But the core software development is always the
same.
The team has to deliver usable software which the customer is expecting.
It has been communicated to the customer that the team will be following the agile
process and there are some changes in the delivery process. The customer was
getting involved and assessing the delivered software for early feedback.
“Project_Satisfiedcustomer_A” is the team which is located in India. Total seven
team members are based in India. They are physically collocated. The Product
Owner and the Architect are based in Europe. The product is planned to be released

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in two-years, and it is to be delivered in 2.5 years. The complete product
development solutions to be used by a business unit, say a “Power Plant.”
Product development was followed by “Stage Gate Review” process for decision
making. Gate-2 to Gate-5 took a two-year timeline which is from concept
development to market release. It was a huge successful project from the sales point
of view. The team has undergone a complete team building cycle, forming, storming,
norming and performing the process, the complete journey. Gate-2 to Gate-5 was an
agile software development process.
“Project_NotsoSatisfiedcustomer_B” is a different type of a project. The team is
based in manifold locations in Europe. The testing activities are done in India. There
are seven test team members working with various development teams in Europe. It
was a research-based project catering to manifold business units. There were Level
4 cases (Maintenance cases), which need to be supported by the developers from the
various locations in Europe.
There were new technological developments which are experimental in nature. It
was a complete distributed agile development where a lot of communication, and
collaboration was required. There were many challenges to deploy agile and reduce
the cycle time. Product release varies from 1.5 years to 2 years. The project team yet
to establish a high customer satisfaction and the value generation (Work in progress).
Both the projects are technologically very complex where the domain expertise
(Industrial Automation) plays a critical role.
How can a team ensure success by following certain practices? The end result and
customer inputs are the only evidence that the team is performing and producing
excellent output.

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The roles designated by an agile process to play a significant contribution to success
and failure of the project. The leadership skills from each role can play a significant
value addition for the project.
All these roles have to contribute continuously, especially the Product Owner and
the scrum master.
There are no excuse if these roles are not producing any value. The Product Owner
and Scrum master have a major role to play in the entire delivery cycle. The line
management organization has to motivate, ease, and energize the team members.
Once the energy level goes down it is the line management, the leadership team has
to kindle the fire and boost the team’s energy.
Agile philosophy believes all team members will be highly motivated, passionate,
self-organized, but most of the time team does not have the required expected level
of skilled team members.
Customer satisfaction: Have we achieved the highest customer satisfaction for both
the project teams? The team was taking input from the customers in every sprint
demo meeting and there is a separate feedback form filled by the customer every six
months.
The team got inputs from the different channels to improve and satisfy the customer
need. In the end, we got a happy customer rating.
Predictability: One of the main factors which the team identified initially need
improvement is the date when the software will be released, i.e., it improves the
predictability of the software release. Teams have started doing better estimation
after several sprints and improved predictability. After a few iterations, it was easy
for the product owner to commit to the release date.

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Face-to-face interactions, the communication which plays a critical role, was
missing in the “Project_ NotsoSatisfiedcustomer_B” as there was a budget cut
(Travel restriction). The team was not able to meet with each other in a distributed
agile project which can cause certain soft skill issues. The collocated team was able
to resolve all these types of issues rapidly through video conferencing, was an
effective discussion but nothing like face to face.
Availability, and knowledge of the product manager were excellent for both the
teams, and it was showing excellent results. Sometimes the
“Project_NotsoSatisfiedcustomer_B” team members did not have the information
immediately, but it was available after some time (response time).
Developer’s competency: For both the projects, the team members were competent
and excellent and had the necessary level to execute the project.
“Project_Satisfiedcustomer_A” had many young developers where they had the urge
and hunger to learn rapidly by executing various approaches. It was a journey to
build a mature, and competent “A” class team.
Collaboration with the whole team was not up to the mark for some time for both
the projects and it needed elaborate discussions. It had later improved with a lot of
workouts. These factors played a significant role in the success and the failure of the
project. Cultural fitness also played a role in smoothly handles the issues, and good
leadership practices removed all the bottleneck and increased collaboration
effectiveness.
Organization Culture means that the agile values and principles are accepted as being
part of the way the organization works.
Knowledge sharing: Was not happening properly to the expected level for
“Project_NotsoSatisfiedcustomer_B.” Not much-used wiki, blog, sharing was

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mostly forced. It has been observed for the project “Project_ Satisfiedcustomer_A”
sharing has improved significant domain knowledge and understanding about the
customer needs.
There were lots of push required to get the work done: Initially, a few team members
were self-driven but not all the team members. The culture slowly transformed, but
it took some time. Today, most of the team members are self-organized, they need
minimal follow-up, and they are self-driven. Both the teams are doing excellent test-
driven development, Test Driven Development was being followed at the expected
levels. There need some noteworthy improvements needed for the Acceptance Test
Driven Development for the team “Project_ NotsoSatisfiedcustomer_B.”
Indicators of failure: Team members were closely watching the signals for failure
and correcting the project situation. They were looking for various smells and
discussing at retrospect meetings. As an agile coach, I have always looked for an
opportunity to find the points which need to be aligned to meet the agility
requirements.
“Project_Satisfiedcustomer_A” has fetched more revenue and more orders as the
customer was able to use the product and decide quickly.
So, What I am sharing?
Am I comparing one project with another project?
No, I am not doing Apple to Apple evaluation. What I would like to share is my
learnings from both of these team which make them unique and successful. There
are a few factors which I realized significantly influences to successfully deployed
agile or bring agility into the team. As a result of these steps, the organization could
be able to bring agility into the system.

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Below are the few factors which exhibited fabulous output when we have followed
it across all the areas. All these factors are important, and the agile coach has to
ensure these have been followed religiously. No excuses in the below process to get
excellent output. The team can look for these indicators and ensure that all these
factors are running smoothly.
Few good points to mention:
Customer Involvement:
What we have observed is that “Project_Satisfiedcustomer_A” team was
consistently engaged with the customer and satisfying the need of the end user. The
team was correcting the steps wherever required to meet the end result. The customer
was correcting their expectation on a continuous basis and the team was improving
their capabilities.
Both the party was understanding each other better and the ambiance led to healthy
teamwork. The “You” and “Us” has become “We.” In the absence of these kinds of
engagement, the waste is high, rework is high, and the cycle time is high. The
Product owner or customer representative can measure the ROI and feedback for all
the improvement.
The Product Owner measures the doneness and grooms the backlog accordingly.
“Project_Satisfiedcustomer_B” was not able to do this kind of an exercise. It was
not the full-fledged and it was not consistent. Sometimes the team was doing a demo.
There was not much continuous input for improvement has been identified. The
customer can come back with changes when the product development is at an early
stage and the changes are much easier and less expensive to implement.
Moreover, the customer can raise a concern if some features which are not needed,
and we should not develop the same so that we can avoid non-value-added items.

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Retrospect:
The Scrum masters and product owners were playing a great role to make continuous
improvement. “Project_ Satisfiedcustomer_A” team was getting most of the input
from self and external demonstration about the work. Backlog grooming was a major
activity which refines based on the input. The Team retrospect provides refactoring
input, and improvement input, which goes into a sprint backlog. Competency
development inputs come from retrospect and demo meeting.
The customer was appreciating the sprint-on-sprint improvements. It was necessary
for the product owner to calculate value when the team is doing KAIZEN.
The team is identifying all types of risks and sharing the same with all the
stakeholders well ahead. Every time the team is reinventing themselves in new ways.
There was lots of learning in every sprint. Organizational maturity was growing
systematically. Whenever there was a sustainable velocity dip, the team brainstorms
and identifies the impediment to improving the velocity in the next iteration. Just to
ensure that the team knows how fast or slow they are moving, and the team is on the
right track (Self-assessment). “Project_Satisfiedcustomer_B” was struggling to do
this exercise as other priority work were taking up most of their time. Most of the
team felt that this is not lean, so this is a waste.
Team Members are dedicated:
One of the aspects we have observed team members should focus on one project. If
the expertise, and the resources are shared then the team members are disturbed in
many assignments and multi-tasking can take-up a lot of time in switching which is
a waste. It creates a problem for agility. Any amount of planning will not be helpful.
There will be issues. Consistent resources are needed. Team members have to be
100% for one assignment for a sprint. Sharing resources causes lots of long-term
issues. The organization needs to find a way to address these issues may be

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SCRUMBAN could help but the need has to explore. If there is an architect who is
being shared with various assignments, he or she will not be able to do justice to
most of the assignment (Switching time).
On the surface level everything looks good but most of the time we have always
viewed the tip of the iceberg and later we blame the agile process or the team
members. I could see the excellent team bonding, energy, and teamwork in
“Project_Satisfiedcustomer_A.” Team members have become like family members.
Once a month, all the team members were going for outings funded by them. Most
of the team members were on an average with seven years of experience.
Top Management Support:
In the “Project_Satisfiedcustomer_A” and B, we have an open culture where a team
can experiment and make mistakes. Team members decide which items will take
how much time, and they decide more or less about the backlog items.
Time to Market:
“Project_Satisfiedcustomer_B” team was something like the research type of the
project, which is working on a next-generation technology solution. Whenever the
product is ready, a team is supposed to release it. As there are lots of experiments,
and prototype involve and the first time something of this nature has to be developed,
even end customers also not sure how it looks like, this type of project is having a
lot of challenges “Project_ Satisfiedcustomer_A” was a two-year delivery targeted
project at high-level planning.
In the end, the customer was pretty much aware of what is the expected from the
deliverable at a very high level. The customer was able to use the features more or
less at every sprint. So in every iteration there is a refinement and something which
adds value to the customer.

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Test Driven Development and Automation:
“Project_Satisfiedcustomer_A” team could be able to achieve the complete
automation, unit testing attached with the daily build which deployed automatically
which has integrated unit test result showing the coverage and demonstrated build
success or failure, also capture the automated regressing test result report. The team
has a dedicated developer who worked for a few sprints to automate the test cases.
Developers were acting as a tool smith to speed up the automation process.
“Project_NotsoSatisfiedcustomer_B” team was also following the same approach
more or less, but many improvements are on the way and needed.
“Project_Satisfiedcustomer_A” has broken the barrier between a developer and a
tester. There is some improvement required for
“Project_NotsoSatisfiedcustomer_B” team. When all these types of checking are
happening on a daily basis, team members are well aware where the potential issues
are triggered from. The same code is ready after each iteration as potential
deliverable which goes for acceptance test at the customer location at the real target
system.
These are few observations from both these teams. There are many more, but a few
highlighted.
Leadership Case studies:
Case Study 1:
You have been appointed as a leader to a fresh department established in a healthcare
product. What will be the initial few steps as a leader for the first 15 days in your
appointment?

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This is a new startup company. CEO has a lot of ambition from your department.
Once 15 days is over, you got an invitation from your sales team that there could be
a million-dollar order in a pipeline for a software solution development. They
involve you in their initial potential software product development dialogue.
What would be your steps as a leader? As a presentation to others, what you would
be suggesting to them?
Let us first forward to this condition. After 1 year, your department has 100 + team
members, and you are the leader for all of them.
You got an invitation from a potential company in the health care department to take
over and integrate the same with your team. As a leader of the department, what is
your understanding and what you will be sharing in the department town hall
meeting?
Case Study 2:
You are an associate director in a business line that provides assistance in Business
Transformation to the whole enterprise. You report directly to the Center, head of
the enterprise. The whole organization is going through a cost optimization drive.
And also, the corporation is experiencing severe attrition. Many talented team
members have left the organization.

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You are under immense pressure not able to spend time with your 2 managers who
are managing the whole program in your Transformation business line.
These 2 managers are here with the organization for a long time, and you are
comparatively fresh. There was a constant accusation that your department is not
competent to help the organization in the overall transformation process. The
transformation is remarkably slow and not efficient.
The managers are sensing that staff are becoming overworked as everyone takes on
increased responsibilities due to significant staff turnover. The staff has also reported
that your “glass-half-empty” communication style leaves them feeling disheartened.
In addition, you have not shared budgets with your managers, so they are having
difficulty appropriately allocating work to staff. You also recognize that you have
not obtained ample information from the finance department to complete the
budgets. The finance department said they have sent you all the information they
have available.
As the staff becomes distressed, the managers are becoming frustrated. They feel
like they are unable to advocate for their staff or solve problems without key
information like the departmental budget as well as vision. You sense that your
managers also not so competent in the transformation work. Most of the time you
got the report that both of these managers are conflicting with each other.
You as a leader

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· What steps could be taken to strengthen staff confidence?
· How can you most effectively use both management and leadership skills in your
role as associate director? What combination of the two do you think would work
best in this setting?
· Which leadership style do you think a leader would need to be adequate in this
situation?
Case study 3:
Prasad is functioning as a department manager; he was working with this company
for the last 10 years. He has two decades of overall IT experience. He has developed
himself from the bottom up to this department manager position by performing hard
work. He is a remarkable people-friendly individual and most of the team members
appreciate his management style. He understands the pain of the team members. He
supports them whenever demanded. He has many managers reporting to him. Some
are efficient and some are not so competent. But Prasad mentors them periodically.
In Recent major re-org, Prasad was baffled about what will happen to his position as
the whole organization has suffered considerable transformations. He was assigned
for a new digital transformation program with 50 team members. On an earlier
occasion, he was managing 200 people.
a) What will be his motivation or drive to perform better?
b) What stakeholder management he will do in a digital product?

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c) What should be his initial few steps once he commenced this unique role?
d) How will he safeguard his success?
e) What you would have done when you are in his situation?
Case study 4:
Niraj was the project manager, he was performing great for his project and all
stakeholders acknowledge his hard work. He was consistently managing his project
better and his team members also recognize it. He has remarkably efficient network
skills with the top. He understands the domain. In new organizational
transformation, he has promoted to a new business line lead. He has been in charge
now to define the product strategy with 120 team members. He has never
administered more than 30 individuals in his career.
He is responsible for new product budgeting and sales as well.
a) What he should do differently?
b) What new thing does he need to know?
c) What you would have done when you are in his situation?

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Case study 5:
Alok was the center head. He was one of the distinguished young individuals to run
this center. He is a dynamic and quick learner. He was managing 400 people and
driving a major multimillion-dollar portfolio in a retail unit. He is a hard worker and
a workaholic person. In recent turmoil, his center got dissolved and fragmented into
many minor units. He has got a global role with 120 team members to establish a
Dev sec and ops team first time in the organization. He had many competent
managers who were his close company. In the new structure, he has not given any
of the mature people.
He obtained an all-new set of team members from a distinct company that recently
been acquired.
 What will be the few challenges he will have to focus on?
 What will be his strategy?
 What you would have done when you are in his situation?
Case study 6:
Kannan is an extremely poor project manager but someway in front of the
stakeholders he managed to carry out the show by which Stakeholder was extremely
pleasant, He was managing testing projects and it was one of the mission-critical
projects. He used to market his deliverables extremely well, however small it may

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be. He used to take many initiatives across the organization, and everyone knows
him. He used to take many training sessions and CSR activities.
There was massive program development work showed, 120 individuals, 3 various
department requires to build this program/product.
He has been appointed as an in charge of this large program as everyone knows him,
but he does not have done such monumental work before.
a) What do you think he should do to be first considered?
b) How will he establish he got the appropriate individuals on the bus?
c) As he was dealing with 20 individuals, what he should be working to deal with
120 people?
d) What you would have done when you are in his situation?
e) Most of the team members are incompetent in this company what he should be
doing to safeguard delivery?
Case study 7:
Balaji was managing global product, development teams. There was a competitive
product being developed in another corner of the world in the same company.

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They are marginally varied offering in nature. Most of the time customer was
perplexed as both of this product team participate in sales bidding and demo work.
Balaji was consistently in conflict with one more global manager to demonstrate
whose product should remain and which one to drop. This tussle is ongoing and most
of the top leaders realize. All the top leaders choose to preserve their buddies on the
payroll. As these products have been around for the last few years.
Balaji is leading this distributed product development team, and he is retaining the
budget. These teams are distributed in 5 different geographical locations. It has
developed into challenging to continue this product due to diverse issues, product
issues, people issues, cost issues, license issues, a political issue, internal
departmental conflicts, customer issues, etc.
Team morale is down at the highest level
 What is the next step for Balaji?
 When can he get the promotion?
Case study 8:
Dilip is a recent college pass out. He did 2 MS in a different subject. He did one
internship with one of the prominent firms, and one of his ideas accepted the best
idea award and select for a product to be developed with immediate effect. The
company where he used to work as an intern, they grant him for a full-time job for

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the same product development. He started functioning as a project manager for
product development.
With him 4 architects all are more than 25 years’ experience, 2 product managers,
and 30 team members, most of them are 15 yrs. of experience.
What do you think Dilip should be doing as a leader? He is young, smart, quick to
learn, bright but fresh to the software product development world!
 How will he get along with all these experience personalities?
 How will you ensure he gets acknowledgment for all these team members?
 How he should be driving the whole show?
 Should he go back to earn a management degree?
Case study 9:
Shilpa is a technical lead. She is a district topper and extremely bright developer.
The organization where she was working, they got a development assignment that
they were seeking for some time. But the Organization could not pick up it owing to
the resource competency issue. The client was willing to pick up a few developers
as an on-site developer. Shilpa was among them. She has gone there at client location
for 6 months assignment; it was a c++ work for large-scale product development in
the medical system. There were 25 experienced team members working, Shilpa was
among them. She turns into an on-site coordinator after 6 months. She got extensions
for 2 years and further work started showing up to India. There were few more team
members who started traveling to an on-site location for development. Shilpa used

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to conduct the weekly call with offshore location, every 6 months she used to travel
to India and take classes. After 2 years, she came back and decided to marry and
relocate to America. Sharath will succeed in Shilpa's role and will take up the on-
site coordinator role.
 What do you expect Sharath to do?
 How do you think Sharath will take care of business expansion and business
continuity?
 What action plan Sharath should have?
Case study 10:
Narshimma is a Transformation lead for the Agile Transformation department in an
organization. He has received the target to transform the team with an absolute
deadline from the top. He has got 75% contractor and 25% full-time employed to
run the show. The transformation budget was extremely tight and there was an
abundance of tracking to demonstrate the outcome. There was immense pressure on
the staff to show the progress. There were daily calls, weekly calls, monthly calls to
indicate the progress. The staff is having an internal call with global colleagues.
There was a speed pressure, delivery pressure everywhere. Team members were
collapsing and Narshimma also pressuring as from the top also individuals are asking
Narshimma to produce development.
One day in one of the global meet up, few team members complain again
Narshimma. The global leaders took prompt action, and they eliminate Narshimma
from the lead position and nominate a new person.

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The new person does not know anything about the transformation program
a) What do you want the new person to do so that healthy environment prevailed in
the department
b) How to boost team morale?
Case studies for Scrum Masters:
Case Study 1:
You are the scrum master for the project where the budget has been fixed. The scope
has been discussed with the top-level managers and high-level plan has
acknowledged. Managers demonstrated the confidence that IT delivery team has
performed such work and can do it on time within budget. Now the project has come
to the execution phase. During the execution of the project, you have started
following the scrum process and start elaborating the backlog, showing the demo to
the business stakeholders. You have started discovering that there many challenges
which never looked at during the initial scope analysis and budget finalization.
Whenever you are reviewing all these challenges to the business, the business is
consistently blaming saying that IT is not competent to accomplish the work. You
also as a scrum master acknowledge that there are competency issues that with the
current team skill set many things are not going as per the plan.
Give it a thought:
What you should be doing? Business is pretty upset? You may lose the contract?
There is a deadline on the final date for go live and business is anxious.

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 What do you think as a scrum master you can do?
Case study 2:
You are a scrum master for a team who is working on the latest digital product, your
team is working on a couple of microservices API. Your team is small and having 9
members; most of the team members are having 4-6 yrs. of experience and they are
extremely efficient developers, and your manager is a micromanager where he is not
having any other obligation other than taking care of the 9 individuals. He is
forcefully coaching the team, where he is 100% immersed in the PM way of looking
at the world. You have one Product owner who is in France and there are 3 more
developers working as a contractor from
France working with this India team; any day their contract can be terminated, and
all the scrum events are going on smoothly but everywhere you discover people are
sitting on top of your shoulders, asking for micro-level details, asking for billing
hrs., asking for velocity vs quality defect data, and pressurizing to do more? At every
senior leadership visit, your product is showcased as a digital product development
initiative. You are under terrible pressure to deliver higher quality product and
through rapid delivery. You are having an issue and the team members are not
performing well and the attrition is very high.
 How do you drive?
Case study 3:
You are the scrum master for a product-based company where your team is
supporting back-office work for a bank. Your end product development is done in

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India by your scrum team. You are dependent on some component which comes
from the Vendor company based in Gurugram, India. Your product owner and the
user base are in Germany. You have a total of 15 members in the team and many
stakeholders are spread across multi geographical locations. You are the senior
scrum master for this team and an expert who is expected to minimize some of the
burning issues happening with the team. You have asked a few of the team members
who are working for a long time with this scrum team. They showed a pessimistic
view that nothing can be done. By applying your world-class communication skills,
 How can you motivate the team for a better performance?
 How will you break the distributed challenges in this case?
 How do you simplify vendor management and your scrum teams’ frictions
with other partners?
Case study 4:
Penguin software is a small-scale software development company. They are mostly
into software services. They have got a subcontract from a product development
company to do end to end automation testing by integrating their team with the
product development company’s scrum team.
The expectation is very high which is to rapidly automate all the end-to-end test
suites that are continuously produced by the full-stack team members. As a scrum
master, every sprint you will be fully in charge of the overall product quality. The
team is using the latest cutting-edge technology for developing the solution. One of
the challenges that is present is that you do not have highly competent team members
to run the show. But while getting the order, your sales team had promised a lot.

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Now the order has come, and you need to fulfill the dream. You are the scrum master
for the team.
 What are your thoughts to build the team, which is doing long term product
development work for more than a year?
Case Study 5:
Project Power world has 40 team members in a scrum team. There are 5 scrum teams.
It is a geographically distributed team. There was an immense expectation from this
team with a tight timeline. Team was formed newly after going through several
months of recruitment drive for new members. Each scrum team has one scrum
master and one shared product owner for all these scrum teams. Each scrum team
was dealing with many challenges within the India teams plus among India and
Sweden teams. Leaders of the team are struggling hard to bring in scrum discipline
and establish the self-organized team. There was cultural barrier, which is leading to
many issues, there were new ways of working which causing issues with old timer,
there were new governance which causing some issues etc. There were leaderships
support but only 50%.
By knowing more about human psychology,
 How can each scrum master can Improve the situation?
 What do you do in such situation?
Case Study 6:

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You are the scrum master for one of the product teams which is developing a
Realtime Database. This is a database, and it is not a standalone product. This
database will be used by the Airline platform and there are many consumers who
will use this product. Your team is releasing through sprints, but the airline platform
team is doing a release in six months. You are going too fast for them and your team
is not getting real-time feedback about the software you are building.
How are you planning to collaborate with the airline platform team, which is 100+
team members?
Your entire product management team is supporting you, but you are getting
resistance while collaborating with the Airline team.
As a scrum master, what do you think you will be able to do to control the damage?
There is a lot of conflict within the team and outside the team. Teams are based out
of Denmark, US and India. You are the senior scrum master and with the team for
the last few months.
 What will be your change strategy?
Case study 7:
Opto automation has many scrum teams which are building software for the next
generation Industrial Automation control systems for the cement plant. The team has
adopted many tools to increase the speed of delivery. New tools to code, design, test
and deploy everything is being used in the project and it is completely new for the
team members. It is a 30-member team and there are 3 scrum teams which are
geographically distributed (India, Switzerland and US).

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Recently, it moved from waterfall to an agile way of working. You are the scrum
master for one of the scrum teams in India.
 How do you ensure all the change initiatives run smoothly and are sustained
for the long-term?
 Why do you think culturally divisive teams will listen to you?
They are already comfortable with the team tools they were using.
Case study 8:
Germpower is an automobile software product company where many scrum teams
are working to develop a product. Recently, they received an order to build a product,
which needs to be migrated to a modern technology from a legacy product. The
organization is not a high paying company and most of the team members do not
have a strong track record with their education.
The software was absolutely unfamiliar, and nobody knows where to commence.
The Scrum master was a senior team member within this organization. The Scrum
master was one of the best people leaders and he was accepted by many of his
colleagues. His leadership style was genuine, and people oriented. Everyone prefers
to work with him. He encourages individuals to take initiatives; he supports and
cares about the well-being of the people. During the initial days, when the teams
were in the discovery phase, there were demands to put extra efforts to know more
about the technology plus the legacy system, as the scrum master was easygoing and
a fun-loving individual. The team members were always putting extra efforts to
understand more about the technology and the legacy system. Unfortunately, after 6
months of the project, he received an onsite long-term opportunity which was greatly

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required by the organization, and he has to travel to Switzerland with his family.
You have been recruited as the new scrum master for this project.
 What do you think you will be performing to reinstate the old scrum master
style?
Case study 9:
MegaAero system is a product-based company building solution for the Aircraft
cockpit. Recently the organization has started a new solution for the Cockpit Display
System. Though the development is with multiple scrum teams, but the parameters
are fixed (Time, cost, etc.). The contract has been signed, the release date is fixed,
team members are from different departments, and they are billing 50% for this
program. You are the scrum master for `the multiple scrum teams!
An Expert higher than the Product Owner is your boss/Line manager. He is setting
everything and asking on a daily basis about the program progress. The team
members are under tremendous pressure to deliver. You can see the psychological
pressure on the teams. They are already burning out due to the pressure. They
express their concerns in the many retrospectives which you have started driving.
 What do you think about this scrum program and what should you do, what
can you do differently by knowing the motivational factors?
Case Study 10:
You are the scrum master for the team’s name RAID which is building up a platform
product for multiples business lines. Initially, this project was launched with a small
idea and after one year of work, this was accepted by the business extremely
successfully, and businesses prefer to develop RAID 2.0 and other business lines

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also grew interested to reuse this platform. The platform is built up in the XYZ cloud
web service platform. Team members from XYZ company were in your scrum team
as a full-stack developer to establish this proof of concept and ensure the capability
of the XYZ cloud platform. Now after one year, your company decided to minimize
the contract employee from the XYZ as a full-time developer. You as a scrum master
scared that with the competent team members you have, you will not be able to demo
sprint on sprint. As you had experienced at an initial couple of sprints where you
were struggling to develop potentially shippable products every sprint, that why you
have hired XYZ full-stack developers with higher prices and XYZ also involved to
establish their cloud platform to be used.
 What do you consider you need to work out as a scrum master?
There is pressure from top to get rid of XYZ team members owing to the higher cost.
Can these case studies be solved by below model?
Team Coaching Case Studies:
Case Study 1:
George is an extremely friendly manager working with the IT production support
team. He has a 10-member team. He is 15+ yrs. Of experience in the IT infrastructure
support function. He is a 100% people person who always spends time with the team.
The team has been working for the last several years on this production support
ticketing and troubleshooting assignments. George is associated with each team
member at the personal level. They regularly visit outside office parties and enjoy
life. There is some attrition every year and new individuals join George’s team. But

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he preserves the same traction, support with the team. Technology has changed fast
in the last couple of years, so there is a lot of pressure on the production support
team owing to IT automation. Management wants to reduce headcount and 24/7
support through automation. This establishes a lot of pressure on George to increase
pressure on the team members, reduce headcount, and deal with the latest
competency issues among team members. George constantly inspires teams, though
there is production support late at night, work at the weekend to satisfy the customer
needs, but George manages everything to make happy his team members and
constantly learns something new.
What few of the suggestions you would like to give to George to make him ready
for the upcoming automation world?
Case study 2:
What problem we are solving?
I have been coaching many teams. I have been looking for a formula that can guide
me to know what exactly I should be doing when I start preparing for a High-
performance team.
What are the parameters I should be looking for when I start thinking about a team?
Most of the time I have seen it has to start with an assessment and followed by a
working agreement with the team and next having a coaching session to improve the
specific scenarios.
Let us explain a use case

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A team that is developing a specific feature for the Mobile camera. The team is trying
to improve the image quality once the photo has been taken. Though in the night
photos have to be taken and it will be dark, but the image quality should be
automatically improved.
The team has a 6-member team. Most of the team members are experience ranges of
4-7 yrs. of experience. Most of the team members are very sound in technical term
about this domain.
None of these team members have any knowledge of agile ways of working. They
know how to write better code and deliver their own solutions individually. The team
lead is also a technical person, there is tremendous release pressure to meet the
deadline. The team has defined their KPI based on the code check-in with respect to
time. Every one of the team members is running to meet the deadline, whoever is
reaching the deadline fast will get a very good hike. Though it is a team, and they
support each other, but huge importance is given to individual delivery and
execution speed.
The team is having attrition issues. The work was very good, complete innovating
work. Team members are also willing to learn and do.
As a team coach, what do you think we should improve for this team? What are the
few questions you will ask?

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Case Study-3:
Team Alexa is having trouble with delivering committed features for the AI/ML
Project. Team members are struggling with communication, competencies, and
many other team issues. John is the lead for this project. He has 30 people working
on this release. He is wondering what he should do for the upcoming days, which
can help to improve the team's overall situation. John approaches various of his
friends to guide him to chalk out a plan for the future. Scully has been appointed to
coach the team to improve the overall situation. John and Scully have been
frequently meeting and have started preparing a coaching strategy to address the
situation. If you were Scully, what would be your few top 10 actions for the
upcoming 3-4 months? What are the various team contexts you will look for to start
your journey and improve the situation?
Case Study – 4:
Debolina is a new scrum master who joined this Scrum team named REG-Bank.
Teams are functioning on important, tight regulatory requirements. There are many
team members who are fresh into the team and there are team members who have
been working with this team for a long time. Debolina can quickly spot conflicts
among team members. The product owners are from Finland. There is a sync issue
among PO, managers, and team members. There are many production issues that
require fixing on an everyday basis. Priya is the coach for the team. The team is not
effective at dealing with the release pressure. What are some of the steps as a coach
Priya should take? What Debolina should glance into? What context should they
look for?

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Case Study – 5:
Sourav is working on a team that is developing an algorithm to optimize the memory
footprint of mobile photos. There are many challenges with the team connected to
competency. The algorithms are new, and it has to refine with data for several round
processes is laborious and ambiguous. There is a timeline pressure to release the app
into the market owing to competition. The manager of this team comes from a testing
background in the network domain. He does not understand the underlying work.
The team has many freshers from renowned engineering colleges, but attrition is
extremely high, so the knowledge build-up is going down every 9-12 months. The
product management team is in Hong Kong and all the technology directions are
coming from the Hongkong team. There are cultural and communication barriers.
This team also requires establishing themselves to continue performing and
demonstrating they can achieve the remarkable milestone. The team has 5 members,
3 are freshers and 2 are experienced employees. You are a team coach and want to
help the team by exercising the attitude of the team and enhancing ways of working.
What are the few steps you will pick up to challenge the prevailing conditions and
improve?
Case Study -6:
You have started a coaching assignment with a team, and you have discovered the
below situation in the team context.
One of the team members was profoundly motivated to accomplish a high-quality
outcome, though two others were content with merely just gaining a pass, i.e., they
were thrilled to put in minimal effort. This mismatch of expectations caused many
complications and frustration for team members.

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Two other team members were extremely competitive on this team, which
neutralized the development of an interdependent team environment. They were
extremely concentrated on our own tasks and were not sympathetic in helping others
who may have been having problems.
The team showed little concern for each other and gave almost no assistance to
others in troublesome times. Team members seemed unfamiliar and greatly
surprised that they had upset other team members with their commentaries. They
seemed to have not recognized they were hurting other’s feelings by their comments
and the propositions taken to solve team problems. Comments made by team
members demonstrated that peers were inconsiderate of their situation and problems,
and were not inclined to review problems, as they would merely invite criticism and
negative feedback. This resulted in team members not communicating freely or
examining their problems that had potentially crippling effects on the team; this team
was formed randomly. Three of the original team members had a quick discussion
on the project and decided to make a team, and another few teams member arrived
a week later, so the team agreed to accept them in their team, as they were required
to make a team of nine. Expectations and skills were not deliberately analysed; – the
project manager happened to be the youngest in the team and didn’t command the
respect needed. Team members often complain about team meetings being a waste
of time, and also of team members being late or contributing effectively. One team
member felt that he was not included in decision-making and did not receive all
communication regarding the progress and development of the project from the
project manager. The overall management of this team was realized to be
unproductive by most of the team members.
What are the few steps you will start taking to improve the team coaching?
What areas to focus on for Exercise?

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Case study 7:
Team UxMaximizer is supposed to deliver the working software at every certain
interval. But deliverables are not happening at the right speed. The team is composed
of 7 members, but most of these members are not up to the mark in terms of domain
and technical knowledge. The required skill set is significantly lagging. The conflict
among the team members is high as they are not able to solve the problem on time.
The manager of the team is trying hard to resolve issues by sitting with each one of
them. But it is not good enough. The team is undergoing a reskilling drive, but
motivation is lagging. Team members are lethargic to take on the work.
Team member’s experience levels are right set. There is a mixture of junior and
senior team members.
The support from top seniors’ leadership is not so good. They are constantly
pressurizing and blaming the team for not performing at the appropriate level.
The Manager of the team trying hard but still getting the blame from senior leaders.
The team members are not owning the overall responsibility. They have been with
the company for 10 + years and they know the tricks of the game!
What do you think as a High-performance team coach, a few steps you will start?
How do you define your short-term and long-term goals to improve the team
outcomes and output?
Case Study 8:

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Team Diagnostic Monitoring is employed in developing an algorithm that should
optimize the search. When voice search enables, the accuracy based on the accent
has to be improved. The team consists of 4 members team. The scrum master and
product owner are both goods in domain and technology. The team includes
extensive attrition. The team members own the end-to-end product development.
The team dynamics are appropriately set. There is a reasonable and learning
environment. The share and care are properly distributed. But the team members are
going out for a further opportunity. The new members are joining the team and
overall delivery speed is coming down due to the immense learning curve. Team
leadership is very good and servant leadership styles are visible.
You are the coach for this team.
What are all the varied actions you would prefer to pick up to improve the situation?
All the project-related meetings are followed in a well-crafted manner as SM and
PO are extremely mature and they are the finest in the organization.
Case study 9:
One of my colleagues has recently joined one of the huge complex programs.
Let me explain briefly about the program.
It takes 10 yrs. To get the first drop of oil from an oil well.
The chance of obtaining the first drop of oil from the oil well is also 1 in 10. If we
dig 10 oil wells, we may get 1 or 2 rigs where we will get oil.

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So, what is the complication we are talking about? It takes several dozens of
numerous expert engineers to function together for many years to get the initial drop
of oil.
So what? How can an organization make money? The country’s jurisdiction is also
playing a substantial role here. The geopolitical atmosphere also contributes to or
risks to the business.
So what problem are we talking about? How can modern digital technology aid us
to speed up the oil exploration business? Can we use big data technology? Can we
use cloud technology? and we use UX to build solutions? Some of the question’s
organizations have been asking for the last several years and have started building
solutions around those.
So, my friend joined the team where 150+ varieties of engineers are functioning
together to deal with this complex problem.
Exploring by employing digital technology, can we build the solution?
It is a multi-year program, and he has joined as a scrum master for 3 different scrum
teams to take care of.
It is a globally distributed team.
 By reading all these parameters, what thoughts come to your mind?
 How do you want to guide my friend to start up his journey in a smooth and
rapid manner?
 What are the numerous team factors he should examine for the first month, 4
months, and 6 months’ timeline?

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 If you are a team coach, what would be your advice for him to embed him into
a High-performance team?
Case study 10:
You are the Agile Coach of one of the freshly created teams. ScrumMaster is new,
the Product Owner is a consultant, and also new to this team. Most of the team
members are joined recently by this team. Some of the team members are subject
matter experts and they have deep domain expertise in the system. The organization
is making to develop a product that will solve a complex customer problem. The
concept is not yet established. The product owner is also not too certain how the
product will be expanding and introduced into the ecosystem where the data will be
obtained and dispatched. The complete system is emerging. There is too much
turmoil at the team level including the product architecture level. Everyone prefers
to contribute and monopolize the meeting. The ideas are widely divergent, and we
do not get to any conclusions. The team is a global team with many nationalities
working with diverse cultures and backgrounds. You are the team coach for this
team. Leadership is calling for help to uphold the team to traverse this perplexed
state. Few team members are from the conventional world, and few team members
know agile ways of performing.
What are the few steps you will start to reinforce the team in this forming stage?
What is your vision for this performing state?
What activities are you thinking of for the 3-month timeline?
Case study 11:

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Ram is the team leader and manager for an old team that is taking care of the product,
which is the centre of the business transaction. The system takes care of everyday
transactions and reconciliation. There are 40 people work in this team.
The system is primitive and outdated, and the team is struggling hard to maintain the
system. But there are fractures in the team as well as the system.
There are many issues in the team.
Most of the time, when many incidents take place, Ram loses his emotional control
to fix the issue faster as every second’s cost is huge. As Ram as a leader is terrified,
team members follow it.
Ram’s task accomplishment, the ritual of role, interpersonal relationships, and
power, all are at stake.
Ram is supposed to show how to contribute constructively by taking care of key
details, and by showing up to the wider purpose of the company, but it is not the
case. Ram could not establish a sense of shared credit with others for achievements
and likewise could not present an obsession with learning from impediments.
Ram is, as a leader, not competent to clarify boundaries between responsibilities,
both horizontally and vertically. Most of the time, he is micromanaging. Ram cannot
make sure that systems and procedures are designed by the people who use them,
and all join in learning from others’ successes and failures in handling complex
tasks. Ram turns an ignorant eye when people bend or ignore rules, formal channels,
and procedures. It creates turbulence in the team. Team members are not able to
share sensitive information about their personal encounters; are not apt to share with

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others. Which creates disturbance among team members. Ram is not accessible most
of the time and does not provide enough attention to the team’s needs.
You are the team coach for this team. What coaching stunts will you create for this
team to improve team performance?
Case study 12:
You are coaching a team. You have recognized some challenges in the team, and it
is due to the command-and-control manager in the team.
You have a situation where the supervisor was creating complications and his
employees were experiencing a troublesome time dealing with his employees.
Employees were frightened to open their mouths.
You know that when the problem is a manager, this presents an extraordinary set of
complications for employees. Fear of vengeance is the number one reason
employees cite for not coming forward with employee/manager workplace issues.
Employees realize that their managers will take it out on them if he finds out that
employees have been saying things behind his backs.
Retaliation can be laborious to substantiate if it doesn’t involve whistleblowing or
harassment, and no one else comes forward with complaints.
You figured it out that the supervisor had terrible people skills. In the same
organization engineers or other technologists are elevated to the level of manager,
but these individuals often lack any kind of people skills. Often, they're promoted
because they are the ‘star pupil,’ but occasionally it is not a suitable fit, and can be
a catastrophe.
The manager used retaliatory practices to get back at employees who complained
about him. People would complain that he would castigate them in front of other

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employees during staff meetings. He played favourites among the employees,
allocating exclusive concessions to those individuals whom he admired.
Other employees called these people ‘suck-ups.’ His team suffered from low morale
and would transfer out of his area as soon as another opportunity presented itself.
As a coach, what are some of the steps, you think you should take to improve team
performance.
Case Study 13:
Exploring Agile for ERP roll out e.g., SAP
According to the latest annual State of Agile Report™, the top three benefits cited by survey
respondents for adopting agile are the ability to manage changing priorities, increased team
productivity, and improved project visibility.
Why not get the benefits from ERP-based projects, e.g., SAP or Cloud rollout?
Most of the time, team members think that agile is incompatible with ERP rollout.
Organizations can get quantifiable improved results on the application of agile to ERP programs.
Agile approaches, until recently, were looked at to be more suitable to software product
development than ERP implementations. SAP AG itself started adopting Agile development
around 2010, releasing Agile extensions to ASAP 8 as an essential part of SAP Solution Manager.
When we are thinking of Agile for SAP projects, businesses require to realize that Agile, as it
pertains to SAP, is distinct from Agile for a new software solution development.
Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) is greatly different from a packaged application like
SAP versus a new software solution development we make by ourselves.

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In the new software solution development, there is no delivered functioning application; We have
to develop a working solution by ourselves. In the SAP world, a working solution has been brought
to us by SAP.
What we’re looking at is we’re picking up the functioning application, considering the
specifications, and later making a fit/gap analysis. Then we’re picking up that and extending into
the next set of exercises around process design, configuration, and master data definition. Even
though SAP delivers the solution, it has to be configured to meet the requirements of our business.
Core building activities really consist of setting up a business process that crosses business units
and spans functional areas. Then there’s the testing, which is an unquestionably substantial part of
the entire project.
In the conclusion, there’s a considerable foundation that has to be established to bring the minimum
system of functionality required to add business value. It is always good to move into the MVP
model.
MVP1…MVPn to demonstrate the incremental value generation.
Large SAP Projects usually progress through numerous stages: project preparation, scoping
(Blueprint), realization, Final Preparation, Post Go-Live support, and closure.
With agile, projects are spread in smaller blocks that experience delivery in small iterations known
as sprints. Therefore, businesses require to acknowledge uncertainty when dealing with agile and
also admit that solutions will emerge. By this, the risk of publishing improper work also gets
reduced.
The formation of teams is an essential element. It should be in a manner where collaboration can
be increased. Team members need to find ways or mechanism that work for them. Cross-functional
teams need to operate together in a smaller chunk for specific requirements and resolve value
delivery.
Stakeholder mapping is one of the essential elements of this cycle. In the rollout process, all the
critical stakeholders need to be present for all the rollout cycles.

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Advantages of Agile in SAP implementation:
• Fast results within 4 weeks of each sprint cycle.
• Priority-based development as per client requirement. Hence immense gratification.
• Lower the overall IT cost.
• High visibility and quantitative outcomes.
• Stronger coordination. All partners are connected from the initial setup of the project.
• Risks are analysed in the introductory stage and hence handled efficiently.
• Resilience to accommodate changes in each sprint.
• Periodic release of the software.
A few challenges we need to address in the SAP project:
• Formation of the team members consisting of business and partners and product team members
• Incremental goal definition and agreed by all stakeholders
• Identify maximum core functionalities and start working on those in iterative manners.
• Continuous adaptation and learning from mistake
• Silos mindset among the various departments and team members. Collaboration is the way
forward.
• Old school of thoughts has to be eradicated with proper training.
• People have to participate in all the events, and they need to find time to contribute.
• Old way of working has to be re-looked at and optimized wherever possible

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• Team members have to find a way to implement an Agile way of working on SAP roll-out
• Too many Product Owners could cause issues, let us find one decision-maker in decision making.
• Accept the disruption and changes, find a way out
• Priorities are established on the basis of the most added value for the organization model and
design Agile organizational structure
• Project Manager to take care of schedule, status report, project cost, consultancy recruitment,
project status meetings, cut over elaboration, integrated testing stages, go, hyper-care, etc.
• Writing user stories in SAP projects for 4 weeks sprint delivery needs to discover and learn from
the experiment
• SAP typically requires more upfront preparation before "sprinting" can begin. By building a
baseline, we provide an architectural runway for the agile SAP program and enable sprint teams
to start delivering user stories related to system functionality. Be ready with this.
• Some business processes in an SAP system are extremely complex and take significantly longer
than a single sprint to design and build. It is crucial we have an early and ongoing dialog between
the business and scrum teams to stay organized and keep the program on track. Have patience and
keep collaborating with all the stakeholders.
• “Agile” is an attitude of flexibility and nimbleness.
Case Study 14:
The Reno bank attributes the fruitful collaboration between their Development and
Product support/Maintenance teams almost exclusively to their unique approach to
hiring.
During interviews, team members seek a collaboration mindset. It is not entirely the
main consideration for hiring candidates but is also applied to company-wide for

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team building and daily communication. Interview techniques are exclusively based
on the life experience achieved based on the organization’s defined values. Another
focus area is also to peek into thinking attributes (Analytical, structural, Social, and
conceptual) and behavioural attributes (Expressiveness, assertiveness, and
flexibility) that are fundamental.
The several rounds of interviews with the various panel members to substantiate all
the collaboration aspects.
The Human Resources department also seeks to hire individuals with a diversity of
thinking patterns, as well as cultural, gender, and ethnic diversity. Employees are
also leveraged in interviews to ensure that the candidates will be beneficial to that
team’s unique culture and skill set. The process is not standardized but customized
for every position.
Weekly meetings and cross-training programs are key internal processes that are also
responsible for the Reno bank’s commendable collaborative environment. The
development and maintenance support departments understand their role in the
greater organization and therefore work hard to show appreciation for other teams
and accommodate their needs. Personnel also showed commendable levels of
personal accountability.
Development personnel are not afraid of getting their hands dirty and will often take
care of small matters themselves rather than calling maintenance to do so. The
organization also makes a point of celebrating its successes together.
· You are the team coach for this team, what are all aspects you will look into
to start your coaching?

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· If all the things are going well, what role are you going to play?
Case Study 15:
Jack is the Lead Manager for the RPA (Robotic Process Automation) department.
Jack has been hired to establish this department and start this initiative in the
organization. There was a deal to enlarge the team to cater to international needs.
Due to the pandemic, recruitment has been suspended. Jack is supposed to take care
of himself on his own. There are few team members given who are interested in
knowing Robotics process automation, but they are not the experienced person RPA.
They will be learning with other RPA experts and performing the assignment. Jack
is on this assignment for the last 6 months and there is no recruitment hope. Jack has
been challenged to take care of the current manpower. There is insisting to
demonstrate the work progress!
Jack has presented the roadmap and has set up the strategy of what to be done and
how, but the right manpower with the skill demand is missing. There is tension
among team members that they will not see what will happen to this new initiative.
They are not able to perform any substantive work as they are not skilled. There is a
persistent conflict as pressure is high to show some improvement. The organization
does not have any sign of further expanding the investment in RPA. Several attempts
with leadership failed to show any sign of progress. Leadership wants to run the
show with the existing members and show improvement before investing further.
There is a deadlock situation. Jack is under pressure and collapsing his energy
You are the team coach for this team, which consists of 6 people, including the lead
manager Jack.

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· What is your coaching strategy and guideline for this team?
· How can you build this team a high-performance team?
Case Study 16:
Jayavel is the Product Owner. He is a remarkably brilliant product owner. He is
working on a datacenter-to cloud migration program. It is an exceedingly big,
massive program where the organization does not have much proficiency. He
engages one vendor to do his assignment. But it touches on many other departments
to be on board with this process. Jayavel was egotistical, and it was his
brainchild, the cloud migration work. He does not want to give credit to others for
this work! Without engaging the other department entirely, he engages the
transformation work entirely with the vendors. He has a good repo with the
department head. The department head trusts his capabilities. He has almost
established the strategic plan to migrate all units to the cloud. But he was missing
support from the other team, as he was not eager to give the credit to the other
product owners. The conflict increases among the other scrum teams and members
of the Jayavel team. The upper management has to dissolve the transformation work,
as tension has heightened to the top level.
The organization is absolutely aware that they have to perform the cloud migration
as the license fees for the data centers and operation costs are not sustainable.
You are the team coach.
· How do you bring in a High-performance team in the whole setup?
· What strategy will you employ here to build a collaborative team?

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THANK YOU

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