Give Credit

to Collaboration
& Commitment
From Low Expectations
to Forecast-Topping Results

A Success Story

 Give Credit to Collaboration

& Commitment
Engagement Type

Agile launch

The Challenge

Train and launch agile teams for the credit group of a financial services company
with nearly 250,000 employees worldwide.

The Clients Goals

Launch pilot program and scale so that teams can delivery more quickly and
with greater predictability. Increase understanding of leadership/management role
on an agile project.

The BigVisible Approach

Assess the current situation, plan customized training & coaching, start sprinting
with a pilot team. Adjust the plan, scale, and offer suggestions to sustain results.

What We Delivered

The successful launch of 10 agile teams, some co-located and some distributed.
A culture of continuous improvement and team input into decision-making.

The BigVisible Difference

By working directly with both leadership and teams, our BigVisible coaches were
able to create an atmosphere where real change and sustained success were
possible. With help from our agile coaches, the group quickly scaled to 10,
coordinating and collaborating agile teamsand from complete skepticism to total
buy-in to an agile way of working.

Just the Facts

Industry: Financial Services

Number of Employees: 250K

Length of Engagement: 4 months

Number of BigVisible Coaches: 2

Teams Launched: 10

Give Credit to Collaboration

& Commitment

How agile coaching helped one group transition from

low expectations to forecast-topping results.
By Carlos Buxton and Rebecca Traeger

Research
conducted at the
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology
(MIT) suggests
that agile firms
grow revenue 37%
faster and generate
30% higher profits
than non-agile
companies.*

Abstract

Not too long ago, a financial services company called on our agile coaches to
work with both leadership and development teams as they transitioned to an agile
process. Through a combination of training and coaching, BigVisible coaches helped
a 120-person group successfully launch 10 agile teams and institute company-wide
practices for sustained success with Scrum. By the time our coaches left, features
that used to take more than a year to build and release were complete and ready for
production every month. Teams that used to work in silos, unaware of how their work
impacted others, became a cohesive group, working together toward a common vision
and achieving previously unimaginable results.

Overview

Agile is nothing but a passing fad, a lot of hype that ultimately wont make any
difference. That was the opinion of most of the team members when we arrived at
this financial services company for the first time. Most of the people in the group had
seen several management theories come and go and were understandably skeptical
that this latest initiative would be any different. To say they had low expectations was
an understatement.

What this group did have was an innate curiosity, a willingness to try a new way of
working, and a tremendous amount of management and leadership support. Company
leaders had called BigVisible in originally to help them understand where they fit
into a system of self-organizing teams and what appeared to be a plan-as-you-go
philosophy. After some initial training, these leaders and managers soon became
some of agiles biggest advocates. Managements willingness to not just invest in a
new methodology but also to give it time to develop, to delay forecasting until they had
real data, and to work directly with teams to truly understand the challenges at that
level were instrumental to the groups ultimate success.

Assess & Plan

We began by training the managers about agile, Scrum, and the leaders role in an
agile organization. In doing so, we were able to work directly with everyone from
project managers to the executive director of the division. After this initial training,
management agreed to kickoff one pilot team and see how it went.

*PMI Pulse of the Profession

95% of BigVisible
clients extend their
initial engagements
based on the
strength of our
results.

Through a series of informal conversations with the chosen pilot team members, we
customized a training program to fill in the gaps in their agile and Scrum knowledge.
We then worked with the pilot team for 2-3 sprints, from creating an initial project
backlog through working as a team to releasing working software. Throughout the
process, we documented our efforts so that we could create a repeatable process to
launch other agile teams.

Start

The teams began by using Scrum. They were able to identify several improvement
opportunities during the first sprint and, with the help from our agile coaches, were
soon able to tweak the Scrum process to one that worked well for their particular
product and environment.
As they began producing and showing off new features, their excitement levels grew.
They had never before developed anything tangible so quickly. A buzz began to
develop throughout the other teamssoon all the teams wanted to be launched at
once so that they could enjoy the same success.

Our agile coaches cautioned against scaling

too quickly. They knew that some of the other
teams would face different challenges: they were
not co-located and had widely varying levels of
agile expertise. The coaches suggested that the
next launch be a distributed team, so that those
learning could be applied to future team launches.
The client agreed.

Teams and leaders...

made the mindset
switch from throwing
problems over the wall
to deep conversations
and collaboration

Scale

Our agile coaches wanted to create the same sense of camaraderie on a distributed
agile team as the co-located team. They knew they would need new tools and tactics
to bring team members in far-off countries together with those in the US. Our agile
coaches started with a remote kickoff via video conferencing. With a panoramic screen
and a 24-hour-a-day dedicated connection, the tool made the participants feel as
though they were all in the same room, even though they were separated by many
miles and time zones. The coaches used the video conferencing tool to deliver the
initial training and left the connection open continuously for the first 3-4 days of the
sprint so that they team went through release planning, creating team rules, and their
first sprint planning meeting in an room surrounded by their teammates, even ones
who were far away.

Agile Principle
#6: The most

Time to Release, in Months

14

efficient and
effective method
of conveying
information to
and within a
development team
is face-to-face
conversation.

12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Before Agile

After Agile

The effect of the panoramic video conferencing surpassed our coaches expectations.
I was expecting that face-to-face release planning would be significantly, measurably
better than remote planning, said one of the agile coaches. I was surprised with how
natural it became to spend the day in front of a camera. Im not sure if it was the fact that
the screen was so large that everyone felt life-sized or what, but we felt as though we
were all in the same room. And our results, at least for this first team, were shockingly
similar to the co-located team.
After 4 months, the client had successfully launched 10 agile teams, some co-located
and some distributed. Though they did not all match the success of the first two teams,
they did all produce and release features at a rate that they could never have imagined
when the project began.

Sustain

With 10 agile teams working on new features and products, the client began to
look for ways to coordinate the efforts of the teams and also share practices across
teams. One innovative solution the client instituted was the cocktail hour, a series of
meetings where team members, functional groups, and management could all gather
to share what they had learned. These happened daily at first, and then became more
of a weekly occurrence as the teams became more used to an agile way of working.

One key factor for this groups success was the agile emphasis on releasing working
software. Being able to see and touch what the teams were creating gave management
early confirmation that the agile teams were building the right things, with better quality
than ever before. As the teams received more and more positive feedback, they gained
confidence in their new delivery method. The team members expressed that they felt
more motivated and had a new sense of camaraderie.

Game Changer:
Cocktail Hour

One of the most impactful practices this

group adopted as they began to scale was
the cocktail hour. This end-of-day meeting
was broken up into a series of 15-minute
increments, with 5-minute breaks between.
The first 15 minutes were reserved for
each teams daily Scrum, an opportunity
for team members to discuss their progress
and obstacles that day. The next 15-minute
increment was a functional meeting, where
all the product owners or business analysts
or testers from different Scrum teams came
together to share ideas and learnings as a
functional group. The last fifteen minutes
was set aside for the leaders and managers
to work through organization-level problems,
such as hardware that was held up in red
tape or issues that had come up in the daily
Scrums or functional meetings.
As time went on and the company became
more used to Scrum, the full-scale cocktail
hour was held weekly instead of daily. But
it remains an important communication and
collaboration tool for this organization.

With 10 agile teams working on new

features and products, the client
began to look for ways to coordinate
the efforts of the teams and also
share practices across teams. One
innovative solution the client instituted
was the cocktail hour, a series of
meetings where team members,
functional groups, and management
could all gather to share what they had
learned. These happened daily at first,
and then became more of a weekly
occurrence as the teams became
more used to an agile way of working.

One key factor for this groups

success was the agile emphasis on
releasing working software. Being
able to see and touch what the teams
were creating gave management
early confirmation that the agile teams were building the right things, with better quality
than ever before. As the teams received more and more positive feedback, they gained
confidence in their new delivery method. The team members expressed that they felt
more motivated and had a new sense of camaraderie.
Another key factor was the level to which managers and leaders involved themselves
in learning agile and working directly with teams. The chief product owner, for example,
who was by title a director and who would ultimately be responsible for multiple team
releases, began by working as the product owner for a single agile team. She explained
that she felt the best way to understand the challenges of the individual teams and
product owners that would report to her was to live life as a product owner herself, at
least for a few sprints.
This hands-on attitude extended to decision making. The leaders and managers
werent content to make plans and decisions for the teams. Instead, through activities
like the cocktail hour and attending team reviews and retrospectives, they encouraged
everyone to contribute to planning and decisionsto understand not just what to do,
but why to do it.
6

Management also worked to clear obstacles that stood in the way of improvements.
For example, when multiple teams reported being blocked by a dependency on a
separate database analyst group, management took steps to incorporate DBAs into
agile teams to the extent possible within the larger constraints of the organization.
Working with our agile coaches, they created a temporary, improvised interface that
allowed the DBAs to be part of the extended agile teams by attending sprint planning
and daily meetings. They also worked through capacity problems to help reduce time
teams spent waiting for a DBA to be free to work with them. As a long-term project,
they began to work outside the group toward the goal of removing the DBA silo and
creating embedded DBAs.
When our coaches left, they felt confident the client had not just the right skills and tools,
but also the right attitude for sustained success with agile. The teams and leaders had
made the mindset switch from throwing problems over the wall to deep conversations
and collaboration. They were continuing to scale using the lessons learned from the
pilot teams and were consistently delivering the right features with the right quality
at a predictable monthly rate. The
The results didnt stop when our
coaches give all the credit to the
clients commitment to collaborative
coaches left. The client continues
decision making and willingness
to scale using the lessons learned
to take the leap of faith toward an
from the pilot teams and still
agile way of working.
consistently delivers the right

features with the right quality at a

predictable monthly rate.

Want to be
the next
success story?
Contact us now to
learn more about
partnering with us
to successfully meet
your business goals!
Email:
Info@bigvisible.com

BIG Wins:
Successful launch of 10 agile teams, both distributed and co-located
Commitment to leadership, management, and team-level agile training
Collaborative environment with regular cross-team sharing
Improved delivery time, features that had previously taken a year or
more and still werent quite right, are now delivered each month.

You Can Replicate This Success with BigVisible Solutions!

Phone:
1-800-675-1757
7