Accelerated Agile Skills and Ways of Working of Business & IT Leaders, Program Managers, Scrum Masters, Product Owners in an European Bank
As part of an Organizational Transformation program in an European Bank, one major portfolio in the bank with 4 Programs and 10 teams across it, wanted to improve Agile skills and Ways of Working of its Business & IT Leaders, Program Managers, Product Owners, and Scrum Masters, and help them succeed in their roles.
With due interaction with the Business & IT Leaders, Program Managers, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, I custom designed Accelerator Programs for each of the roles with 10 sessions one hour each spanning across a quarter. The programs included Business and Operating context, expected Roles and Responsibilities to succeed, Practical examples of successful people in the roles, samples of their work, and their success stories, learning of Tools, Utilities, and Templates, problem solving discussions, and concluded with knowledge check questionnaire and internal certifications at the end.
Achieved Outcome:
The Accelerator programs not only gave understanding of the roles and their day-to-day work responsibilities, but also it gave insight how people in these roles have been successful in the past, it equipped them with the needed skills, tools, utilities, and templates. It also created room to discuss and solve the challenges they face while applying the learnings at work. At the end they completed the scheduled tests, obtained internal certifications, and demoed their new work to their leaders which established trust and confidence with the senior leadership.
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​Client Feedback:
The was extremely happy with the development as they witnessed significant improvement in the skills and Agile ways of working of the leaders in the programs of their portfolio that helped in delivery and in executing the programs successfully.
Formed new Agile Teams and launched Agile Programs (Agile Release Trains) with Scaled Agile Framework and PI Planning Event in a FMCG leader
A European FMCG company wanted to completely transform one of its product portfolios into Agile, and implement Product Centric Operating Model in it to improve Value Delivery, Time to Market, Product Quality, Collaboration & Engagement among members, and Governance & Operations.
With a Strategy and incremental Roadmap, I created Product Centric or Value Stream centric Agile Programs or ARTs, with multiple Feature teams and Solution team in it operating in Scrum/Kanban. Created Product Roadmaps, OKRs/Metrics, Backlogs, Delivery Plans for Product Management. Created events at Team and Program level and Collaboration Boards/Dashboards/Metrics for Program Management, Governance and Operations. Created Roles & Responsibilities Playbook for members and leaders to orient them on their expected ways of working and program delivery.
Implemented Scaled Agile Framework with Scrum/Kanban teams, events/ceremonies, product & sprint backlogs, increments, dashboards/metrics. Implemented Azure DevOps Lifecycle Management Tool for Product Management, Backlog Management, Quality Management, Release Management, Risk Management, Transparency & Visibility, Collaboration, Engagement & Governance. Finally launched ART/Program with PI Planning/Big Room Planning event with complete team and stakeholder involvement.
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Achieved Outcome:
Transformed the whole Program/Value Stream into Agile and launched Agile Release Train equipped with multiple cross-functional Agile teams capable of end-to-end delivery. Now the program runs in a scheduled cadence of sprints boarding all the teams and stakeholders together, and is able to prep, plan, execute, sync, deliver, and review products/functionality release by release continuously following Agile practices, methodology, and framework. The Business/IT stakeholders are instantly able to visualize the roadmap, progress, projections, quality, and performance through dashboards and metrics which is helping perform Program Management, Product Management, Governance and Operations.
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​Client Feedback:
Very happy that we successfully transformed into Agile. It seemed impossible before, but now we are 100% satisfied with the outcome we achieved. It helped us achieve more value delivery in less time. We were able to release products to market which were stuck due to inefficiency. Now the whole program is aligned and moves like one engine to deliver prioritized products/functionalities incrementally through iterations. The Agile operations is inclusive, participative, and engaging for all team members and leaders.
Setup efficient Management, Operations and Governance in Teams, Programs and Portfolios in a Bank
A European FMCG company was increasingly facing challenges in engaging its multi-vendor multi-region development work force, tracking work progress and delivering products/functionality wanted by Product Managers. Without visibility of teams and their work, performance, progress, projections it was difficult to make business decisions. The company wanted to improve team inclusion, collaboration, engagement, work visibility, and execution to achieve successful delivery.
With a Strategy and incremental Roadmap, I created Product Centric or Value Stream centric Agile Programs or ARTs, with multiple Feature teams and Solution team in it operating in Scrum/Kanban. Created Product Roadmaps, OKRs/Metrics, Backlogs, Delivery Plans for Product Management. Created events at Team and Program level and Collaboration Boards/Dashboards/Metrics for Program Management, Governance and Operations. Created Roles & Responsibilities Playbook for members and leaders to orient them on their expected ways of working and program delivery.
Implemented Scaled Agile Framework with Scrum/Kanban teams, events/ceremonies, product & sprint backlogs, increments, dashboards/metrics. Implemented Azure DevOps Lifecycle Management Tool for Product Management, Backlog Management, Quality Management, Release Management, Risk Management, Transparency & Visibility, Collaboration, Engagement & Governance. Finally launched ART/Program with PI Planning/Big Room Planning event with complete team and stakeholder involvement. The whole program team including business-IT stakeholders experienced how everything work together for a pilot release with complete handholding, training, and coaching.
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Achieved Outcome:
Transformed the whole Program/Value Stream into Agile and launched Agile Release Train equipped with multiple cross-functional Agile teams capable of end-to-end delivery. Now the program runs in a scheduled cadence of sprints boarding all the teams and stakeholders together, and is able to prep, plan, execute, sync, deliver, and review products/functionality release by release continuously following Agile practices, methodology, and framework. The Business/IT stakeholders are instantly able to visualize the roadmap, progress, projections, quality, and performance through dashboards and metrics which is helping perform Program Management, Product Management, Governance and Operations.
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​Client Feedback:
Very happy that we successfully transformed into Agile. It seemed impossible before, but now we are 100% satisfied with the outcome we achieved. It helped us achieve more value delivery in less time. We were able to release products to market which were stuck due to inefficiency. Now the whole program is aligned and moves like one engine to deliver prioritized products/functionalities incrementally through iterations. The Agile operations is inclusive, participative, and engaging for all team members and leaders.
Led a program adopt centralized ALM tool Azure DevOps (ADO) to increase collaboration in the program in a IT Middleware major
An IT Middleware company, wanted to organize its work, people, releases, governance with a central tool Azure DevOps for its multi-vendor multi-region teams in a portfolio. The IT Stakeholders cautioned that similar initiatives had failed in the past in the organization due to team resistance.
With multiple discussions with the teams and Business & IT Leaders, I outlined a incremental implementation strategy for Azure DevOps. We first rolled it out to one team as Pilot. And then scaled up the implementation to the whole portfolio, with review and feedback from all. All the teams, programs, and the whole portfolio utilized the tool as Single Source of Truth, they used it as main collaboration tool to visualize, manage, plan, sync, test, and review the work. In ADO, we have created Product Roadmaps, Product Backlog, Delivery Plans, Program Boards, Sprint Backlog, Workflows, Teams, Boards, Dashboards, and Metrics etc. that teams need to complete their day-to-day work.
Through complete handholding and coaching sessions, the teams got confidence of using the tool to fulfill their necessities and meet their goals. With the help of the Azure DevOps tool they completed their PI Planning, Sprint Planning, Daily Standup, Backlog Refinement (with estimation and prioritization), Sprint Review, Scrum of Scrums, PO Sync, Quarterly Business Review events for multiple Program Increments, delivered products and functionalities for multiple releases successfully.
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Achieved Outcome:
It has brought efficiency to the teams, programs, and the whole portfolio in its management, operations, and governance, and saved everyone's time and effort persistently. The ad-hoc meetings are dramatically reduced. Coupled with the ceremonies, Microsoft Teams, ADO enabled the portfolio stay on the same page all the time removing differences and bringing transparency. Business & IT Stakeholders can see current state of work, roadmaps, priorities, delivery plans, projections, work of teams, progress/performance/quality metrics instantly whenever they need and make decisions.
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​Client Feedback:
ADO implementation came as a boon to our Product Owners. Our work became so easy now. We can clearly communicate the User Stories to the developers and also can rope in Users to validate the requirements both during the development and after its done. We all are on the same page, sharing and consuming information transparently--the roadmap, the plan, the progress, delivered value, the feedback etc. It's a saving of weeks of our time and effort. Decision making is simple now.
Implemented DevSecOps & engineering practices in the teams of a Program, enabled T-Shaped Skillset, made the teams self-organized and high performing
A Bank wanted to implement end-to-end engineering practices and automations in its teams for a banking program to improve their performance and speedup value delivery. They wanted to get rid of the persistent production issues and quality issues at once. At the same time they wanted to give 100% ownership to their teams for development, deployment, and operations.
I collaborated with the banks in-house cloud enabler tech team, and developed strategy/roadmap to onboard the banking application team with DevSecOps automated pipeline to test and deploy User Stories automatically with minimal intervention. At the same time I implemented XP engineering practices in the team to improve the development quality. Coached the team on improvising their skillset to own end-end responsibility to a large extent for delivering User Stories. The teams now self-organized and able to share responsibility and own the needed work, and deliver the business value without being blocked. The team performance has gone up and so the value delivery with high predictability.
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Achieved Outcome:
The whole team, in collaboration with the Business & IT stakeholders, can now take complete responsibility right from requirements, planning, development, deployment, and operations for their the application/service they own. The Production issues and quality issues has been declined sharply. Now the teams can release functionality on demand any time they want as their pipeline is fully automated. The business value they deliver every sprint has improved, and the Lead Time for each User Story has come down.
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​Client Feedback:
Our teams now taking up work ambitiously, and delivering more and more User Stories successfully every release. This is an extraordinary turnaround. It helps us focusing on Governance and Operations leaving out the complete ownership of development to the teams, and commit to business with confidence. Business has started trusting us on our commitments and deliveries.
Assessed Agile Maturity of Teams in a IT Company and improved it with Coaching & Transformation
A Bank had multiple unsuccessful non-sustainable Agile Transformation in the past. They wanted to assess current maturity of their Teams/Programs in a Value Stream and wanted to improve it and make it sustainable for long term.
I collaborated with the Teams/Programs in the Value Stream, and ran a discovery process to understand their current maturity by utilizing in-house Agile Maturity Assessment Toolkit. I assessed them across multiple dimensions of Business Agility, such as Business Alignment, Product Management, Leadership Engagement & Support, Governance & Operations, Team Structure, Technical Excellence, DevSecOps & Engineering Practices, Scaled Agile Framework, Continuous Improvement, etc. Based on the findings I created a Coaching and Transformation Roadmap for them and executed it incrementally with complete Leadership engagement and Review.
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Achieved Outcome:
The Teams/Programs in the Value Stream now have successfully ran Agile Sprints and Program Increments for multiple times, each time improving performance and value delivery. The Agile Transformation is more structured, practical, sustainable and aligned to Business & IT leadership. With Playbooks, Tools, Dashboards, and controls for sustainable governance and operations the IT leadership executes the delivery with ease.
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​Client Feedback:
Looking back where we were a year back and where we are now, its a huge change achieved for our Value Stream. We would like to circulate this success story for others to follow. The transparent and relentless execution of coaching and transformation of people and teams worked nicely. The ways of working for everyone is mutually understood and its easy to follow. The tools, dashboards, metrics, events, plans are able to successfully bind all and keep delivering business values each time.
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Setting up Agile Operations and Governance in Teams, Programs and Portfolios
Project Type /
Setting up Agile Operations and Governance in Teams, Projects/Programs, and Portfolios
Date /
2023
Agile Operations and Governance in Programs and Portfolios