0:00
I'd had a tough conversation with the leadership team about projected delivery dates before we kicked off shape up for
0:06
what we were trying to deliver you know talking to various teams of that were doing the work
0:12
um you know and I think we we brought forward that delivery by about four months which was wild
0:19
um so that was really the biggest win out of it just going well I'd already had this tough conversation and
0:26
then suddenly I had a very different conversation around um you know so we'd already done the kind of the hard stuff and then actually
0:33
it was all it was like um under promising and over delivering in that in that way so it felt great to
0:40
just so with the team we have nothing to lose here we've got the time we've been given the grace this period to give this
0:45
a crack let's see what we can get delivered and getting something out by the end of it was
0:51
uh not only great for me but morally for the team I think this is the positivity
0:56
was phenomenal and I think that ownership was huge um I've never seen people be so invested in how something
1:03
was performing ever you know giving you know asking for metrics asking for how
1:08
people were using what what we built and delivered um was really exciting and
1:14
uh yeah just giving people under ownership of the work as well was a huge piece of it
1:25
welcome to Shapers and Builders the show about better ways to deliver great software products today I'm speaking
1:32
with badvin Thunderbolts and Melissa Matthews of go see travel the global car
1:38
rental and motorhome rental site Bachman joined go see as an agile Elite
1:44
about a year ago and piloted shape up together with Melissa a product manager
1:49
and one of the teams at go see this conversation is part of a series about
1:54
companies that use shape up a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp
2:00
if you've never heard of shape up check the show notes for a link to the video shaping in a nutshell by Ryan Singer
2:07
former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book shape up stop running
2:12
in circles and ship work that matters in our conversation we talk about how
2:18
Melissa's team got started with Shape Up and the many pushbacks and doubts that Barton and Melissa had to navigate even
2:25
with the leadership level eventually we'll learn how the team built momentum within the first cycle and was able to
2:32
deliver a critical project months ahead of schedule you'll hear us frequently come back to
2:38
the topic of refinement and how Shape Up pulled the team together and empowered or maybe even forced them to collaborate
2:46
more I'm excited to get to share these insights with you because the implementation of shape up at go see is
2:53
the largest that I've witnessed to date by the time of our recording Barton had
2:58
just kicked off the first cycle for a total of 20 teams across go see travel
3:04
so here it goes enjoy [Music]
3:15
Melissa thank you so much for being here with me today I do want to talk to you about your
3:21
experience in adopting shape up at a really big scale at go see travel and we'll get to that in a minute but before
3:27
we start would you mind introducing yourselves a bit your backgrounds and now your role at go see travel
3:38
as you can tell I am not a native TV but actually Dutch
3:44
and I have been working in New Zealand for the past couple years three plus years now and now working for
3:52
go see travel and working there in a passive agile actual lead at your coach
3:58
and um we have been trying to update our ways of working
4:04
to uh to maximize our efforts cool thank you
4:10
Melissa what about you I am a the e-commerce product manager at
4:15
gosy Travel I've been at go see for two years now prior to that I was working at Air New
4:23
Zealand for seven years as uh e-commerce optimization specialist so
4:29
I've been in the Ecom optimizing website world for a long time and have always
4:35
been very interested in product management so happy to have made that change in my career at go see would you
4:41
like to know more about the background on scrum agile that sort of a thing obviously or is this enough of an
4:46
introduction I mean if you want to you can just kind of back it up by your how many years you've been doing this across
4:53
how many companies what teams of sizes something like that the only purpose it would have other
5:00
than tattoo my own horn is uh is to uh highlight a bit that I I have
5:06
um the topic of this discussion is from scrum to shape up and why did we make that Trend transition it all so
5:14
having been a consultant in in all things agile and scrum Master product
5:19
owner and all these different roles I think that's that's an interesting one to add so I have quite a bit of a track
5:25
record and experience working in in scrum agile kanban you know say for the other Frameworks that you can think of
5:32
so happy to take those uh experiences along when we start discussing Shape Up
5:38
awesome and just to set the scene on go see um how big is the company uh how would
5:44
you describe kind of the life cycle stage because I do talk with a lot of people who are implementing shape up at
5:50
startup scale you know companies three four years old and obviously that is not you so can you kind of set the scene on
5:56
the scale of of the company a bit so go see travel was 15 plus years old our
6:03
primary role is in renting motorhomes and car rental as well so we have two
6:08
different websites uh the aggregate car rental companies and motorhome rentals
6:14
so uh the service that we provide for our users is that you can come and
6:19
search and find the best deal and or the best motorhome or car for your for your
6:25
um journey and it's yeah we're Global and we're in seven different languages so we really serve a wide variety of of
6:33
customers in many countries so it's very exciting and of course coming out of
6:38
code covered we're now looking forward to the future of travel and it's a very
6:44
exciting time to be working in that space and how many people do you have working specifically in kind of the product
6:51
development organization top of my head I don't know how many um are in our product organization you might know the
6:58
numbers but in our team we've got um six Developers
7:04
ba testing team and we're supported by a ux team of two
7:10
um shortly going to be three and how many other product teams do we have do we have four six other than yours right
7:17
yeah okay six product teams and in terms of being fully in the product structure
7:24
we're we're reasonably Junior um we experimented with agile
7:30
cross-functional teams probably in the last three years that weren't permanent product teams they were sort of put
7:35
together to deliver business priorities and they were a
7:41
great way to start and a great way to kind of dip the Tampines codes and add tozen being agile
7:48
um and to deliver exciting projects um but of course they weren't permanent so
7:53
The Fallout of that is that you have short-term deliveries and then you don't really think about the long-term
7:59
management of those deliveries um but we have been in the fully permanent product space for
8:07
just over a year now I'd say or maybe a little bit longer than that what was the word before those three years where you
8:13
said we've kind of started our agile Journey there what was it like before that so I've only been at go see for two
8:20
years so before that I'm not fully sure but what I understand is that it was a real startup mentality in the business
8:26
for a long time and I think that's why Airport Rentals and motorhome Republic which are two different
8:32
um public facing websites I think that's why they were so successful is because
8:37
they were built really quickly in a market that was really competitive and
8:43
were about really built especially Airport Rentals was built um structured around Google AdWords the
8:52
name really being structured for that Airport Rentals car rentals so we're really great and geared up for when
8:57
people are searching for cars they tend to want to book a car at an airport um and so the founder were really
9:06
um I guess sharp in that space and they had people and they you know they really knew at the time when they when the
9:12
business was founded that you had to be um if you knew how to do Google AdWords correctly at that early stage
9:19
um you'd really be first in the market and um you know that's continued to evolve and the way they built
9:26
um and customized the sites were they were really into a b testing really really early on and optimization really
9:32
early on and so there was this great um from what I understand mentality in
9:38
the business that if you had an idea you would just go for it and they would test it and try it and anyone could contribute to that funnel of ideas
9:46
um and so I think that was really why they were successful so early and continue to be as well
9:51
but that mentality somehow kind of lost its usefulness at some point
9:58
yeah I think it's hard when you get bigger and bigger and then you um we were acquired by webjet just before
10:05
covert hit um and of course when you start to get to the size and you have to start
10:11
playing a little bit more by the rules um and you become a little bit more of that corporate structure where you get
10:16
bigger and bigger and I think um yeah you just uh you have to do a bit of
10:22
growing up and so there was you know bigger teams put in place um and
10:29
I think what happened was just when you have so many people working in silos
10:35
it's really hard to kind of think on your feet that quickly and that dream of
10:41
being in that startup spheres you know everyone a lot of the the um people were still the people that were in the
10:47
founding space still remained um and so there was a lot of this oh we
10:52
used to do it like this and we used to move so quickly and then it became we became really bogged down in the tech
10:58
um of how we you know when you build really fast at the beginning you might not be thinking about future proofing
11:03
yourself um so in my mind I think they need they were trying to get back to this space
11:09
where they could be Innovative move quickly like they did at the beginning
11:15
um and I I guess from what I understand you know looking at the way product teams are put together is they had to
11:21
start serving our Tech in different ways and also thinking more about the customer so I think that's where the the
11:27
idea around bringing in that agile cross-functional team started um but that became that was great for a
11:34
time but that yeah became a bit of a challenge in terms of short-term delivery and then realizing that we
11:41
weren't continuing to serve what we were trying to deliver and it kind of would be delivered and then
11:46
stop there wasn't any that continued focus and Innovation and also thinking
11:52
about the customer as well button do you want to talk us through when you joined what were you seeing how
11:59
were you observing the organization and the issues and the opportunities I guess I think one of the earliest things well
12:07
any anybody joining a new organization will do some bit of analysis right so what is this new organization I'm
12:12
stepping into what are the teams like what's the way that we create value if you want to want to take it that that
12:18
broad um so one of the first things that I I saw and I through my years as a
12:25
consultant and and agile professional for lack of a better word typically this
12:31
happens in all organizations especially the bigger ones is a lack of refinement
12:37
or attention for refinement so a big business idea how do we break it down
12:43
into smaller stuff so we can actually consume that into our production and
12:48
make sure that we can deliver on those things and if so how can we do that in a continuous Cadence so we're not just
12:55
delivering ones each year or something extreme like that this issue of missing refinement like
13:02
what's a tell for you well a major tell of course is that the
13:08
uh production teams or the people executing the work are actually doing the refinement as
13:14
they are in the midst of their let's say Sprints if they're taking a scrum framework so all of a sudden they have a big chunk
13:21
of work let's say build X or build app that does XYZ and then they'll be discussing amongst
13:28
themselves how do we get to this point what is this app all about what is this functionality we're building so
13:34
therefore refining but we still have to actually deliver on stuff so we have a
13:39
structure in place which is often sometimes a big convoluted meaning
13:46
we have used Stories We want to estimate with story points we don't know quite how we have events but we we're lacking
13:54
certain support either from a scrum Master something else so now all of these things come into this bucket
14:01
and then um for me it's it's just asking the right questions to those
14:07
teams to say how do we know what we're how do we know if we're building it correct
14:13
how do we know what the actual output is that we want our outcome rather that we
14:19
want to deliver so you kind of you you come in and you you spot these issues with refinement
14:26
being not where it should be how do you turn from that to shape up
14:32
what was your previous relationship with Shape Up well uh my previous relation with the
14:39
shape was quite light um I've been I've been a fan of of uh not 37 signals per se but I read the
14:46
books of Jason freed and I understand where he's coming from I thought he was had business ideas that were very
14:52
practical and applicable and you know they they they do not talk to talk only
14:58
but they walk the walk right so they have their own software products that are quite successful as well as home so as an
15:05
agilist you start or at least I would uh start to look outside of the box right
15:10
who who what's the new thing what's the what's the Improvement who has tackled
15:16
this refinementing uh correctly because I was seeing it at all these different companies
15:22
um so that's how I got into touch with with shape up as as a as a way of delivering value and of
15:30
course read the book which is online and and and and started thinking about it and uh at go see I was for the first
15:37
time in in a role in which I was more free to say I want to I I if I can make
15:44
the case we can start piloting uh this this way that will allow us for
15:51
better refinement happen therefore more success in our delivery so like I said you start to analyze and
15:58
build that case to be presented to leadership to show them not just with interviews and and and um
16:05
and qualitative stuff but also quantitatively to show that there is a leakage going on or there is an error in
16:12
the way that we operate um and then uh luckily enough there were
16:18
there were uh listening to me and uh and allowed us to do a pilot
16:25
so can you recall what you exactly put in that case like what do you think May
16:31
leadership say you have a good point here I believe this story you're telling
16:36
me other than my blue eyes no basically it was uh like I said at
16:43
least get enough uh data points in even roughly but also back it up with some
16:49
examples of deliveries that were happening at the time to show how those deliveries were
16:57
being hampered by the lack of refinement um so you could you could simply point
17:03
to say this is a current delivery we're doing this is the current time path it's on uh this is what's hindering that
17:10
delivery and therefore we we wouldn't really need to look into uh refinement
17:17
especially when it comes to how do we select our initiatives to work on it's
17:22
another common theme in in any company that you have kind of a scatter shot approach so we want to be number one in
17:29
the market so let's do 20 different initiatives and uh we'll see hopefully
17:36
all of them will pan out and then it works and then even if you take those 20 on more than likely in the delivery of
17:43
those 20 something else flies in and everything needs to be broken up and
17:49
something new Direction needs to be taken so I think what I like about one of the things like about kamba for
17:55
instance is that is that a motto of you know stop starting start finishing
18:01
so you want to limit the stuff that you do to make sure that you're you're actually delivering something
18:07
so that's that's that's part of that way that we had that conversation with leadership so allow a lot of business
18:14
cases to to underpin your point uh use some some key metrics
18:21
and then also make the investment kind of small so this was a pilot investment of one
18:27
team right we I did not say let's overhaul the entire company and and
18:32
everybody switches off from the scrum framework which the product teams are on and we're all going to do shape up now
18:39
but um we we opted for for asking for one team and luckily enough Melissa's team
18:45
Melissa was uh were brave enough to say yes we're going to give the shape up a go and uh and and that helps because
18:54
after that you have some actual uh data points and some some evidence to point you because we now or that team is now
19:02
in cycle four so we have some actual deliveries to show for
19:08
each at the end of each cycle we were able to deliver something of significant value
19:13
and then it becomes you start to build your case for for stakeholders to go
19:19
there is Merit to this idea Melissa what was your initial reaction to shape up I
19:27
think we were at a point where we didn't have a lot to lose um
19:33
because we were we had been trying to deliver a big
19:38
chunky piece of work for probably a better part of a year
19:43
um whilst also serving BAU um and other asks from the business from
19:50
leadership uh and so we'd been partially kind of splitting our Sprints into you know this
19:58
is what we need to deliver BAU and then working in the background on this big chunky piece of work and
20:03
then it got closer and closer to our deadline that we had sort of picked out of thin air you know at some point when
20:09
we had a light refinement you know earlier in the year where we think okay well this is what we think we have to deliver and this is what we think it's
20:15
going to be the effort um and then that deadline you know kept kept creeping and creeping
20:23
um and then it got the conversation for me as a PM was really tough because I kept
20:29
having to inform my stakeholders that um you know that we were delaying and we
20:34
were delaying um and so when Bart presented shape up to me I was like let's give it a crack
20:42
because what's going on right now is not working and it wasn't just from the outside and you could see that I could
20:47
see it from the inside out and a lot of my team were a bit frustrated um because really what was happening it
20:54
was I myself and my ba we were spending so much time in refinement and not doing a
21:01
great job of it and the reason we weren't doing a great job of it was because we were so siled in the way we
21:07
were working you know we had a ux team up the funnel doing their work and doing their designs
21:12
then we had ba and you know working with the US team to write requirements and refinement and
21:19
making sure we knew from the business what needed to be done you know then I was layering on my piece
21:26
and it was kind of going through this funnel and then getting to the the developers at the end
21:31
um and then you know them looking at what we were asking and they're saying well this is way harder than what our initial
21:38
conversation was so this was this kind of loop that was happening where we you
21:43
know you looking right it's always easy retrospectively just to look at that and go the like you know you know get together
21:51
and and really talk it out but I think there was a lot of because as well there
21:56
we had different levels in the business we had really senior engineers and really Junior designers so when you ask
22:02
people to collaborate that's really hard sometimes if you don't give them a safe environment to do so
22:08
um so just expecting people to have conversations where we would figure out
22:14
quite early on if things were going to be a problem was challenging for people and of course when you've got quite a
22:20
big team I couldn't oversee all of that I needed people to be take that initiative and have those meetings
22:27
outside of me managing them or my being you know managing them because we were absolutely at capacity with everything
22:33
that was going on and so we were just kind of in this we had so much work to do all the time it just you couldn't
22:39
stop and breathe um so when Bart presented the idea I just thought look what's working it's
22:45
not working what we're doing there's certain aspects of of General scrum that we're doing really we were doing great
22:51
at you know the BAU the bugs cool we're smashing smaller pieces of workout that was fine it was just this bigger piece
22:57
um that felt quite colossal at the time um we just were really struggling there was just so much back and forth between
23:04
the teams and um you know so yeah we you know the idea of
23:10
of peop of shape up really for me was about collaboration
23:15
um and about taking away the silos of of this funneled up and down way of working
23:22
um and so the first thing I thought was it's going to be a bit crazy but we're all going to be thrown in to a pen
23:28
together um and we're gonna have to deliver something that was what was really
23:33
appealing it was that something at the end of this had to be delivered um and we couldn't in the way we were
23:41
working we couldn't get anything to deliberate because it was always piecemeal and what we were trying to deliver was a whole experience there was
23:46
unfortunately not really a way for us to cut it up smaller so um which would which would be the ideal
23:53
way right if in agile you want to be delivering in small chunks but um just with the way the tech we were
23:59
delivering in a completely new um language and we couldn't connect the old to the new
24:06
um in a way that would enable us to do it in bits so we had to deliver one big thing
24:11
um to a degree so Shape Up was offering an opportunity for us to go well
24:17
um if you only have this much time which is what I liked about it you know there's no stretching of time here there's no delaying it's like if you
24:24
only have this what can you do um so that's what I was what I thought was really appealing when when Bart and
24:31
just so that I don't mix up acronyms BAU would be business as usual yeah sorry
24:37
call me out if I'm doing any of those oh good and yeah and ba would be business
24:42
analyst I'm guessing Okay good hey I hope you're enjoying the
24:48
conversation I wanted to take a moment to thank you for listening and to let you know about the Shapers and Builders
24:54
job board on Shapers dot Builders yes that's the domain you'll find jobs in
25:01
software development design product management and other roles at companies that work with Shape Up many of these
25:08
rules are remote and teams who use Shape Up generally run at a more sustainable healthy and meaningful Pace than the
25:16
hamster wheel of two-week Sprints so if you're looking for a job in Tech or
25:21
trying to find great people head over to the Shapers and Builders job board at
25:26
shapers.builders now let's turn back to the conversation
25:33
place to start is your first cycle and how you approached it and how you got
25:39
into that yeah that was fun yeah first cycle right I think one of the first uh sessions
25:47
that we had was everybody in the room chatting through the scope of uh of this
25:53
build and for as long as I was there I always heard about a part of the
25:58
functionality impossible to do within the six weeks right we can't do it and you know everybody on their own said
26:05
it's too too difficult and in the room I think within 15 minutes we had a
26:10
solution to include uh that functionality into
26:16
our delivery and that was simply because we had uh all the different roles in the room
26:23
so as we were chatting through a senior developer just said Ah that's easy we can just do blah blah blah blah and we
26:29
can change this the other way around and would that work and everybody was like hadn't thought of that actually yeah that might work
26:35
so that's that's the first real um grassroot that I saw thinking like
26:41
all right this this is this is this has potential and then we had our first
26:47
kickoff which I think Melissa and I estimated for three hours or so first off
26:53
and uh that wasn't nearly enough I think we we spend uh I think uh three times as
27:01
much I think on on getting that correct so we went through a template and I do
27:06
have to put a quick shout out out here to uh Elon Herbert which is a a shape up
27:13
uh professional here in New Zealand and uh through my network I got into contact with him and he helped me significantly
27:20
setting up kickoffs and templates and so on so cool so kickoff uh session started
27:26
and we went through essentially that that is I think we had a quite big team
27:31
still do right about 12 13 people I think around that
27:37
so quite quite a few people in the room and we had to get that motor going of
27:43
saying right so we got this initiative that we want to build we all are aware of the scope
27:50
and now we get need to get started on brainstorming tasks ideating tasks that you see from your role to be fitted into
27:56
this we started using Miro as a tool to to make sure that everybody can connect and track stuff
28:03
and uh that was you know it's challenging for a team who were who were
28:08
accustomed to a different kind of delivery more siled approach if you will to then sort of speak up
28:14
uh and also to put their ideas forward into tasks and you know we we had a go
28:20
at that and then try to group them together and then started to picking out similar
28:26
to you in in shape up way of working um you know the unknowns with the knowns
28:31
and setting up a refinement plan essentially what the tackle which which bucket of work essentially to tackle first
28:37
so as I'm saying this that takes 30 seconds but in reality it took many many
28:42
hours and uh and I I I don't want to you know
28:48
sometimes in a podcast you only hear the glory stories now everything went perfectly I'm I'm not too shy to say
28:54
that that was struggling for us right I had a call with it with uh leadership or other people in in leading role
29:00
especially for developers who were not that happy so why would my developers be in this
29:07
call for many many hours and they're not coding anything they could be coding and building stuff that's also important and
29:13
why would they be chatting away and they they they have to get accustomed to
29:18
that and they don't necessarily like it and that that was all fair right so but
29:24
I I do think that after we've had that kickoff session I think it was spread out over two days I think we've got to
29:30
that refinement plan and then we set up sub teams to to break down the work even further
29:37
right so some spikes were called out and some some other stuff was called out obviously in that session that's where
29:43
things really took off because we had a smaller group who had put their own talks into it so
29:49
they were very connected to to the content and then um I think that that then we start to
29:56
see some traction totally agree I think everyone was a bit freaked out about the
30:01
intensity I think that was the real difference of like the intensity of the first couple of days it wasn't just
30:06
sitting in a meeting and and listening to what your PM is directing you on the
30:11
work that's going to be done and then you go cool someone's going to hand me a ticket with all the details it's like I'm at we're asking everyone to use
30:18
their brains and think hard about because if we're trying to deliver something and then I'm suddenly you're
30:25
in a room and I go and the ask is going okay how are we going to deliver it and and you you know everyone needs to
30:30
contribute to that conversation because the designer the ux team need to know
30:36
um you know what they think what what are the how much time is it going to take them or could we quickly whip up
30:41
some you know and they they need to stand up and draw lines you know do some whiteboarding the you know the engineers
30:46
need to go well that's not possible because of XYZ and and my maybe it was a bit of a cultural
30:52
thing but that usually that was kind of kept to everyone's you know their own piece so it was a real for a bit it was
30:58
like you know Bart and I sitting there really pushing people out of their comfort zones
31:03
um it's almost like asking people to be a bit vulnerable um because they're putting themselves in
31:08
a position where you know if they're say introverted which many people are in this space
31:14
um asking them to throw an idea up can be a real scary concept you know some people really excel at that some certain
31:21
types and so you also have to try to manage um the room so it's not dominated necessarily by those particular
31:28
personalities um because you know it's we're much stronger as a whole um and so like the beauty of that has
31:35
come through now absolutely but at first it was like sometimes drawn blood from a stone but a doubt creeping in a few
31:42
times around is just the right thing to do um because some people are not happy about sitting around and and
31:49
contributing or feeling like what are we doing here you know I just want to you know I should be behind a computer and I
31:55
should be doing my job so there was a bit of anxiety about that around the hours that we were initially asking
32:00
people to to contribute but the absolute beauty of it in the first few days and
32:06
this is came from that framework that you brought in bar in terms of how we were going to tackle the work that was
32:12
for me I was like how are we going to prioritize the work how do we know what to do first and the biggest thing there was just going what are the unknowns
32:18
because there were so many unknowns right and once you've once we figured out you know we wrote on the tasks and
32:24
heaps of those tasks were explore or scope or you know you know research like
32:32
that was a lot of what was initially there um and and giving you know Shape Up
32:37
gives you the time say we've half of the Sprint is supposed to be about doing that
32:43
um which is normally we had no time normally it was the Sprint before delivery trying to figure out the thing
32:49
that we're trying to deliver in in a rush and so suddenly you go you've got we're allowing you know three whole
32:56
weeks and potentially we don't need that but um giving people the time to go actually scoping and researching is a
33:03
crucial part of the work um because I think everyone when
33:08
traditionally looked at that piece it was sort of not maybe given enough
33:14
um priority or given enough you know as sort of like delivery was The crucial thing not that not the research so
33:21
um but back to my point was that once we figured out that the things that needed to be done first were the unknowns and
33:27
that initial structure that brought where we um prioritize the buckets on the biggest
33:33
Reds you know we had to label everything you know what are the things that are really were uncertain about delivering or were worried about trying to deliver
33:39
in the six weeks and and what do we really need to understand um that was great because for the first
33:46
week that's all we were doing um was just researching collaborating asking questions
33:53
um and once we got first that that through that first few days it was like the noise settled you know
33:59
first of all there's a lot of people being calls I'm sure is this gonna work
34:05
um a bit of anxiety some people this is this is so great our natural collaborators were like the new ux team
34:11
were like this is the best thing ever um you know so really different lots of
34:16
noise and then it started to settle and go quiet it was like we went through it
34:22
probably first part of the week of intensity and then suddenly the work started showing itself it was like we
34:28
could balance the the talking with the giving people things to do that we had
34:34
agreed that that was the right work to start with um but yeah so it was a bit of a wild ride for at least
34:41
at least a week hey Bart yeah yeah for sure and I think I think that's
34:46
a great point you make around uh collaborating and I think we you know there's always a case of of
34:53
setting yourself up for success but also just a bit of luck as well I think uh quite a few characters in the team stood
34:59
up and and uh took a letter took a shine to it and we're way more collaborating
35:06
uh and and and pulling people into their sessions and and those kind of things so
35:12
that that worked really well and I think for any kind of change initiative
35:17
you know humans tend to be a bit scary or change because it means something new and you know you know what you got and
35:23
even if it's not working you prefer that over something new and that hasn't proven itself I think with this setup it
35:30
allows us like like Melissa saying after a week or so we you know you start to see the results
35:36
and you yourself are refining you are researching and the decisions that you make will get acted on and and it will
35:43
get built and and then that direction is being taken on so it massively increases
35:48
the ownership I think of of the team whereas other typical Frameworks maybe scrum
35:55
like to just pick on that one uh refinement setting up requirements is
36:01
done by product owner with uh senior Bas or or senior deaf people uh developers I
36:08
mean of course um so that that that that takes away some of the ownership of uh of the team
36:14
will just basically get handed if they're lucky well refined tickets and more often than not when you start
36:20
talking to developers they'll say yes I see all the refinements here but I think if I were to add my hand at the wheel I
36:27
would have taken different options here so if all that work is then regrettable because then the developer needs to go
36:34
back and unpack that and go like what we can't even build in Java so I don't know why they put that into the ticket so
36:41
we'll just delete all that and now we need to do that again and then that's where the typical two-week Cadence
36:48
that's allowed for in scrum starts to starts to break up Rhythm instead of
36:53
allowing it so I think with scrum they have sort of a ideal end state in which
36:58
if you have all these building blocks set in place correctly yes you would have a steady Cadence of delivery but
37:05
more often than not we don't take the time to put those building blocks into place or with building blocks I mean like having a scrum Master with a
37:11
cross-functional team face to face if you take on the scrum guide stuff right which is which is a
37:17
great piece of writing but executing it they always say scrum is is easy but
37:23
executing it is quite difficult and then if as we start to juggle all
37:29
our other priorities then that becomes difficult to to keep the quality in and therefore
37:35
aesthetic Cadence of delivery at the end yeah and I I I appreciate how open you
37:42
are uh about your kind of misjudgment of the kickoff where you thought you know
37:48
this is something I'm going to get to in three hours and then ended up taking two days if you kind of were to give advice
37:54
to to yourself in the same position trying again kind of in a parallel universe scenario
38:00
um what would you maybe do different how would you attack things differently knowing what you know now
38:06
all in all I think it's mostly important to get going you can think everything through but at some point you have to
38:12
just get going try it out and make sure the effort your boundary set up so in this case the boundaries were excellent
38:18
we have one team we had a very clear scope and delivery uh backing off the stakeholders
38:25
um yeah we're gonna give it a go so I think that's you know you can always think about
38:31
things that need to or you could have done differently or unless it's still be learned but I think the key lesson for
38:36
anybody is to start small but start like this I'm a signic quote
38:44
you need to get started and then don't be afraid to Pivot change
38:51
do things differently like with our testing we had quite a bottleneck at the
38:56
end of our big delivery that was you know messing up our timelines and and causing problems
39:03
and then we had smaller stuff to fix like do we want to have a bucket owner like a bucket of work do we do how do we
39:10
keep track of all the decisions being made in these subgroups but I feel like we tackle those things
39:16
as they were happening and I think that's that's just the best way to do it rather than think everything through and
39:21
come with a manual uh yeah you want to keep going what do you think Melissa
39:27
yeah that's so true I think until you do it um you can't be
39:34
you can't be so prepared to get everything right so it's being comfortable with with the fat that
39:40
you're likely not going to get it right for the first time and I think that helped us a lot right Bart is that our
39:46
tagline for that first week was like this is just a trial this is a pilot this is a pilot we're
39:53
just you know we're not committing to this full-time um if it's terrible it's terrible and we just kept accepting feedback as as
40:01
generously as we could um and and we kept kind of encouraging people to speak about that um and we you
40:07
know showed record of that um Bart was great at we held an early um retrospective you know two weeks in
40:15
which was great people could voice how they felt but even by that point the mood had shifted so if we'd had it
40:21
earlier it might have been a different situation so the two weeks was probably good
40:27
um so you know really accepting that feedback and hearing people out when they weren't super stoked at the
40:33
beginning the one thing I would if I could tell myself then was you know for me just to have faith because there was
40:39
a few moments where I I was like whoa like have faith Bart and
40:44
I were looking at each other like oh keep strong we're gonna be good um so yeah just understanding um as well
40:52
and you and I could have only known this now that we're through it is that that intensity of time at the beginning where
40:59
people were really drained and thinking creatively and in that intense problem solving space only lasted a short while
41:07
um and at the time I thought whoa is this going to be the way it is all the time and how it like and I think that was everyone's fear was that they were
41:13
like well are we gonna have to do this every day um is this like my complete new way of working and some people love that idea
41:19
and some people didn't um but looking back now it was only because we were tackling the hardest
41:25
problems the trickiest things and the things that you hadn't we hadn't uncovered at all but probably because
41:31
they were the hardest things they were the hardest conversations to have yeah and making those big decisions early on
41:36
right so cutting things out of the Sprint if we needed to so I'd done some pre-work with the developers on my own
41:43
and with the business analyst to kind of frame up what I thought we were going to deliver but of course quite early on
41:51
um some of it was was chopped out and some of it was tweaked um because then we had everyone in the
41:56
room together like Bart mentioned earlier it was sort of we we picked out things that were too hard and so that
42:04
that were those really hard conversations and so yeah just if I could tell myself then it's okay within
42:09
a week people are gonna have lots of actionable work and I think people were anxious about
42:16
um not having work on a ticket in their list of things to do and those first few
42:22
days because we didn't assign anything until we had some of those first things solved
42:29
um because we didn't want people to do work that wasn't um the right work to do and to do busy
42:35
work where they were delivering or working on things that weren't actually crucial to the Sprint or what we were
42:41
trying to deliver so until we were really comfortable that we'd we'd figured out what we did and everyone had
42:47
agreed what we were delivering um we didn't want people to jump in
42:52
um and start building um until we were like cool um we're building in terms of we're
42:58
testing and we're we're creating together right that's kind of the initial build and trial and bring it
43:04
back to the group um so slightly different um so yeah that was a definitely a
43:09
learning and so I'm much more comfortable now when we do a kickoff and everyone is more comfortable
43:15
um in this first yeah I was going to ask about that because you mentioned you had you you've had four Cycles now
43:21
um has have you had the same intensity in those those first few days as you had for the first cycle or has it kind of
43:28
settled down in general now I think it's a two-part depends on what
43:36
the initiative is that you're trying to deliver so it seems like every shape up so far has been different
43:43
um for us in terms of what the thing or multiple things are that you're trying to deliver and we're being
43:50
and every Shape Up Sprint we've done has been different and I'm still learning about how the format is going to work
43:57
for different types that one was particularly a challenge because it was almost like we'd been pushing so hard
44:04
for so long on a big thing that we um that was the first time you know we were
44:11
asking um multiple teams to self initiate
44:16
collaborative meetings where they were solving things giving them the autonomy to make decisions without myself or our
44:25
business analysts in the room that was a big ask for people because there was a lot of nervousness around going while we've decided to not do this or we've
44:32
cited to change what the ask was so that was new so I think since then not only yeah the
44:39
the time varies depending on in terms of the first week it varies depending on the unknowns you
44:47
have for your delivery so if you've got something that you really aren't super clear at what the shape is going to be then you might have a lot more
44:53
collaborative refinement kind of type meetings at the beginning um but also the intensities drop down
44:59
because people feel more comfortable making decisions they understand the process now because we put that in place
45:05
and it takes a lot of you know it takes a lot of time to get an agreement from the team what
45:11
those processes are going to be and um you know even in the first shape up we had lots of things that we said oh
45:17
you know we didn't have owners for the work so that got lost or people didn't report back to the team that this
45:23
decision had been made or we didn't record it well so that got missed and crucial people weren't there you know so
45:29
all of that happened in the first Sprint um that you know as we went along we
45:34
started implementing structures for ourselves that would kind of clean that up but you know every Sprint
45:41
things happen you just keep learning yeah true yeah yeah I think especially the kickoffs went uh much faster in the
45:49
cycles that followed uh although there was in a second cycle we really tried to purposely limit the
45:56
kickoff but that ended up biting up biting Us in the rear end later on
46:02
because then we we felt uncertain about certain things or the order of it so we
46:08
took some learning from that as well you don't want to rush through the kickoff essentially the kickoff is really critical to set you up for success for
46:15
the rest of six weeks yeah it sounds like that you could fall back into kind
46:20
of not taking the time to to refine things yeah you feel like all right let's we hurt you we heard the feedback
46:27
of the first cycle we agreed was kind of intense it was full on so maybe we want
46:33
to do the other thing and and see if we can get Pace in our kickoff and go
46:38
through decisions quicker but that ended up you know in a lower quality of
46:43
refinement and then therefore similar things that we had before so yeah so you try to to the point where
46:51
we're trying to iteratively change and optimized way of
46:56
working similar to like Shape Up doesn't have any events per se but we included
47:02
some of the events from scrum framework to allow for some retrospective to
47:08
happen some refinement session happened at the end of week three or so so we we don't get stuck into refinement all the
47:14
time we actually get to building and delivering so we try to to mix those
47:19
things together we try we use a hill chart and sometimes you know it's it's with jira of course because we need to
47:25
log our our work somewhere so this we we try to sort of make the best of those
47:33
worlds if you were to run through the Playbook you have now for setting up a
47:38
cycle what does that look like so I think uh the the kickoff session is uh
47:43
done of course with the whole team and we use uh Miro as as a as a whiteboard
47:49
to capture us with a certain framework to go with a certain template to go through the capture the brainstorm of
47:55
ideas grouping those ideas together they have matched together then we uh Source out the level of known
48:03
versus unknown in those buckets of work and then we come up with a structured
48:08
refinement plan so which bucket of work needs to come first so obviously the red ones the most unknown go go first and
48:14
the ones that unlock other buckets of work so something often things need to happen in a certain order so you need to
48:20
figure out something out first before you can actually unlock some other work in in a bucket so you can order
48:28
after that uh breakout and into sub teams so per per bucket of work so those
48:34
sub teams cross-functional sub teams then figure out the work we start to capture things into jira because we have
48:40
actual tasks then coming from that session so that's where Miro ends and and jira
48:46
then takes over to to log our our efforts uh we use a a hill chart uh
48:54
function free function that sort of allows the tracking of these buckets of work across the bell curve
49:02
um and then we have uh like I said three times a week stand-up session in which
49:08
we have a look at those the pro progress talk about collaborate decisions that
49:14
have been made in the buckets of work and how they might affect things and then we we take it through that mid
49:22
cycle so end of week three we'll have a refinement session with the whole team
49:27
and uh and um retrospective and then the second part of the cycle is
49:34
obviously on on getting it done so building and delivering are our selected
49:40
options and then at the end of week six we have another retrospective
49:47
and of course a delivery of uh of what we have attended cooldown in startup
49:54
um two weeks is more around like a typical Sprint Cadence in which we would take often non-critical bugs
50:03
errors that have popped out in our six-week cycle and uh if if we have time and an
50:09
appetite for it some Innovation some some some new stuff that's on the Shelf
50:14
that's not particularly related to the delivery itself since you mentioned bugs um have you set up other systems to
50:23
Shield the kind of the teams working in the cycle from interruptions so this has been a challenge for us
50:30
um in terms of how to incorporate capacity for business as usual or bug
50:36
fixing um our first Sprint we were kind of given leave to focus solely on what we were
50:43
trying to deliver but we did get a couple creepins that ended up taking probably
50:48
one of our developers have her capacity um so she was frustrated at that because
50:55
she just wanted to be a part of the delivery team doing the good work um so that was something that we learned
51:01
from our first sort of retrospective around how do we actually carve out assigned time so setting up
51:08
on a you know the beginning of a shape up understanding that there will be a BAU
51:13
um or a bug fixes during the Sprint so we have to carve out capacity for that
51:18
so we've we've cut we've come up with a couple different ways and we probably haven't fully settled on exactly what that will be
51:24
um but one of it is just saying you know 0.5 developer capacity for the full Sprint
51:30
um to deliver BAU um as a part and then they can that developer can switch between the two
51:35
depending on what comes in as critical and what doesn't um and then the other thing is actually having a BAU bucket uh in the shape up
51:44
set up so it's sort of I guess we need to make sure that the stakeholders are um
51:50
they have an understanding of what capacity we have and as well as our team
51:55
needs to understand if they are a part of that delivery Channel because if they get pulled away from work then
52:01
the stress comes or the anxiety comes when they feel like they're failing at either one of those things so if they're
52:07
a part of the shape up Sprint and they're trying to deliver something and and then they get pulled away on urgent
52:12
bugs it's not that they're upset about working on the Urgent bugs they're upset about maybe they won't be able to
52:18
deliver what we're asking them to In Shape Up so that's my job to try to to set expectations and carve out that
52:25
capacity time to scope it properly so still learning because of course you can't anticipate what is urgent right
52:32
um so you have to sort of try to understand and remember you know
52:37
carve at that time that yes we're going to have and and also rotate um who is doing the work because you
52:44
shouldn't always have the same person doing the bug fixing if possible Right sometimes that just makes sense because
52:49
they understand the infrastructure but um depending and trying to keep it mixed so people feel like they they get to do
52:55
exciting work and the fun stuff the creative stuff and the the bug fixing at
53:00
the same time yeah that's actually very similar to other teams that I've spoken to where
53:06
they kind of just rotate uh in an on-call type of fashion
53:12
um and and then see what comes in interesting now what gave you the
53:17
confidence to say this is working so well let's roll it out to the whole I think you mentioned it 20 teams 21 teams
53:25
21 yeah I I yeah and I do have to say some of those teams are really small right so it's not not fully fledged I
53:33
think the Ecom team is one of the bigger teams in in the company um yeah what gave us the confidence uh
53:39
quite simply delivery of of quality stuff at the end of each cycle so it was
53:45
really easy to point you and say listen this is what we scoped out and and committed to or forecasted if you want
53:50
to want to stick through to the to The Chrome Guy forecast it on and and we actually delivered it
53:56
or I'm saying actually we but the team delivered it so
54:02
um that's that's I think a a very uh
54:07
good bit of evidence to point to and at some point you have to say when does the
54:13
pilot stop right it's it's it's trial period so uh similar to any product that
54:19
you take after you've done the trial period you're you're well set up to say listen do it like this product and would
54:24
like to invest some more into it and having then three successful Cycles behind us and I think the team was quite
54:32
outspoken as well on on their assessment of shape up that they liked it and they want wanted
54:39
to rather pursue this over the scrum framework that they were following
54:45
so then it's it's for the leadership team to think around all right do we want two different flavors of work
54:50
framework happening uh some teams following scrums some teams following Shape Up
54:55
or should we uh see if um if Shape Up works for other teams as well at the end
55:01
of last year we had extended the pilot into another team as well so they were also started to use shape
55:08
up as is there as their method um so yeah then it's sort of aligned
55:15
perfectly with the Strategic priority set by the leadership team so one of the
55:21
two things that I I was really adamant about when I started with ghost he was one was the refinement issue that we
55:27
spoke earlier of and two that I felt there was a lack of connection between the priorities and the portfolio
55:35
of initiatives that we were after in the vein that I just talked about with uh with the stop starting start finishing
55:42
so we want to be really focused on which initiatives will take us to those
55:48
priorities to the success of those priorities and how do we do that so that's that's where this this this
55:54
upscaling came from did you put a Line in the Sand before and and say let's give us three
56:02
Cycles until we call it either a success or a failure or was it kind of I think
56:07
it was even close in there right so basically saying after cycle one if we have failed miserably and everything went up to flames I think it would have
56:14
ended there so I I think the first cycle was like all right so that worked
56:20
um then the second cycle was more around well we've been through we've been through the lean learning curve so we
56:26
understand a bit more why wouldn't we do a second cycle then the team wanted to do so and Melissa was happy to pursue it
56:32
and so we started doing the second cycle and then if you start to get into a Cadence of success it's still it really
56:39
reaffirms your belief that this is something that will work for us and I think that's that's critically important
56:46
right we could we can talk anything we can build a case we can put evidence forward we could do all the metrics in
56:52
it but at the end of the day you need to have something to show for so after three of three of those Cycles with
56:57
actually something significant to show for not small stuff but actually significant values have been delivered
57:03
at the end of those it was just maybe a no-brainer Melissa yeah absolutely I mean I had had to have a conversation
57:10
with the leadership team about projected delivery dates um before we kicked off shape up for
57:16
what we were trying to deliver you know talking to various teams of that were doing the work
57:22
um you know and I think we we brought forward that delivery by about four months which was wild
57:29
um so that was really the biggest um the win out of it just going well I'd already had this tough conversation and
57:36
then suddenly I had a very different conversation around you know so we'd already done the kind of the hard stuff and then actually it
57:43
was all it was like um under promising and over delivering in that in that way so it felt great to
57:49
just so with the team we have nothing to lose here we've got the time we've been given the grace this period to give this
57:55
a crack let's see what we can get delivered and getting something out by the end of it was
58:00
uh not only great for me but morally for the team I think that's just the positivity was phenomenal and I think
58:08
that ownership was huge um I've never seen people be so invested in how something was performing ever you know
58:15
giving you know asking for metrics asking for how people were using what what we built and delivered
58:21
um was really exciting and uh yeah just giving people ownership of the work as well was a huge piece of it
58:29
um and we're that's still a journey right we still we still have to work out there all the time to give people that autonomy and building that trust
58:36
together um but it was a no-brainer for me um but we are in we're progressing
58:43
through Sprint one of the the full business giving it a crack and
58:48
um we'll see how we go feeling good about it I am I'm sure you feel better
58:55
have you been pulled in now as kind of In-House experts how did you set up this rollout
59:01
um across the teams I mean you mentioned you took two days for a kickoff of one team uh was the leadership fine saying
59:09
let's take two days for kind of 20 teams no no I don't I don't think so I don't
59:15
know I think I would have gotten that across to Finish Line start line uh anyways no uh it was basically up to the
59:24
people like myself and and uh and the people who were experiencing it by now
59:29
some Melissa and their team to to see if we could scale it up I pitched the
59:35
framework on how to get from uh the why so the priorities of the company to
59:41
delivery so the how so we in that page and then that we started on
59:47
we made up uh we started working groups so per strategic priority a working
59:54
group was started so that meant a a person was assigned as a working group lead that working group lead was then
1:00:00
tasked to find or select other people in the company to support
1:00:06
um ideating business ideas initiatives that would execute that priority to come
1:00:12
up with the kpi for that priority um and then I supported that by going
1:00:20
through a the typical Framing and shaping structure of shape up to get to
1:00:26
a a business case essentially at the end leaning heavily on a cost of the idea
1:00:33
versus the estimated Revenue the gains of it key metrics and and an effort
1:00:40
needed to get it across the finish line so at the end of it we had a simple effort versus impact Matrix to
1:00:46
use to ascertain the different initiatives and then leadership team wrapped that up
1:00:54
with setting the priorities of that backlog of initiatives per working group so if we work in group had five
1:01:01
initiatives that they felt uh through their refinement of that initiative were
1:01:07
valuable to pursue leadership team could select a business initiative to then be
1:01:13
uh be taken on in the first cycle so uh February was a very intense month
1:01:20
for us as all of those work groups got started and the initiatives were firmed
1:01:26
up and and everybody pulled in so zero outside help essentially all
1:01:32
powered by people in in go see themselves which I really like is really
1:01:38
the perfect setup for me in which the leadership team sets out sets out the
1:01:43
objectives but leaves it to the subject matter experts to come up with the actual initiatives
1:01:49
to be taken on and allow for a bit of refinement business case to be built and
1:01:55
then some collaboration happening between all layers so and how to start to interrupt but the the work group
1:02:01
concept is kind of a bit foreign to me how does that map to the teams like
1:02:07
Melissa's team yep so um Melissa's team is essentially
1:02:12
then part of a department so a collection of different teams together all aligned to the same goal so we have
1:02:19
a department commercial we have a department a customer Ops and so on
1:02:25
um so that's that's that's where Melissa's team is in in the department marketing
1:02:30
um so the initiatives there were essentially um refinement of business initiatives
1:02:36
and then it's up to the department to go do we have the right allocational resources
1:02:42
to make those initiatives happen so what that means is on Department level you
1:02:48
would have three different types of work coming in one is business usual work so
1:02:53
keeping the lights on that needs to happen then we would have current initiatives projects builds that were
1:03:00
still you know on Deck so we either need to finish them or or put them back on
1:03:05
the back burner and then working group initiatives so selected initiatives that
1:03:11
were then as a request to the department to do something with so our kickoff was not as much breaking down
1:03:19
initiatives new initiatives the first question was more if we have 100 of a
1:03:26
pie of resources to allocate how much percentage do we want to give to BAU work to current initiatives or new
1:03:34
initiatives do we do we what's the emphasis there I think that was that's the significant difference between
1:03:39
taking it from a team to to a bigger scale and then after that conversation to wrap
1:03:46
that point up it's more than I think in especially in in Melissa's team there
1:03:52
were three new initiatives that needed to be refined and via the typical kickoff template but luckily enough they
1:03:59
were very capable of course by this point to do so so our team is is delivering the work of
1:04:06
the as a part of a delivery team of the work that gets set by the working groups so
1:04:11
for us it was a slightly different way to have work funneled into our team so before because we were the first people
1:04:18
kicking off into shape up um we sort of had you know work defined
1:04:24
um and and it was in individual conversations with the leadership team that I would come in every month and say these are the kind of my road map and we
1:04:31
would have sort of a discussion around what I thought was the best thing to do and then that would layer over and it
1:04:36
would come to an agreement in the room around what was the right thing to do in general generally we were always aligned
1:04:42
with that um however there was often interruptions maybe not so much in the first shape up
1:04:48
because they knew what we were doing but before then a lot of interruptions um around priorities and kind of you
1:04:55
know that oh this needs to be done and have where are you at with this um so I guess the great thing about the
1:05:02
working groups and you probably have heard of the term tribe that's similar to that um is that because every one of the
1:05:09
working groups are working um at the same time and then we all come together to say these are the things
1:05:17
that we think are the most important things that will deliver the goal right so we know what our we set kpis in the
1:05:22
working groups we we know what we're trying to achieve so then the initiatives come out of that what do we think is going to move the needle the
1:05:28
fastest um then that is force overseen and agreed by from the full leadership team
1:05:35
so there's no interruptions right you've got your resource for the Sprint you've got what you're delivering and then you've got your BAU so there should
1:05:42
technically be No Interruption unless there's something obviously that shakes the ground and we have to pause piece of
1:05:48
work but everyone in the whole business knows what the work is going to be done in all the teams
1:05:54
um which is before none of us really would know what was going on in Ops or none of us would really know what was going on in finance unless you'd hear
1:06:01
um you know if you made sure you always attend and attended the Sprint reviews um but some people wouldn't be there and
1:06:07
you know it's just really hard to have that full understanding and I think that's been great so far as to see at
1:06:14
that level what has been prioritized across the teams yeah that makes it all a lot more
1:06:21
relatable um or understandable for me thank you so one thing I want to ask you about is
1:06:28
some kind of the most common doubts questions concerns you've gotten well
1:06:33
you have lots of doubts of course when you try something new I think on stakeholder level you have some doubts
1:06:39
to say we are trying something new uh is my investment gonna pay off which is a fair
1:06:46
question that needs to be answered by any product person
1:06:51
so things like all right so I have something in six weeks or uh how does
1:06:57
this whole model work they take two weeks off after that they just twiddle their thumbs and just
1:07:03
have a couple of beers together how does that work I'm just exaggerating to make the point obviously
1:07:10
um but those are some some key key questions to answer to give as much
1:07:16
Insight on what's going to happen um some some concerns around we were in
1:07:22
the Cadence of delivery every two weeks and now it takes three times as long then so we are not being agile at all
1:07:29
and that's what we wanted to have now we go back to a sort of typical waterfall delivery potentially
1:07:36
so I think those are some questions to mitigate around the scope of the initiative you pull in so cycle one we
1:07:43
had a large scope so we needed to spend the six weeks at it uh whereas potentially in other Cycles
1:07:50
like we're doing now there are some smaller delivery so you would be delivering every two weeks
1:07:56
dependent on what you pull into your cycle so that sort of sussed out some of those
1:08:02
doubts um and then um like I talked about earlier the
1:08:09
mindset shift towards needing to ideate brainstorm let your
1:08:16
voice be heard rather than coding alone and working and feeling maybe some
1:08:21
anxiety around I'm not doing anything right now I I don't I don't think this
1:08:27
is this is good I want to be doing something it feels like I'm not being productive and and that's not the point at all but
1:08:34
you know that's that's some stuff that will come up throughout and the kick off the only last point I want to add is the
1:08:43
potential for testing and learning that we need to do that earlier
1:08:48
on incorporate it make sure that we make sure that we do the right things
1:08:54
there because that at the end of our first cycle definitely at a point of attention
1:09:00
for success bringing um bringing testers in really early on
1:09:07
um because unfortunately for them sometimes it's an afterthought you just think about what you're building and delivering
1:09:13
um and you know luckily we had a pretty outspoken tester in our team that made it known early reasonably early on that
1:09:21
when she needed at least you know their 10 knitted two weeks of end-to-end testing and we hadn't scoped that in so
1:09:27
that was definitely a learning for us um so now we have uh what we've done to
1:09:34
mitigate that is have represented representation in our collaborative meetings earlier on bringing a tester to
1:09:42
that um just so they have full idea of what we're trying to deliver so we have to be careful of
1:09:48
their time too so there's always balance but keeping them up to date early on
1:09:54
around delivery and and we will see how that works out as well now that we have everyone on the same
1:10:00
cycle run that's going to be a certain challenge for us and that was played really early
1:10:06
on so um we will we are doing our best to uh
1:10:11
get things tested early in the Sprint um and kind of breaking down pieces of delivery like Bart mentioned but time
1:10:19
will tell to see if how we get there in the end um
1:10:24
and yeah uh I think some of the things that are risky and still can be risky in this is
1:10:32
that you think that the first couple days you might have nailed your refinement and I can let myself get very
1:10:40
busy with other things that need attention um and things go quiet for too long I
1:10:46
notice um that is a red flag for me in terms of
1:10:51
uh if I'm not seeing um collaboration sessions happen in meetings cross-functional meetings
1:10:57
happen smaller groups right we that's what I want to see I want to see people who don't know what they're it's the
1:11:04
unknown right so if they're not sure of what they're working on that is a major problem so what I'm hoping is and what
1:11:11
I'm asking people to do is if you're unsure of the work that is the call to to put a meeting together with a few
1:11:18
people that where you can say well this is what I think I'm working on this but I'm not sure or I'm not sure if this is
1:11:25
the right priority of the work that I'm working on so that's that's an issue and we've had a couple Sprints where you
1:11:32
know that gets caught say halfway through and we've been maybe the developers are picking up work that's
1:11:37
much lower in the in the list of things to do like they're The Marked green work because they're easy
1:11:45
um other reasons why that gets picked up quickly is it's we've got a live we're live now so it was very different at the
1:11:51
beginning we were not live with this new thing so we could focus and be really Tunnel Vision on it but now it's live
1:11:58
we're getting real data in all the time and we're seeing things happen um it's really easy and for me too to
1:12:05
drop everything and try to fix something or um if you see say a user in a field and
1:12:11
it's blocked or there's certain things that you know behaviors you're seeing you just want to drop everything and fix that
1:12:17
um so that's a new challenge um that that that quick work that turn
1:12:22
around um so that needs to probably be baked into some sort of BAU stream and
1:12:28
capacity for that um which is tricky because we're also live and then it's a test and we turn it
1:12:34
off and then we're live so trying to um just make sure there's capacity for that
1:12:40
um and also be really really and I and I'm I find myself being a bit of a
1:12:45
I'm just repeating myself a lot but it's just that is what's happening is I'm saying remember everyone you know the
1:12:52
red boxes the unknowns is what happens first um and if I start getting notifications
1:12:57
and without trying to be a micro manager but if I start seeing things weren't getting picked up that is in those green
1:13:02
boxes a lot you know that happens a lot and so just polite reminder guys you know that's that's the last thing we're
1:13:08
supposed to be doing we're trying to do the hard things first because it's it's you know that's the stuff you
1:13:13
want to procrastinate on because it's hard yeah so just having that's the biggest watch out for me now is just making sure that we're doing the
1:13:20
refinement in the work early on the hard work yeah that's an amazing
1:13:26
um amazing kind of watch out for other people as well who are trying this because it it's so easy just from my own
1:13:33
experience to get to procrastinate on the hard things and get pulled into the easy stuff and get
1:13:38
those quick wins feel good about yourself but then get bitten in the butt and down the road
1:13:44
do you have any other thoughts on kind of kings that you still perceive or is
1:13:49
that it really I think there's there's always so many more stuff so many I get I especially well now we're we're scaled
1:13:57
it up so resources will be an interesting uh bottleneck potentially right so we don't have I don't know
1:14:05
100 full stacked developers in our company so there will always be a
1:14:10
certain um stress on that demand same goes for ux same goes for any role in particular
1:14:19
um however I think you know once we have I think we have the right attitude when it comes to trying to acknowledge them
1:14:26
and trying to fix them so now in this today we have a discussion around how do
1:14:33
we allocate business usual work to which department does that go if there's cross-functional work in that how do we
1:14:40
keep on track of that so those kind of things I think will continue to pop up and and for me
1:14:45
anyways it keeps it interesting right is if everything is perfect and and and there are no
1:14:52
bottlenecks and I will get a bit nervous maybe because it's not reality in reality you're always something flying
1:14:58
in so maybe a stakeholder wants something different need to be done in the mid-cycle or you know that those kind of uh
1:15:06
bottlenecks will still have to work through and and to be fair this is our first cycle as a company
1:15:13
so maybe you should we should revisit this question in a few weeks to see if
1:15:18
we've actually been able to make a good on our word and deliver something of
1:15:24
significant value as a company at the end of uh at the end of cycle one but I feel fully confident that we will is
1:15:31
there because one of the main goals of the the this series of talks that I'm
1:15:38
doing with teams who've adopted Shape Up is help others understand
1:15:43
could this be for our team could this fix the issues that we are seeing and how to go about it
1:15:49
um knowing what you know now is there anything any pieces of advice pieces of
1:15:55
wisdom that you would give to those teams wisdom even you set the bar High
1:16:01
potentially some experiences for my end and uh Melissa has no doubt I will share some
1:16:08
more um for me it would be refinement is always an issue
1:16:14
but even for us right In Shape Up is also an ongoing point of attention so I
1:16:20
think uh it wouldn't hurt to have at least a look at the The Shape Up way of working read the
1:16:27
book talk to some practitioners I think that's really important uh there's a
1:16:32
forum you can you can reach out to me you can reach out to to you David or other people or Marissa so just
1:16:40
share your thoughts experiences way be honest about the bottlenecks you're facing and give it a go just set the
1:16:47
scope for a smaller delivery that you want to have with the team um and just give it a go yeah I think
1:16:54
giving it a go is and just you know committing yourself to a Sprint I think is
1:17:02
is a great easy way in right um just not to throw people out the bath
1:17:09
it's not quite the right thing but um uh and be prepared for that grief
1:17:16
cycle you know the change cycle so that's something that I learned a lot about and I was lucky enough to be going
1:17:21
through a leadership training at the same time and it was interesting because we had a session on
1:17:26
the cycle of grief being similar to the cycle of change where you you start going through denial it's not really
1:17:33
happening I'm not really engaging this has not really happening to me and then once the acceptance part hits you drop
1:17:39
down and you go like this is really really uncomfortable
1:17:44
um and I start getting a little bit mad or sad or and that just um understanding
1:17:49
that that was really helpful for me because I just gave me a little bit of faith um I'm probably scaring people but I
1:17:57
guess that was really helpful for me to just understand it's a natural human reaction um to when you ask them to completely
1:18:04
change their way of working it's a big ask um and Bart and I had
1:18:10
weeks of thinking and investigating in part more than me even of understanding
1:18:15
the why of that um so it was so much I remember Bart and I going back to the Y again and again
1:18:22
and so being prepared um with the why um and why you were trying this what
1:18:28
what's the purpose what were the challenges we've had before and guess what if it doesn't solve those problems we're happy to move back
1:18:35
um so just trying to keep people feeling as safe as possible um was really important
1:18:41
um so that was that would be you know yep do that do the do the research a little
1:18:48
bit uh do the learning and then having a little bit of a a good understanding of
1:18:53
the of the kickoff in your structure for that so don't go unprepared into that um it was wonderful to have a template
1:19:00
to follow and we've tweaked it over time to to make um sure it works for us but not much you
1:19:06
know the the first round and the understanding of the buckets Bart pushed us really hard to make sure
1:19:12
the buckets were collaborative so that's something that we haven't really talked about yet but it's really tempting for people to put
1:19:18
their work into a bucket you know a front-end bucket a back-end bucket a ux bucket a whatever bucket and we were
1:19:25
really uncomfortably pushed to say no what is the theme the theming of the buckets had to be around
1:19:32
um it couldn't basically the rule wasn't it can't be like that we've gotta it's got to be more about and we would we
1:19:38
ended up making it really fun and the themes were really creative we kind of came up with these silly names about if
1:19:45
we were trying to deliver something to do with currency it was like it's all about the money and putting emojis in
1:19:51
and being silly and try to keep it light um and so those buckets ended up having you know we you know there'd always be a
1:19:57
design element a front-end element and a back-end element to deliver that one say feature
1:20:03
um so that was really crucial because then that naturally lent um collaborative meetings with those
1:20:09
people and you suddenly kind of had allocated people to pieces of work that um would join you know the catch-ups
1:20:17
um and then the bucket owners as well to make sure that those catch-ups happened right if they weren't happening then the
1:20:23
bucket owner was accountable for why so they had to turn up to the stand-ups and say this is what we did or we have a
1:20:29
meeting booked on Monday this is what we're going to to discuss so keeping the individuals accountable was really
1:20:36
important and we didn't do that initially and now you know we baked that in so that's been a really good Improvement but
1:20:42
um you don't know until you don't know until you do it yeah exactly yeah exactly awesome uh the template is that
1:20:51
something you would feel comfortable sharing with the community or is that something where you're like this is trade secret stuff yeah of course I
1:20:58
think with every template it does deserve a bit of um uh commentary and walk through if you
1:21:05
take the template on its own it may be a bit too daunting and often when you start pitching the template or it's my
1:21:12
experience you would need a couple of filled out examples yeah because if you if you talk look only at the template it
1:21:18
might be like all right I see boxes and things and what am I supposed to do here yeah so that would be helpful though but
1:21:25
you know of course if anybody wants to reach out or or feel like they want to
1:21:31
uh they want to start up with shape up or or need any information or help just
1:21:36
reach out it'll be cool to hear see what other people are doing I'm sure that you know
1:21:42
people who are running shape up have a very different way of kicking off so I'm sure we can learn a lot more about you
1:21:48
know and add-ons or takeaways from ours for sure how can people reach you yeah well I'm
1:21:55
happy to leave my uh work email that's that's that's one way to do it um LinkedIn you can find me there if you
1:22:02
just uh plug in my my name is likely there's only one part win in in LinkedIn
1:22:08
so I think so maybe I have a doppelganger somewhere uh we'll see but
1:22:15
you know that that's the way to reach out and uh yeah I can leave my details with you David you can you can add that
1:22:21
to the description I put it in the show notes yeah definitely cool and same for me email and LinkedIn
1:22:28
Melissa Matthews there might be a few of us only one that works at ghosty though however we've recently hired a Melissa
1:22:34
matchett so um yeah it's very confusing very similar all right so I'm gonna make
1:22:40
sure to put the right ones in the show notes so yeah really I appreciate it there's
1:22:46
so much in in our conversation that I think others will benefit from thank you so much for sharing your story
1:22:53
foreign [Music]
1:23:00
and Alyssa I certainly did if you like this show it really goes a long way if
1:23:06
you leave a favorable review wherever you are listening to this and to find jobs at companies that work with shape
1:23:13
up like go see remember to check out shapers.builders again that really is
1:23:19
our domain so thank you so much for listening and I hope you have a great day