Transcript
Pasco Duarte (0:01)
Hi there, Pasco Duarte here, your host. I wanted to share a story with you. You know how sometimes Agile just feels like following another checklist when like processes and frameworks feel more important than what we are trying to achieve and sometimes even like handcuffs. I was talking to a customer of the Global Agile Summit and he used a term that kind of stuck in my he said, I have Agile fatigue. And I've heard that a lot from people since then. But here's the thing, it doesn't have to be this way. So we started thinking and at the Global Agile Summit, which is happening this May, we're bringing together practitioners who've actually done that, who've broken free from this, you know, install the framework kind of mindset. We want to focus the summit on real life, first person stories of Agile all succeeding that inspire you to action. We're talking real experiences, practical solutions, and of course, amazing insights from leaders like Gojko Adsic, who will be one of the keynote speakers, and Jurgen Apelo, who will be one of the keynote speakers as well. If you're ready to leave the Agile fatigue behind, just join us in Dalit. The early birth tickets are now available@the globalagilesummit.com and mark your calendar. We will have workshops on May 18th, that's a Sunday. And then the conference itself will happen on May 19th and 20th of 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia. So let's make Agile exciting again. And remember, go to agile globalagilesummit.com that is, and get your early birth ticket. Now. It will only be available until early March, so grab it now. And now onto the episode.
Anti Horelli (2:05)
Hello everybody. Welcome to our Wednesday the Leading Change episode this week with Anti Horelli. Hey Antti, welcome back.
Antti Horelli (2:13)
Hello. Hello. Great to be here.
Anti Horelli (2:16)
So anti change leadership is the topic of today, of course, and in that context we want you to tell us a story, a change process you were involved with and walk us through the steps like how it went from beginning to end and then highlight for us as you go the tools, the tips, the tricks, the techniques you learned back then that you still apply today.
Antti Horelli (2:38)
Okay, so this is kind of going to be a big one. This is an Agile transformation. So some years ago I worked in organization. My to be boss there, the head of R and D, started an Agile transformation. I was hired there as a Agile coach to help with that. And where we started was a fairly kind of, how do you say, traditional or old school organization where we had development as one organizational silo QA and testing as another, support as a Third one, very little transparency or kind of big, big walls between these. Not that good understanding what will come out when what should even be the focus of things. Business didn't understand what was happening in tech. Tech and all that kind of, I guess in a way classic situation. Things that we did, we set up cross functional development teams, I think mostly scrum teams. So no more silos between for example the testers and the developers. We did try to keep the competence support. There were kind of metrics in that sense. But still. We had some scrum ceremonies going on there earlier also, but not really. It wasn't like full scrum. It wasn't the whole deal. So we enhanced that. And that was one of my big roles. I worked with the teams as a scrum master, for example, for two teams at a time and then maybe changed teams as necessary. Then on kind of the higher level we set up this big wall to create transparency. It was a physical wall. It was in the middle of the office. It had kind of two sides. On the left side we had our kind of sales and business things that are coming in. Maybe kind of a business funnel, so to speak. And that resulted in projects that were tackled by. By the delivery side. They were visible on the delivery wall where we had like on a month month base things that. What do we think that our development teams can accomplish during this month? So you could kind of see what's coming in into the through sales on the business side and what is being done and when should things be ready. And that was a huge thing. People could walk by, take a look at it. We had a common meeting around at every every week that was open for others. There was stakeholders there. Yes, but anyone could join if they wanted. Then we brought some planning structure into the situation as well. Higher level planning. We have something called joint planning day. It's maybe a little bit like PI planning in safe, a lot lighter, but still. So we did this midterm planning for let's say four sprints. Looking forward, four sprints every two sprints. So we did four sprints of planning. Then after two sprints we again did four sprints of planning. And this emphasized the change that is always happening. So we don't have one plan that we try to stick to. The plan is changing but still it gave us much better understanding of what we can accomplish and also what to communicate to everyone else. Then we had a scrum scrum between our scrums teams which is kind of maybe as usual. Yeah, that was a really big thing. A lot of change. A lot of patience was needed there for everyone involved, a lot of small things to iron out, a lot of new processes for everyone, new ways of working for everyone and so on. But I think one big learning there for me at least was that, because I was kind of very much looking at the change aspect here and that was very important for me also emotionally then. But at the same time we were doing the change, we still had to make a profit, of course. And during this time our company was given a very important project, a very big, big project, which kind of turned out to be kind of a do or die thing. So we, we were. Failure was not a possibility. So in, in that situation, balancing making change in small steps at least, and not like stagnating, but having also the stress of a big project that you really have to deliver, that was pretty tough. And we did our change kind of went back, back a little bit even. We had kind of a. When our big do or die project looked, looked like it might be in jeopardy, we kind of took a very hardcore project management drive to take care of that project, which kind of set us back in our agile transformation a bit. But still some of the elements were there. And then we move forward after that. But that, at least for me as a person making the change was like.