Practical Strategies for Organizational Tool Rollouts | Anamaria Ungureanu

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Practical Strategies for Organizational Tool Rollouts

Episode: Practical Strategies for Organizational Tool Rollouts | Anamaria Ungureanu
Host: Vasco Duarte, Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Product Owner
Release Date: July 30, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte welcomes Anamaria Ungureanu, an experienced Agile Coach, to discuss practical strategies for rolling out organizational tools. The conversation delves into real-world experiences of managing significant tool transitions within large organizations, emphasizing stakeholder engagement, handling resistance, and ensuring successful adoption.

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The Change Process Story

Anamaria Ungureanu begins by narrating a pivotal change process within a Spartan organization that required transitioning from their legacy tool, ALMA, to JIRA for comprehensive backlog and requirements management.

“They needed to move from their actual ALMA to this new tool JIRA. It was a significant transformation impacting different teams within a large organization using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).”
[01:56]

This transition was not merely a tool change but a strategic move to enhance transparency, alignment, and dependency management across teams.

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Stakeholder Engagement

A critical aspect of the change process was securing buy-in from key stakeholders, including managers and business owners. Anamaria emphasizes the importance of presenting a clear plan that outlines the why and value of the change.

“It's important to have the buy-in from the key stakeholders, for example, the managers, the business owners for those teams. We required a plan to present why we are doing this and what's the value.”
[02:30]

By highlighting the benefits such as increased transparency and better alignment, the team could effectively communicate the necessity of adopting JIRA.

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Overcoming Resistance

Resistance to change is a natural human response. Anamaria shares insights into managing pushback by reasoning out the costs and impacts of the change.

“We had a lot of pushback… every change comes with a phase of pushback… reasoning the cost of changing the impact of the release is.”
[03:00]

To mitigate resistance, the strategy involved iterating the rollout in small, manageable increments to ensure that deliverables were not adversely affected.

“It's important to have a plan to do this change to not impact our delivers iteratively, incrementally and to support this first we continue with the strategy of value.”
[03:20]

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Practical Implementation Strategies

Anamaria outlines a hands-on, practical approach to implementing the tool change:

1. Open Discussions and Feedback Collection: Starting with open forums to gather team feedback on the proposed change.

   “We had some open discussion with all the team and from that discussion because we were open to feedback and improvement.”
   [04:00]

2. Identifying Change Champions: Spotting team members who were supportive of the change and leveraging their influence.

   “I could spot those members who believed in this change and I worked with those people.”
   [04:30]

3. One-on-One Engagements: Conducting individual meetings with identified champions to develop transformation plans.

   “I had one to one with those to capture the discussion and agreement on how we like to do this and have a plan on their transformation.”
   [04:50]

4. Hands-On Support: Providing continuous support through training sessions, such as building Kanban boards in JIRA and demonstrating its advantages.

   “I was in the first phase hands-on helping them, helping them with all the contacts supporting in starting with the basic sessions.”
   [05:30]

5. Communicating with Leadership: Maintaining consistent communication with management to align the transformation with business objectives.

   “Communicating to the leadership in parallel… we had a plan to progress this in I think we had forecasted to do this for four or five months.”
   [06:00]

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The Importance of Support and Presence

A recurring theme in the discussion is the significance of being present and supportive throughout the transformation journey. Anamaria stresses that visibility and accessibility are crucial for addressing team concerns and fostering trust.

“If you show value… in my transformation communicating to the leadership in parallel.”
[08:28]

The host, Vasco Duarte, echoes this sentiment, highlighting the necessity of being available to answer real-time questions to prevent misconceptions about the change effort.

“It's those questions that they need answered… only they know what they need to learn.”
[09:00]

Anamaria adds that being a consistent source of support helps teams feel accompanied and reduces frustration during the change process.

“They felt that they are not alone, they are someone who can support them, guide them if it's needed and you know, be with them.”
[09:15]

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with a mutual appreciation between the host and Anamaria for sharing valuable insights. Anamaria reiterates the importance of collaborative effort in transformational changes, emphasizing that such endeavors cannot be accomplished in isolation.

“This transformation, you need a team, you cannot do it by yourself.”
[09:50]

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Key Takeaways

• Stakeholder Buy-In: Essential for initiating and sustaining change.
• Handling Resistance: Address concerns by explaining costs and benefits clearly.
• Incremental Implementation: Roll out changes in manageable phases to minimize disruption.
• Active Support: Continuous, hands-on assistance fosters trust and smooth adoption.
• Change Champions: Leveraging supportive team members can accelerate transformation.
• Consistent Communication: Keeping all organizational layers informed aligns efforts and objectives.

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Notable Quotes:

• “We had a lot of pushback… every change comes with a phase of pushback.” – Anamaria Ungureanu [03:00]
• “It's those questions that they need answered… only they know what they need to learn.” – Vasco Duarte [09:00]
• “This transformation, you need a team, you cannot do it by yourself.” – Anamaria Ungureanu [09:50]

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This episode offers a comprehensive look into the practical aspects of managing organizational tool rollouts, providing listeners with actionable strategies to navigate similar transformations in their own environments.

Transcript

[Vasko]

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[Host]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our Wednesday the change Leadership episode as I like to call it this week with Anamaria Unguriano. Hey Anna Maria, welcome back.

[Anamaria Unguriano]

Hello. Hello.

[Host]

So change, of course is the big topic of our Wednesday episode. We want you to tell us the story of a change process, something that was important in that organization or team or even for the person. And we want to explore how that change process happened because we want to understand the tools, the tips, the tricks, the techniques you used back then that you still apply today. So tell us that story. Anna Maria.

[Anamaria Unguriano]

Is that I spartan organization where alignment requests with the business strategy Companies should change to using tool as JIRA for backlog all types of backlog management, requirements management. So they needed to move from their actual ALMA to this new tool jira. Okay, so it was part for impacting different teams because we spoke for a large organization here which they use their Agile framework scale Agile framework say. So the change process have been a journey in the sense that at the beginning requires some discussion with the key stakeholders. It's important to have the buy in from the key stakeholders, for example the managers, the business owners for those teams. So we require a plan to present why we are doing this and what's the value. Highlighting the importance that this tool provides like transparency and alignment helps support the dependencies, for example, for sure we had a lot of push back every change we are human at the base. So every change comes with a phase of pushback and it's involved like reasoning the cost of changing the impact of the release is. So it's important to have a plan or to do this change to not impact our delivers iteratively, incrementally and to support this first we continue with the strategy of value. But on my role as coaching and supporting this change transformation. Okay, I think I constructed some change agents if I could say so I looked between teams and I had some assessment with the teams to say what involves and I spotted which are those members who believed in this change and I worked with those police. I think you cannot go alone in a change in a transformational change.

[Host]

How did you engage with them? Like did you have like one on one conversations? Did you bring them into a workshop? Like how did you engage with these team members that you thought would be supporters of the change?

[Anamaria Unguriano]

First we had some open discussion with all the team and from that discussion because we were open to feedback and improvement. Okay, so I wanted to collect also what's impacting, what is the cons of what not doing the change and what are the plus. And from those sessions which I had with every team I could spot those which are more buying engaged to do this change. And after I had one to one with those to capture the discussion and agreement how we like to do this and have a plan on their transformation. Usually I work with Scrum masters as an agile coach in this context and what I know from my experience in a change to change transformation and this use case was quite big transformation because impacting different teams. Yeah, again it's very often that at least someone is really pushing back. But we don't need to stop to this to solve this. We need to move on with those which believe already in this change statistically and also from my experience later on also the last ones will join the whole program change as soon as you show value. As for example in this change I was in the first phase hands on helping them, helping them with all the contacts supporting in starting with the basic sessions. What involves a learning phase? No problem if it's nothing perfect the beginning for a concrete example, how to build the Kanban in this tool the different approaches to see the weak limits in Kaban advantages. So I have plenty of session to show them the value. Not just tell them the value, but to show them the value. Then to build and have some iteration with those teams which were engaged and believed in my transformation communicating to the leadership in parallel. So you know, we can still be all the time in contact. In contact, sorry with the management but also with the team all the layers and I could say that we had a plan to progress this in I think we had forecasted to do this for four or five months as we had this, you know, plan journey with all the phases. And I could say yes, in the six months we already all the team had the baseline in starting to use this tool. It was a nice transformation which included the face of leadership buy in the transformation of the team with support of those champions, those members which believed and cascaded information to the teams. Because this transformation, you need a team, you cannot do it by yourself.

[Host]

So one of the things that is really interesting about this story is I would call it like the practical, hands on approach that you described. It's not about, I mean, we can share the why, we can talk about the impact and so on, but then being there with the people who will have the real questions is so important. And I'm pretty sure there were also managers and product owners who had the same questions and we need to be there and it's the same no matter what the change is. If the team is adopting Kanban or Scrum or Safe or Nexus, whatever they are adopting, it's really important to be there and to be answering the questions that come up at that time. Because it's those questions that they need answered. And very often from a change leadership perspective, we think, oh, we know what they need to learn, but in fact we don't. Because only they know what they need to learn. And it's by being there and answering the questions that they have in the moment that we prove that the change is there to help them. Right. Because if they had a lot of questions and we weren't there and nobody would answer those questions, they would learn the opposite lesson, that the change was there to make their lives more difficult.

[Anamaria Unguriano]

Indeed. I liked when you said in the moment. It's my technique, it's my approach. I want it to be there to answer quickly. Because in that phase of frustration, if I say the fact that they felt that they are not alone, they are someone who can support them, guide them if it's needed and you know, be with them. I think it helped a lot. Yeah, it helped a lot in, in the journey. Not the fact, like you said, I send the message and then boom, I disappear. The fact that I servant them throughout this journey.

[Host]

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that story. And Maria, great story.

[Anamaria Unguriano]

Thank you.

[Vasko]

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[Host]

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[Outro Speaker]

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