Do engineering teams have to be static? Could you form them, disband them or adjust their composition on a regular cadence to adapt to business needs? Could you go as far as letting your engineers decide themselves what to work on while keeping everyone aligned? Would it be a recipe for disaster? Or would it give you the flexibility to work on what has the highest business impact while increasing engagement and developing your future leaders? In this talk, I'll describe how my team adopted self-selection and self-organisation and how we scaled those practices to 60 people. I'll share with you our recipe to: - Successfully plan quarters when managers can't assign engineers to projects anymore, - Engage with stakeholders, - Set constraints to encourage positive behaviour, - Create alignment and track progress through OKRs. You will leave with a renewed understanding of what Agile means at its core! http://2019.aginext.io/Session/flexible-working-agile/

1. Continuous Reteaming
Adopt self-selection and start moving
people to the work!
Aginext.io

2. Who am I?
Julien Lavigne du Cadet
Engineering Manager
Data Engineering
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julienlavigneducadet

3. Agenda

5. <2015: 1 dev = 1 part of the system

6. <2015: 1 dev = 1 part of the system

7. <2015: 1 dev = 1 part of the system
Bus factor
High WIP
Long lead time / queuing

8. ~2015/16: Product teams
End to end ownership!
But…

9. ~2015/16: Product teams
… What if priorities change?

10. ~2015/16: Product teams
… Or the business wants all hands on
deck?

11. ~2015/16: Product teams
Low adaptability to changing demand
Unequal work distribution

12. ~2016/17: Project teams

13. ~2016/17: Project teams
Hard to compose teams
Hard to stop projects and transition
Massive overhead on the manager

14. Early 2018…
In a galaxy not so far away…

15. More work…
• 15 engineers, growing…
• 10+ stakeholders
• 30+ people years of project
backlog…

16. Massive product scope
100+ pieces of software, full stack
• Microservices in C#, Kotlin, …
• UIs with Angular, Typescript, …
• Spark code and Scala libraries, …
• SQL, NoSql, …
• Batch and RT processing…
• Random infra like hosted jupyter
notebook, …

17. Sadness…
Why are people not taking ownership?
How do we scale the team?

18. Optimise for…

19. Intrinsic motivation

20. Inspirations…
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf
https://blog.crisp.se/2016/12/30/henrikkniberg/agile-lego
https://dannorth.net/2018/01/26/in-praise-of-swarming/

22. Planning day
The theory

23. A simple process…

24. Planning cocktail
Ingredients and recipe

25. Recipe for the day
8:30 – Breakfast (optional)
9:30 – Last quarter achievements review
10:30 – Demand side pitch
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Constraints presentations
13:45 – Iterate on the clustering and form teams
16:30 – Present each newly created team / mission
17:00 – Drinks (optional)

26. Recipe for the day
8:30 – Breakfast (optional)
=> Build relationships
9:30 – Last quarter achievements review
10:30 – Demand side pitch
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Constraints presentations
13:45 – Iterate on the clustering and form teams
16:30 – Present each newly created team / mission
17:00 – Drinks (optional)

27. Recipe for the day
8:30 – Breakfast (optional)
9:30 – Last quarter achievements review
=> Energise everyone and celebrate success!
10:30 – Demand side pitch
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Constraints presentations
13:45 – Iterate on the clustering and form teams
16:30 – Present each newly created team / mission
17:00 – Drinks (optional)

28. Recipe for the day
8:30 – Breakfast (optional)
9:30 – Last quarter achievements review
10:30 – Demand side pitch
=> Provide visibility and build alignment
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Constraints presentations
13:45 – Iterate on the clustering and form teams
16:30 – Present each newly created team / mission
17:00 – Drinks (optional)

29. Recipe for the day
8:30 – Breakfast (optional)
9:30 – Last quarter achievements review
10:30 – Demand side pitch
12:30 – Lunch
=> Build relationships
13:30 – Constraints presentations
13:45 – Iterate on the clustering and form teams
16:30 – Present each newly created team / mission
17:00 – Drinks (optional)

30. Recipe for the day
8:30 – Breakfast (optional)
9:30 – Last quarter achievements review
10:30 – Demand side pitch
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Constraints presentations
=> Enable self-selection
13:45 – Iterate on the clustering and form teams
16:30 – Present each newly created team / mission
17:00 – Drinks (optional)

31. Recipe for the day
8:30 – Breakfast (optional)
9:30 – Last quarter achievements review
10:30 – Demand side pitch
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Constraints presentations
13:45 – Iterate on the clustering and form teams
=> Engage all relevant parties and build the quarterly plan
16:30 – Present each newly created team / mission
17:00 – Drinks (optional)

32. Recipe for the day
8:30 – Breakfast (optional)
9:30 – Last quarter achievements review
10:30 – Demand side pitch
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Constraints presentations
13:45 – Iterate on the clustering and form teams
16:30 – Present each newly created team / mission
=> Communicate and test the plan
17:00 – Drinks (optional)

33. Recipe for the day
8:30 – Breakfast (optional)
9:30 – Last quarter achievements review
10:30 – Demand side pitch
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Constraints presentations
13:45 – Iterate on the clustering and form teams
16:30 – Present each newly created team / mission
17:00 – Drinks (optional)
=> Celebrate and build relationships

34. Ingredients

35. Preplanning
Top N projects

36. Who?

37. Where?
• Big enough room
• Lot of walls white boards
• Far from the office*
*otherwise people will come and go…

38. Constraints
E.G. rules of the game!
=> Makes sure we don’t end up with an unacceptable solution

39. Constraints - examples
• All work gets picked or deprioritised
• Team size between 3 and 6
• If a team is a continuation from last quarter:
• The new team must not be a subset of the previous team
• At least one person must stay

40. Constraints - examples
• 20% of kaizen / tech debt reduction work

41. Detailed instructions

42. Previous quarter achievements
Teams present what was done last quarter.
~5mins per team
• Focus on impact. How did you move the needle?
• What is still in progress or left to do?
• Make it fun
• Applause & celebrate!

43. Demand side pitch
Stakeholders present what are this quarter priorities.
~15mins / topic
• What’s the context?
• Why does it matter?
• What is the expected business impact?
• What would a great quarter look like?
• Q&A with the room
A volunteer creates post-it notes with the main ideas / work items

44. Self-selection / self-organisation
People will cluster work as they see fit and form SLAM teams
around those.
We will iterate until the constraints are satisfied

45. SLAM Teams
Self-managed,
Lean,
Audacious,
Multidisciplinary

46. Expected outcomes
• Team name
• Team composition
• Mission
• Stakeholders
• Capacity and SWAGs*
• Risk and dependencies
• Draft OKRs
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_wild-ass_guess

47. OKRs
Objectives and Key Results
• Moon shots!
• Measurables
• Score from 0 to 1

48. Iterations
Start iterating! People will:
• Engage with each other to discuss the work
• Put their name where they want to work
• Fill the expected outcomes template

49. Iterations
Are the constraints
met?
Is there too much
work somewhere?
Have we addressed
stakeholders’
concerns?
Iterate
Yes No
Yes
Yes
Drop or move work
around
Adapt teams
No
No

50. What have we NOT achieved?
• A static plan – things will change
• Option: buffer with “BAU” team
• Chosen a delivery lead for the team
• Finalised OKRs

51. Stuff we learned the hard way…
• How you introduce the planning day matters
• 1 day offsite ?!?
• We already have a 5 years roadmap!
• Stakeholders need to show up

52. Stuff we learned the hard way…
• Too much work
• Preformed teams

53. Success?
“I want to keep the quarterly planning and self selection process in
place”

54. Success?
“I want to keep the quarterly planning and self selection process in
place”
Little long term product ownership
Only works with software that fits in
your head?
Leap of faith

55. Forming the teams

56. Delivery lead
• Keeps the team focussed
• Communicates with stakeholders
• Is *NOT* a tech lead

57. Delivery lead selection process
• By the team itself
Interesting findings
• Nobody wants to be a project/program manager… Everybody wants to be
a delivery lead!!
• People tend to elect the person that wants to do it more

59. Weekly status update
• OKR Update
• Team health and discussions

60. Weekly status update
• What did you achieve last week? Current KR score?
• What are you focussing on this week?
• How confident are we that we can score a 1.0 on this KR by the
end of the quarter?
• Do we need to change anything / move work around?

62. Agile?
Scream team A Scream team B XP team

63. Agile? Or not…
Scream team A Scream team B XP team

64. Intrinsic motivation

65. Continuous reteaming

66. Continuous reteaming
Thank you! Questions?