Jolene Enoka - Autonomous Pods Across Time Zones (accidentally agile)

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This presentation focuses on Xero’s increasing use of decentralised control and decision making. Xero uses a pod structure across the enterprise (i.e. outside of IT) to give local autonomy and freedom of action, while maintaining alignment of activities through common purpose. The session will be delivered in the context of the delivery of a recent significant online marketing project led by Jolene that built a cross-functional network of pods to deliver the outcomes needed. It will discuss the Agile concepts some are only familiar with in an IT context, but which are now common across the Xero business. It will also cover the problems Xero had, why they changed, where the wobbles were and next steps.

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Autonomous Pods Across Time Zones(...accidentally agile)

Jolene Enoka Xero – Beautiful Accounting Software

Where we were, and problems we faced

Why and how we changed

Wobbles along the way

Context of a specific project

What I’ve learned

Here’s what I’ll cover

Where we were and problems we faced

The model was slow, and dissatisfying

300 projects in queueMarketing HQ(in Wellington)

AU Marketing(Melbourne)

UK Marketing(Milton Keynes)

US Marketing(San Francisco, CA)

NZ Marketing(Auckland)

HR(Wellington)

API(Wellington)

Education & Training(Denver, CO)

We had tochange

How we changed

Accidentally agile

Global Marketing Services

AUMarketing

USMarketing

UKMarketing

NZMarketing HR API Education

& Training

Global Marketing Services

One step further

Automation

Sniper

PartnerMarketingXero U

Online Buy Flow

Search Marketing

Global Marketing Services

Alignment across PODs

Wobbles along the way

De-centralising requires trust

A specific project

Build a world class US online revenue engine, to create happy,

paying, referring customers

Objective

Scope

Xero.com: convert traffic to trial

Onboarding

Purchase

Demand generation (out of scope)

Customer retention (out of scope)

Team

Online Buy Flow

Analytics

Design

Marketing

Sales

CXEducation

Product Dev

SEO

Video

Tools to manage people and processes

Five things I’ve learned

#1 There is no silver bullet

#2 Iteration and testing is the new mindset

#3 Outside view for objectivity

#4 Prioritisation must be ongoing

#5 Autonomy is motivating

Thanks for listening…Jolene Enoka Xero – Beautiful Accounting Software