Agile team motivators in a non-Agile organization Reality or myth?

Agile Goa 2013 Manjunath MV

2 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

• Currently: Agile Coach @ GE Healthcare, India

• 17+ years in the IT industry; 5+ years in the Agile world

• Previous employment included: ThoughtWorks, India

• Email: manjunath.mv@ge.com Cell: +91-90083-07313

• My favorite books:

Bhagavad-Gita

The Alchemist – Paulo Coehlo

The Lean Startup – Eric Ries

Coaching Agile Teams – Lyssa Adkins

• My favorite quote:

“Think BIG. There are unseen forces ready to support your dreams..”

About me

3 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

First, food for thought!

What are the likely contributors for this situation?

Your customer and you wanted to feel like this:

You and your customer ended up like this:

During and upon completion of your project:

instead…

Entire world is ours!

4 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

• Individual heroism • Dependencies on several external teams whose availability is a

premium • Misalignment in goals of different stages of the processing

pipe – teams/org vs. Customer • Long (and/or phased) release cycles – typically 12-18 months

SDLC • Collaboration with transparency bottlenecks – many

handshake points • Agile practices in ‘Silos’

• Few pilot teams with inadequate experience • Force fit into existing processes

Possible contributors

Can Agile be a silver bullet here? What helps in delivering the ‘right solution’ to the customer?

5 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

Our focus today: motivation factors

Key factors: • Motivated team • Collaborative environment promoting transparency and

continuous, validated learning

Delivering the solution

Popular choices in the market today: • Agile – Scrum, XP, Hacking,… • The Lean Startup • What else have you heard/seen?

Based on: 1. Drive – excellent book by Dan Pink 2. Results of our experiments with our teams

6 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

Dan Pink’s Drive – my key takeaways

Surprising Truth about Motivation: Carrots and Sticks are counter-productive for any job that requires conceptual, creative thinking: Is there any such job in the Agile world ?

Exercise: Break into smaller groups, discuss and identify 3 motivation

factors.

Two studies funded by the Federal Reserve Bank and done by economists at MIT / University of Chicago / Carnegie Mellon

university:

1. MIT students

2. Madurai India

7 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

Dan Pink’s Drive – my key takeaways

Surprising Truth about Motivation: Carrots and Sticks are counter-productive for any job that requires conceptual, creative thinking: Is there any such job in the Agile world ?

Key drivers for motivating people:

Purpose (Transcendental) Autonomy (Desire to be self-directed) Mastery (Get better at stuff)

8 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

Our experience summary - purpose Shared vision

• Quarterly releases – what matters to the business?

• Team Core Values (Game) - what matters to YOU? :

Maximize customer satisfaction

Keep it simple

Teamwork

Commitment

Consistent messages from the Leadership

• Why Agile? (business view)

• What do you need to be Agile? (leadership commitment)

• Pioneering journey in our world (of packaged applications & GE businesses)!

• Different leaders, different occasions

Team meetings / All Hands

Roundtables

Recognition events, etc

More about the Values Game:

9 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

Cross-functional team

• Core + dependent roles

• No longer separate teams of Producers & Reviewers/Approvers

• Empowered team for quicker decisions and faster delivery of a shared goal

Continuous Improvements

• Both “just do its” and “big rocks”

Agile retrospectives

Lean workouts

“just do its”

Eliminate duplicate test cycles/environments

Embed CM engrs into the scrum team

VM-Tester pairing for reviews

“big rocks”

Reduce IQ time to two days from eight days

Documentation simplification

Enterprise grooming

Our experience summary – autonomy

10 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

Our experience summary: mastery What worked/is working? • Crawl - walk – run, incrementally! [Shu-Ha-Ri model of Martial Arts]

• Opportunity to experiment with different

roles

• Recognitions and timely celebrations TEAM rewards/recognition Dinner/lunch after key milestones

Cake/snacks before new release

11 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

Our experience summary: business results

Enabling business… with Agility

12 / GE Presenter and Event /

9/23/2013

What next? Autonomy/Mastery:

• Agile Champions Team Award:

Each team picks their three improvement areas over next three months

The team sets their target bar

Demonstrate results after three months to rest of the organization

In addition to formal recognition, share knowledge and help other teams too!

Of course, all teams start on their next set of 3 improvements in the coming quarter

Purpose:

• At work for a healthier world

Build better products, faster (The Lean Startup)

Mastery:

• Scrum Champion Individual Award:

Nominated by peers based on prior sprints

One nomination per team

Exemplary incremental improvements, challenged status quo and/or introduced new processes

that improved the productivity or quality