Continuous Reteaming - Aginext 2019
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The document discusses the challenges and strategies of team formation and project management within a growing engineering organization, emphasizing continuous reteaming, self-selection, and adaptability to changing priorities. It outlines a structured planning day agenda aimed at fostering collaboration, celebrating achievements, and aligning team goals through self-managed 'slam teams.' Key elements include engaging stakeholders, setting clear objectives, and iterating team compositions to address workload and project demands.
Continuous Reteaming - Aginext 2019
- 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
- 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…
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 66. Continuous reteaming Thank you! Questions?