We understand “digital Darwinsmus” when technology and society change faster than companies are able to adapt to them (Kreutzer / Land).

Adapt or die

Survival of the fittest: Darwin’s theory can best be transferred to the digitization of companies. Because the struggle for survival also takes place there. The strongest is the one who manages to react quickly to technological changes, adapts his business model to customer expectations, uses knowledge profitably and outperforms his opponent (start-up scene).
So the success factor seems to be the speed of your own digitization. Kreutzer and Land speak of a change from CEO to CDO (see figure). According to the two authors, a modern CDO should aim to “destroy” what already exists in order to make room for the “new and digital”. I already have a further article on the subject Leading digital released.

Me, everything, everywhere, immediately … – digital business

The new “connected, informed and all powerful consumer” has clear expectations: “I, everything, instantly and everywhere” (Kreutzer / Land). These challenges and changes in customer requirements can be counteracted in a targeted manner by means of digitization. Customer wishes as a digital business. More examples can be found in my article too digital change.

Customer trust instead of customer touch

It is no longer enough to simply build relationships with prospects and customers, with each being enriched with more information from level to level. Rather, it is important to build up more trust from level to level in order to be able to make increasingly targeted and therefore more relevant offers, especially by providing suitable information and convincing services (Kreutzer / Land). These trust points are therefore a success factor for digital business.

Despite all the euphoria about the engagement in social media, Kreuzter and Land point out the 1: 9:90 rule. Studies show that – across borders – approx. 1% of Internet users are very active and, for example, Post your own contributions in blogs or online communities. 9% of Internet users react to such entries – while a “silent majority” of 90% are only active as reading, according to Kreutzer and Land.
That is why the two authors recommend that we particularly recognize the 1% of opinion leaders on the Internet and ideally win them over. As a blogger, I also notice that many users read very actively. According to various studies, users only read a blog between 3-12 months before they actually comment or react to it. However, many companies stop the “ agile marketing “due to the low response rate. However, in this case it is important to persevere. It is therefore important to give the readers a channel through content in order to trust the company or, in my case, the research project.

The will to become an agile company

The advancing digitization demands a structural change in companies towards agile and evolutionary companies. Evolutionary means here the adaptation to changes. The Laloux’s theses complement each other very well with those of Kreutzer / Land. According to both, companies have the task of constantly adapting to new markets and customer requirements. Agile includes topics like Work 4.0 , New Work and agile leadership . But the exact change and the interpretation are still highly controversial. Also note my other book suggestions for the digital transformation.
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Der Beitrag Digital Darwinism and digital business erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

One approach to this can be the Spotify model, which has been gaining more and more importance since 2014. But German companies are characterized by special processes and a long tradition – in contrast to Spotify, which started out on the greenfield.

So is it possible to just copy the Spotify model? Certainly not! In this article, I would like to show my experience in introducing and adapting the Spotify model for a fictional German company and underpin it with my experience of the last 2 years from my professional experience with the Spotify model. For general information about the Spotify model, you can consider my reading tip, as I assume in this article that you are roughly familiar with the model.

Reading tip: Spotify model

The classic hierarchy: controllability and control

In most companies we find what is known as a classic hierarchy, i.e. the division of work into small units with a focus on specialization. This is often reflected in the organizational chart and is visible in departments and teams.

For example, a webshop department can be divided into the SEO, content marketing, purchasing and order processing teams. At the top sits a department head who receives information through a meeting with the board of directors and various management meetings and passes this on to the employees via the team leader. Information and escalations from day-to-day business are escalated to the department head via the team leader.

This type of organization is very stable, plannable and optimized for manageability and control. The disadvantages lie in coping with complexity and speed due to the lack of flexibility and the pressure from employees to organize themselves as well as problems in the compatibility with agile methods. The possible consequences are customer and employee dissatisfaction.

Customer dissatisfaction due to slow processes

One consequence of optimizing manageability and control is the structure of the teams and departments. The following scenarios are sure to sound familiar to you:

• Tasks that are defined by processes are solved quickly
• Tasks that several teams need or are neither in the area of one nor the other team often remain lying around for months.

If you have a specific question, you will hear sentences like: This is not my area, I am not responsible for this and there is no process for this. The team leaders are also primarily concerned with their own area. This is constantly being strengthened, protected and expanded. The consequence is strong silos.

Employee dissatisfaction due to a lack of perspective

Has a service provider ever resigned from you? This can be painful for companies. A Study by LinkedIn asked more than 10,000 employees about their reasons for changing jobs. More than 45% indicated a lack of perspective in the company.

A career in the classic hierarchy is often difficult. Employees have to wait for a position to become vacant and responsibility can often only be assumed as a team or department leader. As an employee, you get your clearly defined area of responsibility.

Jourfixes and meetings with other managers and board members, i.e. information, are a strong instrument of power. The meetings mentioned appear to normal employees like clouds, which are visible but inaccessible to you. Those who sit in this meeting or manage to be invited will soon be able to count themselves among the narrow circle of leadership.

The boss has more experience, more information and more power than his employees. The employees are therefore more dependent on their boss than, conversely, the boss on them.

Dr. Marcus Raitner

From the classic hierarchy to the Spotify model

A radical shift towards frameworks like Scrum of Scrums or LeSS is often neither useful nor does it really help companies. I therefore recommend breaking down the hierarchy slowly and constructively and increasing the satisfaction of customers and employees.

Reading tip: Agile framework from my doctoral thesis

One way to make an organization fit for digital change is to adopt some ideas from the Spotify model and adapt them to your own company. I recommend following four steps.

Reading tip: Change management according to Kotter

Step 1: Division of the department into squads and change of leadership

In the first step, we look at which focus points the department has and divide the employees into powerful and cross-functional groups (squads) with a size of 3-8. Cross-functional means that a squad can solve tasks without many interfaces.

The important thing is that you can cut your squads quickly and well. Many companies are obviously having a hard time doing this. Spotify itself has made the division according to functions on the website. Further possibilities would be divisions according to:

• Industries (e.g. with service providers)
• Customers (e.g. with IT service providers)
• Products (e.g. at product house)
• Functions or technology (e.g. at a software company)
• Divisions (e.g. in corporations)

It is important that a holistic view emerges. If a customer’s order in the web shop was previously processed by 3 teams, this should now be reduced to one team. The advantage is a holistic view of the process by the squad. Sentences like: I am not responsible for this or I have no authorization for that will be a thing of the past.

What do you do now with the team leaders? Leadership is still important, but it should no longer be tied to one person. My recommendation is: form a squad from the executives who is the global contact for all squads and who takes care of the management tasks.

I can tell you from my own experience that as a manager in the classic sense you are often alone. The Harvard Business Review magazine conducted a survey of numerous executives. Almost half of all CEOs feel lonely and this can have a negative impact on their performance. The consequence is a lack of feedback and difficult self-reflection. The fact that you bring the managers together to form their own team also promotes their performance.

Something is also changing for the head of department. He keeps the view from the outside and acts as a coach and organizational developer. Due to the fact that the leadership quad can take over all operational tasks of leadership, the time is there for it.

In summary, you divide the department into powerful units with an eye for the whole and minimize interfaces for a holistic view of the process. Leadership is also represented by a powerful unit. The advantages lie in the even distribution of managers. Rather rational managers can help with customer escalations and emotional managers with conflicts. The management quad is basically (theoretically) the perfect manager with the best cast.

My learning: Leadership is not a privilege but a service and hard work!

Step 2: Creation of cross-sectional roles and appointment of the squadleads

Now it is time to organize the individual squads and connect them to one another. First of all, each squad appoints a squadlead who represents the squad externally. The team leaders also appoint a squadlead of the command quad. You now have the following organization.

In the illustration you can also see chapters which are marked green. In order to promote professional exchange, we form cross-section chapters, i.e. specialist groups that deal with a topic. In contrast to classic cross-sectional roles (toothless tigers), the chapters form a high committee for your purpose and monitor, for example, the use of a technology and the compliance with uniform standards, e.g. for databases or software code. With a strong division according to functions, a chapter can also be a process (order process) or, for customers, a technology (Java).

Incidentally, the chapters represent a bit of the horizontal specialist career and the squads the vertical leadership career. By changing Sqaud and the new roles, you offer employees a permanent perspective and the opportunity to create their own job ( Jobcrafting ).

Spotify also suggests guilds, but I’ve never found a sensible use case for this, and in my professional life I’m currently completely satisfied with squads and chapters. Guilds are usually there to train each other and exchange knowledge. Often these are the internal user groups. But you have no influence in the decision-making process.

My learning: The job of leadership is no longer to approve vacations and manage the team, but rather like a gardener who tends a greenhouse.

Step 3: Adapt meetings and information flow

What would knowledge work be without data and information? Not much! That is why the new organization also needs new information channels. For a very long time I thought about the number and type of meetings, because meetings are expensive and employees can be boring. You can find my ideas in the following illustration.

I recommend expanding the meeting with the board to include the squad that is taking the lead. The tribe lead moderates the topics and shows the board of directors: my department is not just about one hero but about many great and motivated employees.

I have not yet adapted the classic management meeting with other departments, as acceptance in the entire company must first exist.

Furthermore, it has been shown that a meeting of all squad leads and all chapter leads once a month makes sense, as well as a meeting between the tribe lead and the leadership quad once a week.

I think the formats shown make sense, as information is now distributed horizontally and no longer individual persons have too much information sovereignty and everyone can contribute to the department.

My learning: The leadership in such a system is now similar to the relationship between conductor and musician in an orchestra.

Step 4: Adjust controlling and maintain controllability

Of course, an organization must also be visualized using certain instruments. I took this step 1 year after the start of the change. I have implemented two controlling instruments for this purpose.

Hard controlling: business indicators

I come from the IT service industry. We work on an hourly or fixed price basis for numerous customers and issue an invoice. If you only have internal customers, then just ignore the time booking part.

Each squad has its own board to visualize their work. How the squad arranges the board is individual. It is only important that it is clear:

• What do you want to do this week?
• What are you working on right now?
• What have you done?

There are numerous free software such as Redmine but also paid software such as Jira for implementation. Each task has an agent and a customer / project assigned. In this way, expenses per customer, squad and project can be viewed. I have created an individual dashboard on it.

It is important that you teach the squadleads how the software is used and how to work correctly according to Scrum or Kanban. We are only able to provide information to the board of directors and customers if all fields are correctly filled out. I carried out internal training and individual coaching and founded a chapter.

Since we as a service provider always need proof of work and have to issue an invoice to the customer, each employee adds the corresponding time to a tool after completing a task. In addition to the number of the task, it also indicates the hours. In this case, it is not of interest how long the employee works in total, only:

• How many hours have created value for the customer?
• what do we have for the customer?

My learning: With the help of tough controlling, the squads can work autonomously and flexibly in terms of location and time.

Soft controlling

Peter Drucker said: “culture eats strategy for breakfast” and in this model it is especially important to monitor the culture. My experience is that the organization is incredibly flexible and fast, but also very sensitive.

First of all, I conducted a workshop with each squad and recorded values, vision and guidelines. So it falls to the squads to continue to lead themselves.

Reading tip: Team workshop slides

To then measure the soft factors, there is the Spotify Squad Healthcheck . They use various criteria to check the satisfaction of the individual squads every 14 days. The squad leads use traffic light colors to convey the mood in the squad to you. In the following you will find my traffic light maps.

Tip: Download the template like here and adjust them!

The individual results are very useful for the squad leads. It is now up to the Tribe Lead to pack all results into a uniform table. It looks like the following figure.

In the columns you can see the main differences between the different squads. Squad 2 is happy with pretty much everything. Squad 3 has many problems, but there is a positive trend on almost all points.

In the Rows we can recognize systemic patterns. Every squad has fun at work (and the trend is even higher!). Motivation doesn’t seem to be a problem. However, the processes cause problems. Over time, this will certainly reduce the fun factor at work.

in the Overall picture you can see that many arrows are pointing up. This means that the improvement process (the most important process of all) is working.

My learning: This type of organization can only function on values and trust. This has to be measured regularly!

Conclusion

The Spotify model is a great source of inspiration for an agile organization. Of course, every company has special framework conditions that do not allow the model to be simply copied. However, it makes sense to take some basic ideas from them and adapt them to your own organization. I particularly like the division of leadership into a central squad and the new transparency of information. I hope that the impulses of my article can help you in your daily work. I can tell from my own experience that such a change can be mastered in 1 year and can significantly increase the satisfaction of employees and customers.

Reading tip: Agility in service companies
Reading tip: Agility in product houses

Image source: Music photo created by freepik – www.freepik.com

Der Beitrag How can you implement the Spotify model in traditional companies? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

What are the reasons: Political instability, new trends, new technologies, competitors and a still unknown Generation Z make long-term planning almost impossible. Even employees seem to have the motto when changing employers: “After three years you can, after five years you have to!” to be taken very seriously.

Often the reasons mentioned force managers to opt for short-term success, as this is foreseeable and measurable. But how can you keep a balance between long-term and short-term success? In this article I analyze both types of success and summarize the findings in concrete recommendations for employees and managers.

Prepare: the marathon runner

Short-term success is like a sprint. With enough carbohydrates (energy) in your body, you can sprint quickly and be successful. Surely you have already walked such a route or at least ran to the next ICE to catch it in time. The consequence: short-term success and you have to take a deep breath first.

A marathon consists of different stages and often the runner cannot say exactly what weather or what obstacles await him on the way. That’s why he does the following: Exercise and keep fit. He practices sprints but also long runs and gathers experience with different weather conditions. There are stages in which he can run quickly and there are also stages which make it difficult for him to make progress.

Use energy correctly: the green sea turtle

I have a great story in the book: The cafe on the edge of the world ” found. The protagonist Casey is an avid swimmer and likes to snorkel on reefs. During such a snorkeling trip you will meet a green sea turtle and swim with it. But something exciting happens: The turtle, which seems so leisurely, has hung up as a skilled swimmer. Casey meets the green sea turtle again while snorkeling and watches it closely.

She notes that the turtle never fights against the current. She slowed down her movements and only paddled enough to stay in place. Only when the wave flows back into the sea does it use this current for itself and make a stretch. Casey, on the other hand, always tried to swim with the same amount of force.

We too have to struggle with difficult times in life when circumstances are not favorable due to the market or management. It sometimes helps to just wait and not waste so much energy. Use the time to think about the future and wait for the next wave.

Conclusion

Professional life is made up of phases of progress and phases of standstill or resistance. Use these phases for short-term and long-term success. Now I would like to summarize the findings in concrete recommendations for employees and managers

For Employees : Use good projects and high phases of the company to achieve short-term success. But then you can also use rest periods and standstill to read and to exchange ideas with technical experts about possible topics in the future.

Reading tip: Employability

For Manager : Use good market positions to be successful in the short term and implement customer requests quickly and flexibly. Use short reviews and vacation periods of the customer to change the company and exchange ideas with experts.

Reading tip: Agile management

Der Beitrag Maintaining a balance between short-term and long-term success erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

Tip: Download the slides for the workshop

What is team culture?

I understand team culture as the

• Processes,
• Habits,
• Traditions,
• knowledge and
• experience

a group of individuals.

What are the types of team culture?

I believe that there are different teams in the company and that there are also good sides to them. On the one hand, there are teams that have a high level of orientation towards each other and who actually don’t care what work you do. They just have fun together. This is a great thing, especially for tasks that are not so exciting!

On the other hand, there are teams that do not have a close relationship with each other but work together through the exciting project. These are so-called purpose teams. Since not every employee wants to be friends with their colleague, this is also an important constellation. You will usually notice this later in the values and mission statements. Purpose teams do not value helpfulness and empathy as much as cuddle teams.

If both dimensions are given, then you have a real high-performer team!

What are the success factors of team culture?

A group at Google pursued this question and surveyed over 200 Google employees within two years and observed more than 180 teams. The success factors for a good team culture are:

• Psychological security (error culture)
• Reliability (being able to rely on each other)
• Structure and clarity (roles and goals)
• Importance of the work (vision, values and guidelines)
• Impact of work (value)

In this article and workshop I would like to dedicate myself to the “importance of work”!

Find a team culture workshop

It is the employees who can influence a team culture both positively and negatively through their behavior. Imagine that a new employee with a rather negative mindset comes into the team and suddenly the team culture changes or an employee with an agile mindset turns an entire team inside out.

This is exactly why vision, values and guiding principles are important, which I will explain below.

Find vision

First and foremost is the vision. She tells us why we go to work every day! It expresses a high goal or a desirable state in the future, is expressed in as few words as possible and is formulated in the present tense. A vision is simple, utopian, and emotional.

task : Have the participant work out a sentence that describes a state that is to be achieved in the company.

Examples :

• We deliver what the customer will need tomorrow!
• Your specialist of tomorrow – today!
• We implement ideas in projects!
• Advantage through automation!
• We bring new technologies into the company!

Find values

Just imagine the following: A soccer team that prefers to party than train or a doctor who does not pay attention to hygiene? Values shape the behavior of teams and form the basis for cooperation between team members and are a central field of action for successful teamwork.

task : The team should select 3-5 values that are absolutely important for the team. For example, quality is generally important for every team. But is it one of the top 5 values specifically for this team or is appreciation, for example, more important among executives?

Examples :

• agility
• Helpfulness
• courtesy
• Motivation
• loyalty
• respect
• tolerance
• Commitment
• Appreciation

Find guidelines

The guidelines differ from the vision in that they do not describe a state but an order. They are more aimed at customers and colleagues. So imagine that you ask anyone in the company what they think of your team: what would you want that person to say, and what do you want customers to say about your team?

Task: Formulate 3-5 guidelines. Tip: There should be a specific guideline for each value, e.g. quality: What we deliver also works!

Examples :

• We always deliver products on time and on budget!
• We pay attention to the structure of our software code!
• We are open to new technologies!
• We document our work cleanly!
• We build setups sustainably for operation!
• We operate what we build!

Conclusion and download

I really enjoyed the workshop and made sure that each team put the vision on a banner on the door and in the internal wiki. Everyone from the outside should be able to look at the vision, values and mission statements of the teams.

Overall, the team culture has improved sustainably, as everyone is advised of the guiding principles by their colleagues in the event of gross violations. In the meantime I often hear: “No! That does not correspond to our mission statement!“By the way, it is important for the team leaders to re-evaluate the mission statement every year to see whether values have changed or new ones have been added.

Tip: Download the slides for the workshop

Der Beitrag Workshop: Defining a team’s vision, values and guidelines #Team culture erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

Download the paper (click here)

Der Beitrag Free download: Agility as a consequence or requirement of digitization erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

• What is the current status of the scaling of Scrum in corporations?
• What are the challenges?
• How could this be solved?

tip : You are welcome to read additionally what the Differences between medium-sized companies and corporations are.

Scaling agility in corporations

The last time I was really active as an agile consultant in corporations in 2015, the first teams were organized according to agile methods. The position of the team leader in particular was criticized and its importance in an agile world was questioned. I found the following scenario (see illustration).

The teams were based on agile methods, had a Scrum Master (usually someone in the team did it on the side) and a Product Owner, who was either on the team, the team leader or someone from the specialist department. These were often the first steps and my task was to bring agile processes closer to the teams.
Reading tip: Scaling Scrum
Now I was back on site and was guided through the new, modern corporate premises. It was impressive what was built there. There are 8 tables each (1 Scrum Team) with one board. Then there was a small partition or piece of furniture for the next agile team.
I was very surprised and excited when I saw the organizational chart. Because the three corporations have made insane progress and have almost broken out of their structures. For me, there was a flatter hierarchy with 30 to 50 agile teams, which are jointly led by 1-3 department heads as well as 5-10 Scrum Masters and 5-10 Product Owners. In addition, there were many other roles such as the Feelgood Manager or similar staff positions.
The following figure shows the scenario using a fictitious group. There are 18 teams as well as 3 Scrum Masters and Product Owners who lead the department. You already notice that a Scrum Master and Product Owner have to look after 6 teams. There are also two department heads who jointly manage disciplines and exchange ideas.

I have to say that I was really excited about what has happened over the years and I think this is the right way to go. The transformation has not stopped for a long time, but it is making great strides. I found it exciting that the team leader role has dissolved and the department heads are already beginning to lead together. I think it took a lot of work to do this. I would therefore like to express my great appreciation for the three corporations. If you want to see another approach, you can take a look at my 2nd roundtable.
Reading tip: 2. Round table for scaling Scrum

Challenges: agile Taylorism and Scrum Master

Corporations are currently in a state of great upheaval. Agility is much more difficult to implement and research, especially due to the large number of people. In the conversation we focused on two main areas. On the one hand, this is the real performance of the new organization and the fact that this form of organization is heavily dependent on the Scrum Masters and the corporations are unable to find enough suitable Scrum Masters. I will now explain both challenges in more detail.
Agile Taylorism Risk
Agility is behavior, mindset and culture. It is common knowledge. For this reason, coaching and teaching the agile mindset are important. This is currently a point that managers want to increasingly implement. Without a corresponding culture and framework, you steer into agile Taylorism. What do I mean by that?
Central points of Taylor (1911) were that the main focus of a business organization should be directed to achieve the highest possible economic utilization of the workers and the machines. In concrete terms, this means that workers and machines should achieve their highest productivity, their highest efficiency. Another goal is the division of work into the smallest units. In this way, every employee can concentrate on a small part of the work and do it better and faster. Today we know that precisely this work leads to demotivation and monotony in the execution of tasks. The criticism of Taylor can be found in the “humanization of work”. Agile work / agile methods are seen as an alternative.
So let’s imagine that 40 agile teams each have a Scrum Master who wants to get the most out of the team. The individual components of the software are also strictly divided between the teams (one team makes payment, the next makes contact forms, etc.). If we compare this with the previous paragraph, we notice that we have agile teams, but at the same time we also implement Taylor’s ideas very precisely. For this reason, the managers of the corporations are increasingly focusing on this, since the achievement of Taylorism is not the goal.

Lack of Scrum Masters

You can see that in the fictitious example, three Scrum Masters have to accompany a large number of teams. This is a tough job. In none of the three companies were there enough positions on the one hand and enough applicants for the position of Scrum Master on the other. However, precisely the position of the Scrum Master is decisive for the success and the communication of the agile mindset. I therefore like to refer to the Scrum Master as the “extended arm of agility”. So we have talked about this point in more detail. The current challenge, according to the manager, is that Scrum Masters can hardly be found, although many positions are open. Nice Boris Gloger stated in 2012 : “Of the 600 that I train alone each year, shouldn’t 10% really want to do Scrum each year? But that is not the case, as I often notice. There is demand, but hardly any people who want to work as Scrum Masters. What’s going on there?”
But why doesn’t anyone want to become a Scrum Master? We asked some employees and Scrum Masters, who only held the position for a while. In summary it was said:

• Scrum Masters have no enforcement skills (no leadership – toothless tiger)
• Scrum Masters have a lot of responsibility (sometimes 5 teams) and they are not adequately remunerated.

Overall, the job was described as very ungrateful. It is certainly tough, because in the example alone, a Scrum Master (8-man Scrum Team) has to lead 24-32 developers. As important as the position of Scrum Master is, it is also difficult to fill it. In this regard, I was already wondering why many recruiters are currently looking for Scrum Masters for corporations and why freelancers are a dime a dozen as Scrum Masters.

The solution

I then brainstormed with all three corporate managers on how we could tackle the current challenges. You presented me with current ideas and I showed my research results.

Against agile Taylorism Cross-functional with OKRS

First, we discussed how the notion of agile Taylorism can be prevented. In addition, there was initially the idea that teams should not be set up according to components (unless there is no other way). Thus, cross-functional teams are to be formed. As a result, a wide variety of experts such as testing, requirements engineering, backend and frontend developers, etc. are mixed in the teams. This is also known under the term feature teams.
In order to maintain controllability, motivation and control, we found the concept of OKRS (Objective Key Results) very exciting. OKRS means that you measure performance against team goals. I explained this in more detail in another article. In the first attempt, three teams should be controlled via OKRS. I’m excited to see the results and I’m currently trying it out with my team as well.
Reading tip: OKRS – the agile management method

Solution to the Scrum Master dilemma

Scrum Masters are very important, especially in this form of organization. I therefore also believe that solutions for the Scrum Master positions are not that easy at all. If you give more skills, then you can use the old team leaders again. Rather, I think that the problem of the Scrum Masters can be solved with the Holacracy approach.
A special pain point is the Scrum Master’s lack of penetration. The aim would therefore be for a Scrum Team to be founded from the Scrum Masters and Product Owners, each of which also has a Scrum Master and Product Owner. These two have certain competencies and are elected by the team democratically or by consensus. So this role can also be changed. You could call this the Chief Scrum Master and Chief Product Owner. The department management could then act as a coach for the agile team of Scrum Masters and Product Owners.
Reading tip: Holacracy

Example from the middle class

I am also currently scaling the Scrum method to several teams in my job. I am currently working for a medium-sized company and of course I don’t have 50 teams, but 5 teams. All of them work for different customers who each provide the product owner, which is why we do not have our own product owner. However, every team has a Scrum Master. This ensures that the customer’s requirements can be met and that the team can work according to Scrum without any disruption.
Our approach is to include the Scrum Masters on an extended management board. This board can jointly make decisions by consensus. Thus we give the Scrum Masters a forum to enforce decisions. We hope that this will give the Scrum Masters position the necessary impact.

Conclusion and limitation

Of course, these were only the results of half a day’s discussions and I certainly haven’t covered all the details. There are further experiments by the corporations such as the appointment of Chief Scrum Masters etc. However, there was not enough time for this or the managers are trying it out and rather wanted to exchange views on points that are currently important to them.
Nevertheless, I believe that we were able to get to the heart of the matter and find two exciting challenges and possible solutions. If you also work in a corporation, write to me via email or in the comments whether it is similar for you. I have to express my respect to the corporations because they are really far advanced and the journey to agility has already taken shape. I too recently finished a change. You can find this story in another article.
Reading tip: My story as a change agent
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Der Beitrag Scrum in corporations – how do I avoid agile Taylorism? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

What are Objective Key Results (OKRS)

The method was invented by Andy Grove and John Doerr and first mentioned on Google in 1999. You can currently find the method at Oracle or Twitter, for example. The T3N describes this as follows: Measurable key results are assigned to each objective (objective). The successes are measured at regular intervals and new OKRs are defined.
The OKRS are not determined at the company level, but are negotiated with each team. A manager then has the task of synchronizing these together with all employees and adapting them to the company’s goals. The idea behind the goals is that they cannot be fully achieved and are therefore an incentive. According to Murakamy are the main advantages and goals of OKRS:

• clarity about the most important tasks to generate in the company
• The right focus for the next three months
• About proper use scarce resources to decide
• transparency creating for employees to work on the right things
• A better communication to introduce
• Implement indicators to measure success
• To connect vision, mission and strategy to short-term, operational planning

An example of Objective Key Results (OKRS)

In the following I would like to give an example of OKRS so that the explanation can be better understood and you get an idea of how these can be used in everyday life.
Imagine a consulting company that currently has a turnover of 20 million euros. The management’s goal is now to be on a par with large consulting firms such as Accenture (34.9 billion euros) and Capgemini (12.5 billion euros). Now you define certain key results which you can measure. These could be:

• Winning every 2nd tender in the public sector
• Advising 8 of the 30 DAX companies
• 100 new consultants hired this year

After a one-on-one interview with your HR department, you could now set the following goals:
target :

• Improve the number of applications

Key results

• Increase investment in social media by 30%
• More flexible contracts for all new applicants
• Establish home office as the standard in the company

You would now have to set similar goals with your salespeople as well as your consultants and synchronize them all together. This results in specific goals, which are adapted to the corporate goals and are clear, measurable milestones. These are transparent for all teams and can / should encourage.

Conclusion

The method is of course not completely new, but now everyone is talking about it. So you set goals that are hardly achievable and measure the achievement of goals using specific figures. It is important for you as a manager to synchronize these. Important: There are no sanctions for failing to meet the targets. The advantage is that you create team goals that are transparent for the entire organization. Surely this is worth a try. What is your experience with it? Feel free to write it in the comments!
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• What are my very personal experiences in my life as a rebel?
• What best practices can I share – and what have been my biggest mistakes that others can learn from?

In the first step I would like to tell my very personal story about a change in which I was involved for a whole year. From this story I derive best practices that can help an organizational rebel in everyday life. The following story happened during the last 3 years in the course of my consulting activity. I don’t want to give any time periods because the company is supposed to remain anonymous. In the following, some details have been changed so that the company cannot be traced. Hired as a consultant, I found myself there in an environment of tradition and change.
Reading tip: SMEs between tradition and change

My very personal experiences

One day I received an exciting project. I was supposed to support a company for a year, to restructure a department and, in addition to consulting, also tackle the change with management and employees.

From one day to the next to a rebel

Change is difficult – hardly anyone likes it. Especially not in a group with fixed structures. But changes are essential to move a company forward. So I was called by a company to restructure a department with almost 100 employees. In 50 percent of my time, I helped the managers responsible to change the organization – the other 50 percent I took on important projects using agile methods. So I had come to change something – an organizational rebel – which perhaps not all employees received with open arms at first.

Planning, planning, planning and shut up

A very well-known agile mind and book author once gave me the tip a few years ago: “If you come in somewhere new, shut up and take a close look at everything.“That’s exactly what I did. In the first few weeks I was busy getting used to it, understanding processes and getting the seniors to explain the company to me. Together with the manager and his team leaders, we met regularly for one-day workshops on planning the new department. Especially at the beginning I listened carefully. I didn’t bring my own ideas to the table, but rather thought about how I can put the manager’s visions into concrete terms. Before I came up with an idea, I usually discussed it personally with one of the team leaders. By the way, if you want to read some theory, you can click on my article on organizational development.
Reading tip: Organizational development

The target image was created!

After a while, we had defined the target image for the department. We had to observe the following framework conditions:

• Compliant with the certified standard
• Compliant with processes in other departments
• Lots of people who don’t all want to work in an agile manner
• Different customers, not all of whom were enthusiastic about agility either
• highest flexibility with maximum stability

There were currently very large teams in the company that worked according to traditional methods. This should be changed. We had the idea to appoint two new team leaders and to form four teams from two teams. These are:

• Internal IT: automation and operation – Kanban
• Project team – large customer projects – complete self-organization and autonomy
• DevOPs: For medium-sized projects and agile (Scrum) customers – Scrum and DevOps
• Classic unit: small customers and customers with standard tasks – ITIL

Challenge accepted! To do this, we came up with a four-step model. Some of the employees were supposed to continue to work in the old organization, the other part slowly moved with the customers. It was important to us that the stability of the department was maintained. I created a graphic for this – I will go into the individual phases in more detail later. To explain: DevOps is an artificial word that is made up of the words Development and Operations.

With full force against the wall

After a few weeks I got into my first project, which I was supposed to do in 50 percent of my time. I was a project manager for a large client. There was a program manager above me and two sub-project managers below me. So I did what I had learned in the target picture and organized this project as agile as I could.
One aspect of this agility was to give the sub-project managers a high degree of freedom and autonomy in their task execution and to keep their backs free as Scrum Masters. I also saw myself more like a lawyer in front of the client and the program management. Unfortunately, it only occurred to me too late that my project was completely out of line with the ITIL-oriented line of the program and, despite its success, was perceived by the program manager as uncontrollable and chaotic. ITIL is a way of organizing IT and is often not easy to combine with agile methods.
Better: Unfortunately, it wasn’t until much too late that I realized that two worlds were colliding. Agility paired with an ITIL-oriented line of the program let my project step out of line. Despite the success, the program manager perceived the change as uncontrollable and chaotic.
In order to protect his project, after three months I was suddenly allowed to put on my hat and “go” – the unit was again organized in the classic way. So I did it! I was kicked out of my first project after three months. Fortunately, the manager of my department was behind me and decided to just give me a new project. There was just me as a project manager and a team. The predecessor should train me. By the way, if you want to read more about the establishment of Scrum in traditional companies, then I have a free whitepaper for you here!
Reading tip: Agile in the Waterfallworld

Networking can help – the Change Board

However, two months passed between the old and the new project and I was able to devote myself to the change. After I got home quite early on the day of the exclusion, I was in the office all the earlier the next day. I used the next time to have a short one-on-one conversation of 15 minutes with 40 of the 60 employees and made notes. I formed clusters and had roughly summarized the wishes and suggestions of the department at a glance for the manager.  Now we formed the change board, which consisted of the following types of employees:

• Strong skeptic against change
• Knows a lot of people
• Is very committed and has lots of ideas
• Team leader of other departments

At the first attempt, we presented a plan to the change board and the new teams. Together with the board, we filled a backlog with tasks. A sprint took place every two weeks and every employee was allowed to take tasks from the change board. Each of the ten participants helped. Team leaders from related departments were invited to provide feedback. After four sprints, we had completed all preparations and could start the change. Each phase was represented by exactly four sprints of two months each.

With a new approach and classic methods

Now I started my new project, which I was supposed to carry out alongside the change. It was another big customer with an innovative technology stack. This time I adopted the same method as the previous one and continued the project in exactly the same way for the time being. I wanted to achieve exactly the status quo. I apparently managed to do this and slowly gained the trust of the team – including that of management. So I devoted 50 percent to change and 50 percent to classic project management.

Persevere and do marketing

Now it was time to persevere and continue the sprints of change. Every week there was a status meeting and every two weeks there was a review and retrospective. Participation in the Change Board was voluntary and I saw my job in motivating people to keep going. We worked our way forward sprint by sprint.
In the course of my project, in addition to the change, I moved more and more from the classic project system to Jira and we carried out the first small sprints. I now had more trust in the company and was slowly able to make the project a little more agile.

Every change also has an end

Every change has to be completed at some point. The first phases were mostly a technical changeover as well as the move to the new offices and the relocation of the employees. Later on, coaching and finding your way around in the new roles came in particular. It was also possible to volunteer for a team. However, the last 25 percent of employees had to be persuaded to switch to the new organization. I accompanied each and every one of them individually and tried to help.

It goes on: After agile comes virtual

Now the change is over and I have to say: It was fun and we all think we did a good job. The change is also officially completed and other departments may follow. I didn’t pack my things afterwards, as might have been expected, but instead took on another mission for the manager: the company set up two new locations.  I was supposed to coach the company’s first virtual team, which is spread over three locations. But this should be a topic for a new article.

Conclusion: best practices for the organizational rebel

The change was a lot of fun and I was looking forward to the next task. Now I derive my do’s and don’ts for organizational rebels from my experiences. First and foremost, a change agent should see himself as an advocate of change, i.e. defend it again and again, instead of preaching like a priest.  Networking is also important in order to attract the opinion leaders in the company. Furthermore, work should be done on the status quo, because a classically run company will not become Google or Spotify overnight.
It is also important, especially at the beginning, to first listen and gain the trust of the employees. As a rebel, you shouldn’t realize your own ideas, but see what the company management really wants to achieve. Of course, it doesn’t always have to be 100 percent agile. ITIL organizations can also be agile and are very important for certain customer projects. Always remember that you are between tradition and change. Much that rebels want to change may even have guaranteed the success of the last few years.
Let’s get to the Dont’s. It is important not to polarize, but rather to stay in the background. You should also not pursue your own goals, such as wanting to make everything agile. Of course, I wanted to try out the LeSS framework, but that just didn’t make sense for our customers. Incidentally, the LeSS Framework is a method of scaling Scrum. If you want to read more about agile scaling, go to the article here.  A change is also not a matter of a few days and takes time. We invested a year in the change. It is also important to pick up all employees and take them with you, otherwise you will lose the opinion leaders of the company and you, like me, will be thrown out of a project. A great saying that I have used again and again in Change is:  Grass doesn’t grow if you pull on it. People need time to slowly adapt to the new situation – because the job means securing livelihoods for everyone. I have summarized my findings in the following figure:

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Characteristics of SMEs

The entire German corporate landscape is predominantly dominated by small and medium-sized companies (99.3% of all companies are SMEs in Germany), which are an important pillar of the German economy due to their innovative ability and experience. According to the definition of the EU (IfM Bonn 2018), SMEs are divided into three categories:

• Small business (up to 9 employees and 2 million euros in sales)
• Small companies (up to 49 employees and 10 million euros in sales)
• Medium-sized companies (up to 249 or 499 employees and 50 million sales)

There are two definitions. My experience has shown that many companies up to 499 employees still count themselves as SMEs. Overall, the term SME and medium-sized enterprise is initially the same. Furthermore, most of the small businesses are more traditional businesses with a focus on handicrafts such as carpenters etc. are. Small and medium-sized companies are also predominantly manufacturing companies and are thinking about the vision of Industry 4.0. A small number are software houses and consulting companies that offer knowledge-intensive services. This distribution can be deceptive. Most of the companies are very small, but the picture is very different when it comes to the employment rate.

Special features of SMEs and large companies

But what exactly is the difference between SMEs and large companies? On the one hand, I like to distinguish these from the fact that they have a low budget as a large company and often pursue long-term planning and sustainable strategies. Furthermore, these are often represented in a niche and have a high level of expertise, which is based on long-term employees. These are usually more flexible due to shorter decision-making paths and find themselves in a field of tension between tradition and change. Has another distinction Dr. Winfried Felser made in an article. So he contrasts large companies and SMEs. I have taken over parts of his table and will explain them briefly.
Limitation: Some points in the table sound a bit harsh or could be interpreted negatively. However, that is not the case. For example: “away from the customer”. In large companies there are many internal issues that are necessary from a certain point on. Longer coordination with many stakeholders and employees is also simply necessary. In any case, I would like to limit the fact that this is not to be interpreted negatively.

This shows that large companies often have more budget and that change support is often provided by a special focus team. In SMEs, on the other hand, money is often tight and the employees have to manage the change work alongside day-to-day business. Large companies also have the opportunity to purchase consulting services that are of little use in SMEs due to the low budget. In SMEs, there is often a much higher orientation towards day-to-day business, as this brings in sales and profit.  This also means that there are few internal topics. (Example: Large companies have a data protection department – SMEs often only have data protection officers who carry out this activity in addition to day-to-day business).
Also in SMEs, all employees are close to the customer (day-to-day business) and often even on-site with the customer. Due to the often short line to the managing director (especially in owner-managed companies), decisions are often made and implemented quickly. The focus is often on a sustainable strategy and maintaining sales. In large companies, on the other hand, there is more of a strategy depending on the current board of directors, which has to coordinate with many committees.

Digitization and agility in SMEs

In my doctorate, I checked SMEs for the difference in agility and digitization. There are numerous case studies on digitization, such as by  by Arbussa et al. (2017) as well as studies on the potential of digital change such as  Data analysis tools (O’Connor and Kelly 2017). As already stated by Lindner and Leyh (2018), it is  on the lower budget and the fact that SMEs are often less digitized than large companies. Therefore, according to the two authors, there is often a centralized and rather inflexible IT in SMEs, which, however, is often built up gradually and slowly due to the lower budget (Essers and Vaneker 2016).
There are also numerous articles on the subject of agility. Lindner and Leyh (2018) state the following: It is clear that SMEs are often seen as more agile and flexible due to their small size and often shorter decision-making paths (Arbussa et al. 2017). However, one thing applies to SMEs: rapid growth, which  can reduce this flexibility and agility. This is how agility is examined in the context of growth. Authors like  Branicki et al. (2017) speak of maintaining the so-called “entrepreneurial spirit” or authors such as Ng and Kee speak of post-agility in grown SMEs.
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Conclusion

There are numerous SMEs in Germany and they dominate the German corporate landscape. They are characterized by low budgets, short decision-making paths and a just do it mentality. They are also often players in a niche and have a long-term thinking and sustainable strategy that is based on long-term employees. SMEs are fundamentally more agile than large companies and, from the point of view of digitization, more retrograde, which is often due to the low budget.
I find the study of SMEs very exciting and I believe that SMEs in particular will become even more important. Since I have been working in SMEs myself since the beginning of my career (3 years), I can also say from my own experience that it is really worth recommending to look at SMEs in addition to large companies.
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Debate about agility in the context of digitization

The debate about the digitization of organizations is by no means new and does not directly address agile organizations. As early as 1985, Bair examined the changes in organizations due to the so-called personal computer (PC) and called for a debate about the digitization of organizations, which, however, only had other noteworthy publications since the turn of the millennium, and since 2012 an increasing number of publications.
There are mainly two opinions on the design of this digital organization. While experts such as Arnold (2016) and Gloger (2016) believe that greater agility in companies can drive digitization, Urbach & Ahlemann (2016) and Schrauzer (2016), among others, are of the opinion that digitization paves the way for increased Is agility in organizations. However, all debates aim at increasing the agility of the company organization.

Agility as a prerequisite for digitization

Schrauzer (2016) takes up this thesis of computerization and states that a more flexible reorganization of companies is possible through more mobile hardware and software. He concludes that the digitization of companies is a trailblazer for new and more flexible company forms. Urbach and Ahlemann (2016) put this into concrete terms and show the increasing flexibility of organizations. According to these, the reorganization of the internal IT is a prerequisite. Attached is an illustration of how such a reorganization can take place.

Mobile technology and software can enable constant reorganization, free choice of seats and concepts such as home office, remote or mobile work. Distributed teams and much freer work are also possible. Which is why a higher agility in work can be determined.

Agility as a result of digitization

In contrast to the sources currently cited, Arnold (2016) states that digitization, such as the IT reorganization required by Urbach and Ahlemann (2016), can require companies to make disruptive changes. He believes that this cannot be implemented in a classic / Taylorist organization and calls for more agile structures. He describes the example of Haufe-umantis and recommends testing this with experiments and evaluating how greater agility can be achieved. Similar to Arnold (2016), Petry (2016) also sees a paradigm shift in existing organizations as a “building block for sustainable corporate management in the digital economy”. He recommends that organizations adapt to the NewWork vision: work when, how and where you want. In this way, employees should be given maximum freedom in carrying out their work. He notes that making work more flexible depends heavily on mobile hardware and software, but the necessary restructuring should be made before it is introduced, as this makes the introduction of technology easier. The following figure shows the vision of NewWork.

It turns out that the introduction and implementation of technology is complex and that appropriate framework conditions must be created in order to realize the vision of NewWork. However, according to the authors, these are the real sticking point. So these frameworks should be created first. So says the union board in the 1st round table : “ Agility also needs guidelines in order not to end up in chaos. What this means is that we ultimately need framework conditions to shape agility. “ The marketing manager also adds that self-determination of work is an important prerequisite for successful digitization. According to the marketing manager, this self-determination enables a “ creative environment[mit] Regulations and framework conditions[geschaffen werden] that enables us to have this flexibility. “ So they have Participants in the 2nd round table presented a concept to increase agility in companies.

Conclusion

Ludwig et al. (2016) took up this debate and evaluated it. The result was that the goal of the digital organization continues to be the humanization of work and should represent a humane, flexible and meaningful way of working. However, he still sees numerous open areas of tension and no or little concrete implementation scenarios for classic SMEs, which are still predominantly in a Taylorist organization and are now faced with the decision to first increase technology or agility.
Reading tips

• What is digital transformation
• What is agility
• What is work 4.0
• NewWork

Of course, this reasoning does not have to be right for every company and every approach is justified. Of course, my round table only represents a small and selected group of entrepreneurs in Germany. So I would be interested to know what you think? Vote in the poll! Finally, with this post, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and say goodbye to your vacation until January.
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