The web and mobile teams for a major retailer had grown to 90 people and their work was fragmenting. They were critical to the success of a £10bn business which now had 40% of its revenue coming through these digital channels!
The initial challenge was that no one knew what was going on, with a dozen teams doing different things in different ways. No one knew who was working on what or where the work was getting stuck.
When we arrived, the teams were sure we would tell them all to work the same way, but we did not. Instead, we said to carry on doing whatever works for you!
We just asked each team to report three metrics every fortnight: how long did each completed work item take; how many items did you finish; and how many are you working on right now? These are the flow metrics of lead time, throughput and work-in-process respectively.
We did not even specify what a ‘work item’ was! Each team decided for themselves; a work item for a mobile app team was likely to be different from that of a platform service team.
This data, along with asking what each team was working on, provided a consistent programme-level dashboard that they could start using to make decisions. Only then were they ready to take on programme-scale prioritization and planning, which is what we did next.
The context
- Major UK retail chain with £10bn turnover
- 90,000 employees, including 1,000 in central IT
- The tiny Online team of 90 people were supporting 40% of revenue!
- The tech was good but programme management was non-existent
- Us-and-them culture between IT and Product, so each team had a pair of managers reporting to each silo
- Critical business deliveries were at risk due to poor coordination, hidden dependencies, lack of trust
The impact
- We established a single, cohesive programme of work which enabled them to more than double to 200 people the following year
- We built a culture of shared responsibility for technical product delivery
- Programme managers and interested stakeholders had a simple dashboard of delivery trends across 20+ teams
The approach
We provided training and education on flow metrics—lead time, throughput, work-in-process—across whole programme team and leadership.
We supported all teams in introducing and reporting their own flow metrics on a 2-weekly basis; creating consistent tracking data.
Teams could work however they wanted, as long as they demonstrated high engineering standards and produced their flow metrics.
We built a ‘big visible wall’ to show entire programme status at a glance. Different colours represented different kinds of work; Cumulative Flow Diagrams showed where work was getting stuck.
We introduced quarterly ‘big-room’ planning where 90 people self-selected into new teams for each quarter.
The teams ran a series of talks and roadshows where they would visit different parts of the organization to show what they were doing and why.
We worked with Product and IT leadership to bring their organizations closer together, leading to closer collaboration and increased trust.