A Case Study in building an adaptive, flexible organisation
Dinesh Sharma
Dinesh Sharma – an experienced software professional, trainer and Lithe transformation coach – has worked in the world of software development for over 27 years. His work includes some of the most complex product developments in the world, including industries such as financial services, government departments, border security, travel, retail, gaming and global consultancies.
In his most recent engagement with an international client in the consumer services industry, Dinesh was faced with another complex challenge: implementing organisational design whilst coaching for technical excellence.
In creating this vision for change, the client leads were the VP of Product and VP of Technology and were empowered to take decisions that would lead the organisation towards transformational change and addressing the biggest challenge of lack of technical excellence within the team.
Dinesh supported the client for 10 months; over the course this term he addressed:
Organisation design,
Leadership coaching,
Supporting and coaching the team,
Product organisation, and
Skill development in teams
The client also needed support in creating an omni-channel experience for their customers within their retail function, as well as handling some of the legacy issues that were present in the retail team.
Organisation Design
When Dinesh started working with the client, he came on board to help with managing organisational design and helping them understand what kind of organisational structure they should set up.
Organisation design is a fundamental part of what makes an organisation successful. It’s a review of understanding the company’s wants and needs (real goals) and where the gaps are between where it is now and where it wants to be in future; hence the design to bridge this gap and implement some key organisational practices.
This led to a series of workshops in which Dinesh coached them through what an adaptive organisation looks like and where the client needed to be to achieve their aims of becoming an ambitious and adaptive organisation.
Teams were also operating in a dysfunctional manner. Apart from not having a shared understanding of where their functions fit into the organisation, many teams were working on their own priorities. This meant that projects that could have taken a week, were instead taking months because of teams focusing on their own priorities.
This was a huge part of the approach towards organisation design. If an organisation wants to be a customer-centric organisation, they need to ensure that skills are shared, and an end-to-end team can deliver on the product.
“In larger organisations, “Culture follows Structure” so, if you don’t change the organisational structure, you will not be able to change the behaviours of the people within it.”
Leadership Coaching
Dinesh applied his leadership development coaching expertise by coaching the Heads of Product and Technology. This involved daily discussions on the vision for the company and the various aspects of the transformation.
This also included coaching Engineering Managers, who didn’t have much experience around concepts for technical excellence, on the importance of technical excellence and what it meant for the organisation as a whole.
The leaders were coached in understanding how they prioritise their customer experience and ensure that their teams are aligned in their goals of delivery. This meant moving from a multiple product backlog to a single backlog.
Supporting the Team
Working with the teams, the one thing that became apparent from the beginning was that the organisation needed to focus on technical excellence. Without this, the company wouldn’t be able to achieve its aims of building an adaptive organisation and expanding to other countries..
Teams at the time were falling short of having experience of creating and crafting a good product. Dinesh spent a lot of time introducing new concepts, such as, Trunk-Based Development, TDD, BDD, Continuous Integration, etc. to these teams (who didn’t have exposure to these concepts) and showcasing the value of applying them towards technical excellence.
In modern organisations, it is quite normal for teams not to have awareness around product development concepts, which is where Dinesh seeded the concepts in terms of how they would apply within their particular product development and technology.
Whilst coaching the team, Dinesh wanted to create a safe space where they had psychological safety and create an environment where they could open up and discuss their thoughts and feelings without fear of embarrassment. This was also so that members could voice their opinions without feeling pressured by the hierarchy within the organisation. This was a mandate given by the VPs, who wanted to encourage open discussions and freedom of thought.
Product Organisation
Any product organisation that is dealing with lots of legacy, will always struggle with that level of technical excellence. This is primarily because they are dealing with bad implementation of the software – although this isn’t the fault of anyone in particular.
“Course correcting product development during the course of development is always more challenging than building a product from scratch. The change expected is always 10 times harder than something new coming into the mix.”
Especially if the organisation doesn’t have the right expertise, skills and capabilities in the team. This doesn’t mean that teams are not capable of building up those skills; it’s just that at that given time the teams didn’t have the skill sets required to support with technical excellence.
The tools and techniques used included:
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs),
Impact Mapping,
User Story Mapping,
Architecture Visualisation using C4 Modelling,
Causal Loop Diagram.
Through these techniques, Dinesh wanted to build the skill within the team, so that they didn’t solely rely on him or any other external consultants, and that the organisation should be able to operate optimally long after Lithe’s engagement had concluded.
These techniques were also incorporated so that the team had a shared understanding of the tasks that they were working on and their overall impact between departments and for the organisation as a whole. The team at the time, was working in silos – with individualistic aims and with limited interaction from other stakeholders relating to the product.
Working in this individualistic pattern meant that there were no shared learnings or shared goals. Dinesh introduced an environment in which he created a shared understanding of the end results and the team moved from being individual-based to a team-based. This was particularly evident when new features were being introduced, and rather than the Product Manager dictating these features, the team collaborated to understand the reasons and the purpose behind the features and come up with solutions to implement them.
Skill Development
Dinesh also included facilitation of these techniques in larger groups. This meant that a team that had previously never heard of the concepts, was able to learn from them, understand them and apply them independently.
These skills started to become embedded in these team members and they were able to take the initiative to carry on the work.
In coaching the product manager with any big initiatives they wanted to implement, Dinesh used the following questions to get buy in from the team:
What would the initiative look like?
How would they apply it?
Should they apply it?
Who will be collaborating together?
How will they prepare the team?
What will the outputs of the workshops be?
Product managers were also upskilled to carry out effective customer and user research. This meant understanding how customers were interacting with the products, what customer experience they were getting and understanding feedback. There was a core focus in improving the relationship between customers and the organisation.
This meant bringing the customer feedback to the team and understanding the problems the customers were facing and then having a collaborative environment in which solutions were found.
The main challenges that Dinesh found was that the organisation was trying to find a way to invest more in its people and their upskilling and took time in trying to implement the recommendations made.
They had a firm belief that the team was not capable but upon training, they were capable of being upskilled in their technical areas. There were many recommendations made around bringing in longer term technical coaches to support with this particular level of upskilling.
We’ve had some key positive results, especially in creating a structure where there was a shift from heavy-handed management to a more collaborative and inclusive environment. The shifts towards transformation happened quite quickly and the organisation was bought in to a lot of the ideas; the team changes and the organisational changes went hand in hand, and although the timeline took longer than anticipated, the organisation saw results that were implemented at grassroots level.
About Dinesh"
Dinesh Sharma is an agile trainer and coach. He has over 27 years of experience helping organisations with adopting agile ways of working. He has worked on some of the most complex product development anywhere in the world, including many large, financial services organisations, government departments, border security & defence and global consultancies.
His work involves advising organisations on adopting agile ways of working, business agility, leadership development coaching, culture change, and team capability building. He has held several senior roles, e.g. Head of Engineering, Enterprise Agile Coach, Head of Development, in the agile space.
Dinesh is a Certified LeSS Trainer and Practitioner and also holds Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) since 2011.