How Peaksys implemented a network of change agents to embed a product-oriented transformation into its teams’ working practices

Short version

When an organisation introduces a transformation to adapt to market needs, the challenge is not only to make sure that each employee implements these changes, but also that they understand them, adhere to them and embody them. Peaksys has done just that with its change network, which it sees as an essential tool for ensuring that every employee benefits in a concrete way from any change in their working practices, thereby making it a sustainable change.

Audience

This article is aimed at change management teams and at teams or individuals about to implement a transformation in their organisation. It is also aimed at employees who are experiencing or will experience a change in their working practices.

Why did Peaksys embark on a product transformation?

Peaksys, Cdiscount’s Tech subsidiary, is operating in a highly competitive environment in which only those companies that can adapt quickly to a constantly changing market will be successful.

This is why Peaksys decided to change the way we do things, implementing a product-oriented organisation in which we listen to our users and take their views on board so that we can build a sustainable, high-quality product with features that meet their needs.

To move us towards this type of organisation, and ensure that the change is sustainable, we developed a two-pronged strategy based on what we felt were the most relevant best practices in our market:

• Establish a product organisation that is compatible with operating at scale and enables our 650+ employees to work together effectively. New team organisational structures were put in place and new positions added.
• Support our teams in adopting practices that improve their performance and therefore how well our software performs. For this, we used a market benchmark: Accelerate.

Accelerate is a book that presents the results of four years of research into thousands of companies. It explains the correlation between software delivery performance and economic performance in an organisation. To do better, faster, Accelerate focuses on what it calls Capabilities that drive improvement.

Based on these Capabilities, Peaksys decided to create smaller transformation vehicles that teams can readily use, called Competences. The result is a common core of 20 Competences.

The challenge for the Change team

We could have forced the entire organisation to implement these two aspects (an improved product organisation and the adoption of new practices) and in theory the changes would have been rapid and the initial results immediately apparent. But would they have been sustainable? Stable? Well received? Probably not.

We know that the success of a change is determined by the ability of the people involved in it to plan, implement, test and adjust, until the change becomes embedded in their everyday working practices. The expected actions must make sense for the team and be in keeping with the company’s vision, so as to transcend the benefits to particular individuals.

Key step: setting up a network of change agents

To ensure the success of the transformation, at both the organisational and human levels, one of the key steps was to create and leverage an extensive, organic network of change agents.

o The first success factor is ensuring that all our change agents are employees, “people on the ground”.

This is how we went about deploying the 20 Competences and the new positions to all employees :

- Competence Leaders provide the framework and vision of a practice for the entire company. There are therefore 20 Leaders, one for each of the 20 Competences. They are paired with a Sponsor — a member of the management committee — who supports and challenges their vision. The Leaders are mostly experts in their field (Agile Coaches, Technical Managers, Design Researchers, Testing Managers, etc.).

- Management Relays, who are closer to the development teams than the Leaders, relay the vision of the practice within their department and support each team in implementing the Competences. The Relays are usually Engineering Managers, Technical or Quality Managers, or Incident Managers.

- Agile Coaches support the teams with the product transformation, in particular through the Product-oriented Competences.

- Lastly, Team Leads ensure that the Competences are implemented and sustained within their own team. These are usually Team Leaders, Lead Developers or Product Owners.

The organic nature of these change agents is essential to keep the transformation on track.

o The second success factor is creating and maintaining a test-and-learn philosophy. In a transformation programme that involves the entire organisation, we must pay attention to what is happening on the ground, propose adjustments and roll them out at scale if they bring value.

The learning process is essential: feedback from the teams is taken on board, successes are shared and areas for improvement are aligned with the teams’ needs.

It is true that there are some risks involved in relying on people who already have a role in the organisation, including lack of time to focus on the change, priority among the teams being supported, and the knowledge and skills needed to support colleagues.

To reduce this risk, the Change team that was set up to steer and coordinate the programme put in place monitoring tools, created synchronisation points and suggested creating communities so that all the change agents could discuss issues, share advice and form a common vision of what they could bring to the teams.

Community workshops for each position

The creation of community workshops for new positions has helped to strengthen the link with some of the change agents: the Team Leads. Team Leaders, Lead Developers, Tech Leads, Engineering Managers and Platform Owners now all have a discussion forum for their specific role.

During these workshops, we discuss how to take on the tasks related to these new positions, the problems raised by the new working practices, the roles of each person in the implementation of the Competences, and how best to share the successes and lessons learnt.

They are also an opportunity to remind people, if necessary, of the reasons for the change and the risks of not changing, aspects that the change agents need to understand and be able to communicate.

These workshops are held every six weeks, involving those people in the new positions. The employees find them interesting and share a lot with each other when they attend.

Inter-team experience sharing

Finally, the quarterly sharing of experiences between teams provides us with an opportunity to reinforce the messages on why and how this transformation project is taking place.

The aim is for a few Team Leads to share the difficulties they faced, the solutions they found, best practices and the benefits in terms of their day-to-day work.

These sessions are an opportunity to recognise the teams that have successfully implemented the change and those that have adapted the framework to meet their specific needs. It is also a chance to answer any questions some may still have.

This experience sharing reinforces the importance of the network of change agents, encouraging openness to change, improving employees’ ability to implement change, and contributing to the development of change as a whole.

Does a network of change agents work ?

Today, almost 10% of the entire workforce is part of the large network of change agents that we have set up and on which the whole organisation relies.

Without these change agents, who are from within our own organisation and whose guiding principle is learning and continuous improvement based on feedback from those on the ground, we would probably not have been able to embed the transformation within our teams.

In just 18 months, the 70 teams involved in the product transformation have already implemented more than 500 Competences, an average of seven per team.

Key takeaways

Peaksys’ goal was to develop a programme that could be implemented by all our teams, made sense to them and was the result of everyone’s efforts.

To achieve this, we set up a network of change agents who we use to help embed the transformation into our working practices.

In addition to being advocates and drivers of change, change agents listen to feedback from the organisation so that we can continuously improve our practices, documentation, tools and so on.

This approach is supported by community workshops and experience sharing. It was and still is important for Peaksys employees to identify the benefits of the change and to get involved in the process, so that they can play an active part in it on a daily basis.

The success of this transformation is the result of everyone’s joint efforts and commitment.