A reflection on scaling Agile

When we set out on arguably the largest transformational journey of its kind in Europe, I wrote a blog post with my perspective on Agile and the challenges large organisations face as they are looking to adopt it at scale. Fast-forward 18 months and I thought it would be worthwhile to publish another post to provide a personal reflection on what we have learned so far during our own journey.

But before I start, why are organisations feeling the necessity to reinvent themselves and why are they embarking on bold, and sometimes risky, large-scale transformational journeys?

Each organisation has its own reasons, but the increasing pace of technology innovation is changing the competitive landscape like never before. Companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Uber are turning industries on their heads by utilising digital technology to fundamentally change the way they deliver services and engage with customers. We are also seeing a seismic shift in customer expectations so for many organisations, ours included, transformation is no longer an option — it’s the imperative.

Transforming to succeed in a digital world

When I said we set out on our journey 18 months ago, I was actually referring to the third phase of a journey that started back in 2011. Phase one focused on building digital foundations and creating a scalable digital platform providing choice and convenience for our customers. Phase two focused on creating the largest digital bank in the UK, enhancing our digital capabilities and exploring new ways of working, i.e. looking at how Agile could be effectively adopted across an entire business area. Phase three is where we truly started to scale up our transformation impacting several thousand colleagues and partners across the Group. If this isn’t implementing Agile at scale, I don’t know what is.

If there is a broader interest in our transformational story, particularly the latest phase, more information can be found in the Strategic Update presented to analysts and investors by our Group Chief Executive in February 2018.

Learnings so far

As I mentioned earlier, this is a personal reflection and covers some thoughts from the journey that I have shared so far with ~600 of our amazing colleagues and partners in the Mortgage Value Stream. I’ve broken it down into three themes — People, Method and Technology.

People

I’m starting with people, not because they are absolutely key to a successful transformation, but because getting the people side right, particularly at a scale like this, has been amongst the biggest challenges I have ever faced — and if I’m totally honest, there is still a lot that can be done.

So why is it so hard? It’s because people are people. They all have different skills, experiences and expectations of what the transformation will bring. Their individual circumstances also differ where some may have to make very difficult personal choices.

Each person will take their own path, and if you multiply that with hundreds of colleagues in our Value Stream, or many thousands across the division, you have to create a narrative that helps guide them through their individual journeys whilst aiming for the same end destination for the organisation.

Colleague engagement is just as critical to the success of the transformation as the actual changes themselves. When done correctly, communication can be a key driver for engagement because colleagues will understand what impact their individual contributions will have and they will feel empowered to help transform themselves as well as the organisation.

Over the last 18 month my co-lead and I have explored numerous ways to engage our teams via all-hands calls, town halls, newsletters, blogs, people forums and videos to name a few. Some have worked better than others, but by carefully listening to our colleagues we continue to adapt our approach in order to create more effective and inclusive communication channels across teams and locations.

Whilst we are talking about people it is also worth touching on leadership where Agile focus on self-organisation and empowerment of teams. As we are rolling out changes at such a scale it has undoubtedly left many managers wondering about their future as they shift from a traditional command and control attitude towards strategy and guidance, becoming servant-leaders who help their teams to succeed.

This transition has not been easy, and for some it has clearly been unsettling to ‘let go’, but it has also been very rewarding where leaders have embraced our new ways of working empowering their teams to focus on what truly matters, putting our customers first. This has been particularly evident in teams that have the confidence to try new things, are not afraid of failing and are always looking to get customers engaged early on in the process. The result is not just better customer outcomes, but also happier teams as they start to feel empowered and trusted to do the right thing.

Method

When organisations talk about Agile and new ways of working, particularly large and highly regulated ones, what do they actually mean? It is well recognised that Agile methods like Scrum, XP and Kanban require additions and adjustments for portfolio management, governance, and risk to scale beyond a single team of about 8–12 people.

So does it mean that large organisations can’t adopt Agile methods? No, it just means that these organisations need to think about Agile in different ways than what most mainstream methods promote.

Traditional portfolio management is focused on top-down planning with long delivery cycles, but Agile portfolio management takes the concept of build-measure-learn cycles used by individual Agile teams and applies it on a larger scale, which is where so called “scaled Agile frameworks” like SAFe come into play.

I mentioned earlier that we are currently in our third transformational phase where the second phase explored our new ways of working. It was the effort and more importantly the learnings, from this second phase that enabled us to create and shape our own method and approach to scaling Agile.

Whilst we have taken influences from other organisations and mainstream Agile methods, a tremendous amount of work has gone into tailoring and shaping our own method to ensure it works for us, and it continues to evolve as we are rolling it out across the organisation with the aim to deliver half of our change using it by the end of 2020.

Whilst I risk trivialising all the effort and thinking that have gone into our method, the way I describe it to people in a single sentence is “a mix of Spotify’s Squads and Tribes model with a portfolio management overlay similar to what SAFe promotes”.

So what are the learnings so far? Well, I could probably write a small book on that topic as it has been very challenging whilst being incredibly insightful. With a varying maturity level across teams and individuals, you realise that a significant investment in training will be required as some teams may not realise that Scrum is not the only Agile method they can use, and that daily stand-ups and two-weekly sprints are not mandated by all Agile methods.

You also underestimate the effort required to bring the business along the way where some will struggle to understand how work flows through fixed capacity teams vs. how individual programmes and projects historically operated. Investment management, budgets, and benefits tracking are all areas that require attention and will require significant changes to work in an Agile world.

If I were to call out one of the biggest challenges, a challenge that we’re still wrestling with, then that would be how to manage dependencies effectively. Whilst we talk about autonomous teams it is inevitable that dependencies still exist between teams, departments and business divisions, and these dependencies become particularly challenging where Agile delivery meets more “traditional” waterfall programmes and governance processes.

An Agile team can fairly swiftly be mobilised to start building new products, but things can quickly grind to a halt if external dependencies with areas like Finance, Risk and Cyber have not been managed carefully and effectively. Whilst transformation activities may be focused on a single business area the interaction with external teams still need to change to fit with these new ways of working even if those teams are yet to embark on their own transformational journeys.

Technology

I always say that technology is the easy bit, not because I’m an engineer, but because relative to people and new ways of working that is a fact — at least based on my own experience spanning a career of 20+ years.

Sure, it can be hard to introduce new engineering practices and capabilities like Cloud into a large and highly regulated organisation. Not because the technology itself is difficult, but because the organisation’s policies and processes are getting in the way. Not intentionally, but they were never meant to support fast paced and modern ways of working in the first place. Together with the people agenda it makes them the focus of any transformation, not new technology.

So no learnings when it comes to technology then? If I’m honest, over the last 18 months a lot of my time has been spent building the team, supporting colleagues, and embedding our new ways of working rather than solving exciting engineering problems. That’s OK as I love building teams, and whilst I personally haven’t been as close to the tech as I would like to be, the teams have delivered some amazing things despite everything else that goes on around them.

We still have a long way to go before we can say we are an Engineering-led organisation, but things like DevOps, build pipelines, CI/CD, Cloud and containers are now driving true customer value across the organisation, and these things are no longer drawing blank faces in conversations with senior business executives. The journey so far has been long and hard, particularly as we are also faced with a mountain of technical debt built up in an organisation that is 250+ years old and has experienced multiple mergers and divestments along the way. But by keeping things very simple, taking small steps forward (and some backwards) and letting the results speak for themselves our progress so far has helped build the necessary credibility. It is a marathon, not a sprint, and I would use two words to sum up the recipe for success. Grit and perseverance.

Final words

There have been many ups and downs along the journey, and some days I wonder if all the hard work will eventually pay off. Then I pause and reflect on what the teams have actually achieved, and when you do, you start realising that it may not always feel like it, but all these amazing people have moved mountains to get us to where we are today, and they will work tirelessly to move many more to get us to our end destination, so a big thank you to all the Mountain Movers!

Originally published at LinkedIn.