what we've learned about learning - powershop

What we’ve learned about learning

Agile Welly November 2014

Brian Bannister & Andy Newport

Brian Bannister@nz_brian

brian@powershop.co.nz

Andy Newport@newportandy

andy.newport@powershop.co.nz

How we’ve grown the Powershop delivery team, when we never have enough people who know anything:

Growth Integration Learning culture

What are we talking about?

10 DevelopersCulture shockComplex business domainHard - moraleHard - build up the junior membersHard - integrate and make it fun

Small start - January 2013

Separate development teamLearn - similar cultures can be very differentHard - need to growHard - lots of people were remoteHard - Scrumbanish

Struggle - January to May 2013

Sprint board with features that moved through:–Backlog -> Dev -> Test -> Release

No need to complete1 week sprintsReally just catch-upsWorked for 5 people, not 10

Scrumbanish

Test - May to September 2013

Sit togetherTeach and learnEasy - dev team supportHard - testers sit with businessLearn - testers = SMEs

No teams!Technical leadersStill ScrumbanishFear of silos Hard - large meetingsHard - right peopleHard - what’s the role?

Team leads - May to July 2013

Better Scrum needs smaller teams!Hard - business buy inLearn - great for priority managementLearn - sprint goals are expected, not rewardedLearn - team leaders are multipliersLearn - silos (aka teams) enable teaching

Teams - August 2013 to April 2014

Hard - fast growth, but we need moreLearn - no-one has the skillsLearn - smart, passionateLearn - <3 teams

Lots of change - April 2014

Growth - April to November 2014

A lot of growthMore to comeWe’re used to it now

Developers at Powershop

Goodbye dungeonLearn - sit together, share cultureHello today’s PowershopLearn - sometimes you need to force change

Integration - April to June 2014

Learn - we have amazing staffDrive engagementTeach and nurture

– Staff and community

Technical and lineManage the SDLC - information vs decisions

Dev Managers - April 2014

Starting point for all new developers Teach RubyEnforce eleganceSet culture1 to 4 monthsLearn - attractorLearn - clear signal of valuesEfficient!

Dev Train - April 2014

We needed another teamWe did thisIt worked OKLearn - some people were scaredLearn - some people like changeLearn - customers don’t like it

Pretty excitedMore visible UX processAdded a UX researcherMaybe more to come?Learn - integration isn’t solved by an idea

Lean UX - June 2014

Tell us your problemsFind the right solutionStops wasteDrives engagementHard - business buy inLearn - feels slowerLearn - some people just want a task

45 people in dev / test / design / PO + 6 internsTotal focus on teaching and learningGrowing quickly, but feels normalTeams are engaged - they complain about it!A culture of respect in an irreverent companyIt’s fun and the kind of company we want towork for

Now - November 2014

More integrationSDLC processNeed more:

–Developers–Product Owners–Interaction Designers–UX Experts

What’s left?

Reasons people want to work with us: –Learning culture

–Training team

–High performance

–Elegance

–Diversity

Silos are good

Key take-aways

Questions?

Brian Bannister @nz_brianbrian@powershop.co.nz

Andy Newport @newportandyandy.newport@powershop.co.nz

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