What we’ve learned about learning
Agile Welly November 2014
Brian Bannister & Andy Newport
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?
