what we've learned about learning - powershop

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

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Slides from November's Agile Welly meetup: http://www.meetup.com/AgileWelly/events/216188702/ Over the last two years Powershop has grown from 10 developers and two testers to a technical team of 40. We used to work as 10 separate development silos delivering work to a separate test team. Now we have small, integrated and engaged multi-disciplinary teams of development, test, design and product ownership. We’ll talk about the changes we’ve made to get here, what we did well and what went wrong. And most importantly what we’ve learned about growth through learning and teaching. Presenters: Andy Newport - Software Development Manager at Powershop @newportandy Brian Bannister - CTO at Powershop @nz_brian

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Page 1: What we've learned about learning - Powershop

What we’ve learned about learning

Agile Welly November 2014

Brian Bannister & Andy Newport

Page 2: What we've learned about learning - Powershop

Brian Bannister@nz_brian

[email protected]

Andy Newport@newportandy

[email protected]

Page 3: What we've learned about learning - Powershop

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?

Page 4: What we've learned about learning - Powershop

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

Small start - January 2013

Page 5: What we've learned about learning - Powershop

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

Struggle - January to May 2013

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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

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Test - May to September 2013

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

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

Team leads - May to July 2013

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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

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

Lots of change - April 2014

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Growth - April to November 2014

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

Developers at Powershop

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

Integration - April to June 2014

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Learn - we have amazing staffDrive engagementTeach and nurture

– Staff and community

Technical and lineManage the SDLC - information vs decisions

Dev Managers - April 2014

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

Dev Train - April 2014

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

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

Lean UX - June 2014

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

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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

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More integrationSDLC processNeed more:

–Developers–Product Owners–Interaction Designers–UX Experts

What’s left?

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Reasons people want to work with us: –Learning culture

–Training team

–High performance

–Elegance

–Diversity

Silos are good

Key take-aways

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Questions?

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Brian Bannister @[email protected]

Andy Newport @[email protected]

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