what we've learned about learning - powershop
DESCRIPTION
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_brianTRANSCRIPT
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?