 The third and last speaker of this session is going to be Maciej Giergwer He's the CEO of STXnext, a software company from Poland Over the past nine years, Maciej has grown STXnext to the size of 100 Python developers He's maintaining a team of Python superheroes in Poznan and other cities in Poland and Today he is going to tell us how he wants to take his company to the next level his talk is going to be about business development about agile and about team development If the superheroes in Maciej's company have one superpower then in my opinion This is changing the rules of mathematics In the abstract of the talk it said that Two plus two can be much more than four Let's find out why welcome how to become an agile company Maciej Giergwer Thank you very much It would be quick talk because we have only 20-25 minutes, so I will be talking quite fast Hopefully we'll have some time for questions at the end So we have Agenda we have seven points So we don't have to go into details more about me my history So I was Python developer like most of you for a couple of years I started in 2004 and in fact I was Plon developer I started I came to Python as a Plon developer and then learned Python based on it but quite fast I noticed that I'm also good in management, so I get extra studies courses in to learn management, so the key Key course was MBA in 2009, but later I noticed that we have to go into agile way So I also took some certificates Agile certificates on Scrum Master and Certify Fight Scrum Product Downer I'm still learning a lot so Future is in front of me. So it was just my quick history So you know who I am from where I Am and That I was Python developer for a couple of couple of years And I think I still know something about Python and how to program but today I don't program anymore today. I manage and I'm very big fan of agile and I'm going to tell you a little bit and not about agile process in software development But how I built a stakes next how I grow it and How I want to do it in future and I want to do it in agile way. That's why we thought I'm talking about agile enterprise agile company not at not agile software development according to Business directory definition of agile enterprises. That's This kind of company is first of all flexible That is that it's able to respond Rapid respond to unacceptable challenges and today's world is a lot is full of unexpected challenges events Opportunities and agile company have to respond to it quite fast It's build on policies and processes that facilitate speed and change Then it's characterized with diffused authority and flat organization structure Is close trusted based relationship with their customers and suppliers. So this is what Definition about agile enterprises Then of course we have agile software development that is also crucial in context of agile company We know about most of you probably know that what is agile that it's iterative incremental and evolutionary So company can be also like this. It's Based on efficient and face-to-face communication a very short Foodback feedback loop and adoption cycle. So it's It was definition This is agile manifesto probably a lot of you if not all Know it that agile manifesto value everything what is on the left So Individuals and Interactions working software customer cooperation and responding to change and what we are trying to do in a stakes We do it internally in the teams We do scram Kanban scram, but so different Implementation of agile, but we also try to do it on company level and I will share with you some Nice stories. That's that we had we started a long time ago. Let's take started a long time ago in 2005 And we were almost agile at that time Why because there have been only five developers so there were there were no structure at all So we can also say it was very flat structure and this is agile one client very short feedback loop Very efficient face-to-face communication of course five people sitting in one room Almost in one desk so there was no problem in communication at all It's easy to communicate, but we also struggled with some problems So we had no policies no process processes no quality assurance and we have a lot of problems with With quality most of all then couple years past 2008 The new investor came to our component gave us opportunity to work for very big projects for banks Biggest banks in Poland We grew up to ten people it took us as you can see three years to grow from five to ten Still there was there were no structures or almost agile, but we already had five clients And we were able to take decisions very quickly The other challenges and problems occurred so we had no policies again still no processes no quality assurance But we also started to face communication problems because there have been already ten people and everybody was doing everything so Unfortunately without speciality specialization we we also Came to in some places to pure execute poor execution and then I discovered Agile I Read a lot of about it. I attended some conferences courses And what I found in agile the most important thing about agile is is that it's based on on a couple of things so In agile you Plan to inspect and adapt and this is how you can define agile in very very simple way with Very one one picture and this is how I was trying to build a stakes next through many years in different areas The first area the first problem was time tracking and how we how we implemented this Agile cycle adaptation so First the problem was employees didn't report worked Hours so we were not able to build it properly to the client So I introduced company rule to report work hours in the excel sheet for Reporting so we are able then to to build clients on it, but of course employees didn't follow that rule So we created an app an app for reporting working hours, and we created that you Reminder so it was some kind of adaptation cycle We found that people didn't report ours because they forget it about it So we try to solve this with application so it was better, but some people still didn't follow that rule So we create policy that we pay only for reported Walk hours, and it's really worked then So we are very we also introduced flexible work hours, so we said well you can work in flexible way But we will pay you only for the hours you report it and Additionally, we always have the policy that we pay overtime overtime worked hours But to be able to to say that you have been working over time You have to report these hours to then at the end of the month you say well I spent 10 hours more than I expected so you will get extra bonus for it And now everybody reports work hours and no more complaints about it Just it's not that simple it took us a couple of years to him to you know to implement it to To find what is working what not what is not working, but reminders are useful But to change people behavior to change something it takes time, and you also always have to find a good motivator To it and yeah, this one was quite quite good today We have 120 employees and everybody is reporting hours very accurately each day so this is this is quite nice and I didn't hurt since since Long time, but anybody's complaining about it. So in the past they complained a lot The next agile thing agile Way in the company is communication. So we started you remember in 2005 with and five with phone communication and different agreements, so nobody was knew what's going on in the in the company nobody people then clients Denied that they agreed to something on the four people complained so we introduce email and chat communication that is Improved something so it was traceable. So there were a history in log So if we agreed about some specifications some feature with the client on the chat Then or email that you could always go back to it and confirm after a couple of weeks that it was agreed But it was not enough we have been growing so it was difficult to To know what's going on so we implemented we used Sorry existing ticket tracking system that time. I think it was track We had a flat or bugzilla or both. I think Jira was not there yet So we had a flash list of tasks problem with many projects people teams It was much better than Emails vent chat, but still when company was growing. We're not able to take good overview of projects So what is nice? recently couple years ago what we implemented this Board agile board so scum Kanban board per team Per projects and this is it is visible on the TV screen in every room So we have a team in rooms. You will see it later on the picture and we have on this TV We have team scram boards or agile boards But really shows a team where they are what we are doing and I can step into into any team in a room I can see what's going on the project and that everything is under control The problem is the problem was then when we have to also improve that we had the same scram a scram board for all teams for each team so it was let's say backlog in progress to test and Delivered or to production to deploy and closed The problem is that our team are unique So each team is different each team works for different clients different project and they also implement different agile a process And it was a problem because not all the teams some teams are doing scram Some the other teams are doing Kanban the other teams are doing something different So what do we created in our app in our internal app because we created it on our own I think it was it was implemented in Pyramid We created custom is able scram Kanban boards with with colors So we have user stories with colors and each team can map their process very very agile process on their screen So right now we have the same tool, but each team Can see something different can see different Different scram and it also took us a couple of years to came to the point where we are now that each team can customize They they scram board or agile board Today your needs to vary Process and they work in agreements But all of them have a T-screen or TV screen or most of them in their rooms and they can visualize work They can see it all the time What is in my opinion the most important part of agile of scram? Retrospectives and retrospectives according to Wikipedia are meeting head by the project team at the end of project Or process to discuss what was successful what could be improved and how to Incorporate to success and improvement in future. So it's all about improvement continuous improvement some kind of kaizen Approach and what I found out this I decided to implement retrospectives on the company level so We do every quarter company retrospective so all team leaders gather in one room and do a retrospective On the company level so we have every quarter team representatives We talk about improvements in the company in the processes on different levels on communication level And examples on improvements from the last couple of retrospectives you can see here. So our people team leaders the representatives Communicated to me found out on their retrospectives that what we would like to change in the company is Simplifying reporting time in the app. It was one thing the other thing I mentioned before but they want the ping-pong table And they've got it at the end that they would like scrum in all projects or teams. It was not like that in All the time today. We have agile in all the teams that they want Separate room for one-on-one meetings That they want anti-stress balls that they want more line on the staircase that they want tea cups with STX Superheroes you can see this tip tea cups on our booth. I think downstairs So you will see how nice tea cups we have and this is the idea from our employees And they want better scramble. We of course implemented that way we can customize scramble. It was also from inside a company The other agile think Feature of agile company is open communication What I understand on from company point of view is open communication. So open space is not open communication What I believe that a team to become a real team that That team dynamics will be in place is that team is gathered in one place So we our work organization office organizations like this that one team is in one room In most cases, we are able to locate entire team in one room Then really incredible things going on when people spent together Eight hours they can solve all the problems. They can create Nice things that are very innovative. They help each other and they also joke each other They challenge that each other they motivate each other. So this is what I understand by open communication And this is I think is most important And it applies to all our teams then we have of course conference room That is available for all teams that they can communicate Outside very team with with client with or they can do retrospective outside very room what is What is the nice thing and I find it that improves a lot communication our lunches with colleagues and what we have and we always had in aesthetics Since our the beginning is that people lunch together in the lunch room in our office So they don't usually go outside But the food is coming to our company and they spent 15 20 minutes together eating Eating together really builds very good strong relationship. And so this is a very unique thing that happens There we have one-on-one room people means of course we have Regular things like group chat skype jagger and so on why one one why one plus one can be more It's because we believe in teams and we delegate the responsibility very allowed To a lot of responsibility to team and team leaders our teams are self-organizing very collocated entire team in one room We have at least one woman woman in a per team and this is also I think quite unique about us We have all I think we have also one team Compout only from women. So this is nice. We have always one non-technical person in the team And team builds very on agreement having this all in place We our when our team usually are most much more efficient when team on clients site We also use agile in non-technical projects a scramble than Kanban world. So we implemented some extra features. So Something like Kanban lanes to scramble And what we managed for example with this kind of scramble is our marketing department and communication So we have different communication to Facebook LinkedIn and we manage this process and this It's process more than a project just with our regular scramble and Kanban Board and then I can easily go into this this kind of board and see what is the progress in our communication on in other things in a company today Companies More than 115 people We are divided in a row into around 15 teams We have locations in three cities in Poland Pwap, Osnaniye Wrocław. We are also opening a new office in Wood we also have an office in Austin in Texas. By the way Probably are not familiar because we are from Europe me me also Austin is small Small silicon wallies of small California and now really a lot of innovative teams are located not in California But in Austin and it's much more cheaper. So It's wise to know I didn't know When I came there, I this is what I learned and we have system 16 clients in most of them are in the United States and United Kingdom we have also crime in Netherlands and of course you have some clients usually these are banks in Poland What how estates is going to be? Tomorrow I don't know but what I know is that we are going to follow all the time and edge I process so we'll be planning doing inspecting and adapting all the time We will see what future what future will come and now if you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them Okay, first question, please here Okay, so why was time tracking introduced as a an agile practice The time tracking was is Key setting point for us because we need to have it because this is how we build our clients based off on time and material What do we need to as an agile we improved our time tracking process inside company and we improved it in agile way But this is not part of of scram or agile itself. This is the business requirement and we found a way thanks to agile and Retrospective and adoption how to make is less painful as as possible So it's not part of scram But without good time tracking you cannot run business very well because otherwise you don't know how to you know For example count velocity per hour. This is some we can do some extra measurements With it, but many reasons for time tracking is building invoicing clients You can always find me in our stakes next both the downstairs I will be there for the next one or two hours. Unfortunately, I have to leave today afternoon Yeah, and one more thing We have we are organizing probably if you know European battle so you are invited today at four o'clock there will be another Competition so just join us downstairs. You will see what also nice things you are doing