 Okay, hey guys, so we're going to get started a little bit of hentra, so we have some technical difficulty with the original presentation The value of derivative variable slicing, this is still an hentra, it happens around transformation to hentra So whereas the last one was more of a kind of new political management than hentra So I hope you find it interesting, I want to gank it up, I do But it looks like we're okay, we're good So today we're going to be talking about a digital transformation at agile In particular, we're going to be talking about the story that open software went through When we did do a big transformation about a year and a half, two years ago When we went through our whole bunch of management methodology And completely shifted the company through agile as a startup methodology It was truly a full company while I changed it wasn't something I had to overgank It's actually, or I'd say we wrote a year and a half, almost two years in And we're still working on improving it Today's topic is really structured in a way that You know, first we're going to be looking at project management from a hentra to a few And then from there we're going to dive into, well, what are the challenges we're going to have We're going to be using traditional product management And then after that, the challenges specifically And then Steve's going to talk about how we can overcame those challenges So we're going to do a little dynamic back and forth So quickly discussions over before we get started So my name is Chris Smith, I'm the founder of Open Software I work here at Ottawa, we have 32 employees today And we're growing really really quickly My background is when I studied business, I'm a modeler at the University of Ottawa I did some system design at the Carlton and Cranes School After that I started teaching at Auckland And a lot of our kind of designers and developers that I own today Were actually my school students way back today And then after kind of a good, I did career as a consultant And a lot of government work in Ottawa I transitioned and started to open in 6M And learning was a world of agencies and groups And all of that And I've been really, really fully kind of developing into this For about 5 and a half years Yeah So my name is Steve Leving I've been a developer for about 12 years I work at Open with Chris I've been there for about 4 Started at Open as a developer Transitioned into more of a tech lead, architect role And then since transitioned into a product owner From that agile perspective Which we'll get into shortly Throughout that process I also became a certified scrum master And certified product owner as well Yeah, I forgot to mention I followed with Steve to that certification process So I'm also a scrum master product owner At PMI I certified certified as a business project management So we've definitely done our training there for students So first of all, who are you guys? So I have a curiosity How many of you are working in teams today Let's say 0 to 10 people? Anyone in that like 10 to 20 range? Anyone in like a 20 plus range? Bigger size than us? And are any of you entrepreneurs today? Product owners? Scrum master? Okay, great I have a curiosity If you were to say the methodology that we follow That our team or the other team You know, agile, strict agile Kind agile Waterfall Or long and strong or any of your brother? All those responses Okay, that's good That gives us a really good pulse on that So, let's jump into a little bit of history project management I always say before we talk about where we're going We have to understand where we've been So for this part, very briefly, for the next couple of minutes This will be the most boring part of the day's talk I want to take a big step back We've actually looked at the slide management team So project management is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year So in 1917 project management first came to be So I want to ask you guys What was going on in the world in 1917 That might have made project management Important skills that happened World war, World War I was happening So 1917, if you can imagine the time before that We were just doing kind of off the wings And then all of a sudden this massive war We had to figure out how we could get resources to the troops So people started saying Well, we've got a lot of food in the warehouse And we've got these trucks over here And we've got troops out of the field So let's bring all the food Big step Let's get into the trucks And the trucks are freezing the fields And the fields do a big distribution And then they put together this formal Kind of way of managing that And then eventually the water fall A lot of 1917 water fall project management was invented And yet to today we still see water fall Being one of the most commonly used Much-managed methodologies in South Korea 100 years ago So I think that a lot of people go for the Recognize how long and how far back Waterfall goes and where it started And the water fall is all of those stages We have a project and we go from one stage To the next stage to the next stage And then from there over the next 100 years It really started to evolve We had a methodology called critical path Critical path was invented almost 40 years later And it said that in project management The way that we're going to be able to Make an integral problem Our project is by looking at all the steps That are critical that need to be accomplished And we have a good sense of what's critical And we can kind of block everything else Well then from there we can then determine What is going to take you into one step at a time Around 1950s there was an IPMA It was released in Vienna, New York It was the first big presentation in project management And of course the Europeans are always there For 10 years I know them so You know they did that in the 50s and the 60s We came out with PMI so the project management Is to release their own project management In North America and at that time The project management became a career To become a professional project manager Since then we've had other technologies And approaches that have been developed We've had one that was developed that said We're going to start taking a list of all the tasks That we need to do in a project We're going to come up with a whole list of different estimates We're going to have those just together And see if it's also on a project case So really kind of like a birth of estimation Computers came around in the 60s and 70s And all of a sudden we had this thing called prompt 2 I can't remember if it was there Prompt 2 was this project management And that knowledge that was created That all of a sudden we were trying to recognize Well computers are different So computer programming and software development Is fundamentally different than say managing How do we get food to the troops in the war So we needed a different way of doing it But it won't prompt you to tank Completely fail and don't pick it up But then 10 years later it comes back With some prompt 2 and then eventually We break those prints And then the prints explode to Europe And then all of a sudden every European agency And firm and big at that side Is using Chris Sweetman's older project So then Chris was born Around 1989 scrum The first time scrum was used In all the scrum like back then Was that we were going to make small teams Of people that were going to work on things together So let's take away this idea Of these massive teams that are really small teams And let's develop software iterations And there wasn't actually until 2001 That Agile Manifesto was written And I'll talk about that in a minute But Agile Manifesto was born from 2001 They took concepts from the critical path here They took concepts from the estimation They took concepts from all the way back to waterfall And then they said But things are broken and not working in modern day So we need to come up with a new set of values And a new set of principles And that's where transformation to Agile Really began The transformation to Agile Agile itself, if you've got any background Or research on it It has four key values One of those values is in collaboration Between the people So they're saying that instead of working Inside of those, your teams Must work collaboratively And we must be having a open discussion All the time There's also a lot more focus On actually delivering working products Than there is on documentation Even waterfalls Even my Gantt chart Two days later Another Gantt chart And you're stuck in the cycle of the implementation Agile, one of the four values That we get rid of all the stuff Makes no sense Projects change too often So let's focus on delivering Real-world products instead And then they have all these other principles 12 of the principles I encourage you guys To agree with them And you understand the way that they're written You're going to see that they're really asking a lot And that's why we're doing this presentation Because there were a lot of challenges One of those is that there's still more specialists And we're going to talk about Cross-functional teams in a bit But if you face yourself as a senior developer Or a front-end specialist Or a back-end migration graph Well, all of that idea goes to the window Because all of a sudden the idea Can Agile as a generalist There's a lot of principles There's also principles on simplicity There's principles on collaboration Constant feedback So that we're constantly improving And keeping it open mind and learning But all of these principles and these values What end up happening is It's defined a new way of managing projects And that new way that got taken Even further into what we call methodologies So we have the strong-mounted technology We have one called the hand fan We have extreme programing The applications of Agile And the main best of them Today we're going to be talking about our transformation That was one of the five in history Let's talk a little bit about Scrum here Scrum is our favorite Agile We've decided to move towards that little bit You know of history Where we started before we transitioned to Agile So our agency I'd say two or three years ago We didn't have a project manager at all We were eight rows All dudes, sitting in an office Less than a thousand square feet Counting out some of my fraternities So that I could use that as a majority But because I'm a star in my class To the roof And then I remember when we interviewed Our beginning interview, our first project manager Because I had a lot of people waiting in my office Maybe in charge when I was eating my lunch And there were these guys I was like, what were you sitting at? I said, Chris, this manager that you're bringing in Did you guys start working? This is not so important It's going to feel a little bit more organized So don't worry, it's a good thing And we were really really concerned That, you know, the structure of a project manager Is going to make things I don't know how you're going to do it Trust me, we still do have it on the phone One of the benefits that we've gone right away Is that we're talking to our clients We say, well, there's actually a big difference To the open and we've been working with them The first and now, we said Even those broad requirements that we were throwing out To digest something, to understand them You know those deadlines that we took to rolling Well, now there's someone who holds on to the idea Of your project manager, sure, we never go over time We're working again And it actually gave us a competitive edge And Steve put it really well when we were Prepping for this earlier He basically said, there's actually a step in So in our company, when we brought in our first PM We started with our water problem methodology And we took this big step forward And it all just rose a economy And we came to a team of 15, 16 people You know, where we only were eight guys Disorganized in a little group So we brought in the water problem We brought in the project manager But within a year and a half Or a year and a half before I should say We started to think bigger issues So the water problem methodology Is really front-loaded and it's stage-based So one thing that the water problem does to you Is it says, well, we're going to do all this To discover that problem We're going to figure out everything we need To imagine that we're going to put a huge team And that kind of project started to flow And then needless to say I'm sure all of you have felt it before It's that, you know, we get to about the end of two weeks And then we get shifted And either your documentation hell Or you're redoing your documentation over and over again Or you're trying to figure out where this water problem is Going to connect up But more often in our case, what happened is that We then started with discovery We moved into, you know, requirement design We got down into, like, visual design We built up content types that go With our views Oh, we waited for the time to come And now we have the time to employ you To do your thing And the project itself went around the liver Because of that sequential approach So you're going to have to go, you know I was sick of this, Steve was particularly sick of this So we drove our engineers and we said We need something completely new We're transforming the company We're going through this new model approach Called Stronger and we're going to ditch the 1917 My fellow water problem And so the big issues that we were having As an organization was not strong So, let's talk about the challenges We're going to, let's see if Bob will do it too But one of the first challenges that we had When we went from waterfall to strong Was in the commitment itself So one thing that you have to notice is that This is innovation This is a little change So when it comes to commitment The senior executive commitment And that's not just, you know, me, the founder But also I have the CFO, we've got executives All of the senior staff in our company Had to be committed to our job Because one of those was going to change their jobs Because all of those were really going to change When they did everything, had to change They had to be invested And they had to lead the team And then the developers, they also Had to use the challenge as well So the developers are used to working inside of us We had to run them in specials We had to get back in specials We had the migration guide And we had to tell those developers You know what? You're comfortable with the migration guide But tomorrow you'll be writing SaaS code And you know Who's never done anything except a bridge In SaaS and JavaScript Well you know what? I'm going to need you to write the first custom module Because we're becoming a cross-functional team There are a lot of challenges As, you know, we need to be committed For the developers to accept That their jobs are going to change as well So Steve, how do you go? Yeah, so like Chris was saying We talked about it at the manager level We needed to make a change We needed to move on from 1917 So it really started from the top down So we started with the management team Getting an agile coach Taking some courses Reading as much material as we can Meeting a lot Meeting again, meeting yet again To really understand from all parties What we're getting ourselves into Making sure we're doing it for the right reasons Once we were comfortable From a management level She brought it down to the developers Making sure that they had to say What they mean to go agile Or fully agile How to change their job role Like Chris said, the migration guy Who just wanted to lock himself in a room And look at the terminal all day Couldn't necessarily just do that No more, they had to do a little bit more Do a little bit more generalists So we made sure that We brought whatever we learned From the courses and the material that we Learned to brought that down to the development team To make sure that they were aware One of the points that Chris touched on as well Is it took money So we had to work with our CFO To come up with the money to pay for training To allow our developers to Go and take courses to come to conferences like that Like this one, sorry Things like that, so We had to talk to her and through that process We had to find new grants And things that we could actually use To bring that cost way down To allow us to actually afford To do this stuff And then transparency is a big thing So we wanted to make sure that We were transparent from the top to each other But we were also transparent to Everyone else in the company And vice versa where We wanted that transparency from the developers To also come up and talk to the managers As we were making this transformation And really decide how we were So essentially just nipping questions In the vibe and making sure that Transparency was there Making sure that if there was a single question We kind of talked about it right away We came up with processes We didn't want this We knew that the agile transformation Was going to take some time But we didn't want to take too much time To even answer a question Or come up with a solution to the problem So the next challenge It is going to be a float for now The next challenge is the cross functionality So I mentioned that our teams In the way that agile setting is critical Is that everyone is meant to work Like cross functional capacity So that doesn't mean that you're now Migration traveling, you're coming up And say if you're a coder, you're a tester You're a back end and front end person You're also a business analyst And perhaps on the day you're doing Some discovery sessions as well So cross functionality presents A lot of challenges One of them is knowledge A lot of people have developed And others So when you're hiring To the company You usually end up saying Where that person has a long front end It's like what a long front end And how comfortable are you With your php code To help you for your program and so on So cross functionality Has had a huge challenge Because our teams could no longer be specialists When we had to encourage people And get a good side of the comfort zone So that they would begin To come up with cross functionality The way we did that was We knew that the back end guy still wanted To do the back end guy Or at least still wanted to Make that part of their skill set So we're going to do something Where we had primary skills And secondary skills Kind of the same way we developed it Internally Where primary skills is more that generalist So we make sure that everyone had A baseline of that primary skill So if there was a task at the top Of a sprint backlog that someone had to use Anyone can essentially take that on And take on that task And at least have that baseline of knowledge To know that they can achieve that But however just to make sure that Everyone was still happy Everyone still was able to do what they wanted to do A back end person can still be a back end person In a front end Could be a front end We had secondary skills So as much as the primary was that generalist The secondary was still a lot of people To go and learn solar Or go and learn as much as they can About Angular Or as much as they want among migrations Things like that In order to do that We invested a lot of time and money Into training for our staff Both to make sure that everyone Had the same baseline So everyone essentially got Acre certified In the company Everyone had the same baseline Which made us understand Just as a whole team That whoever took that next Card with that next task Knew what they were doing To get it done At least to some capacity And then we also kept on Investing in training for those secondary skills So making sure that people can still Take secondary courses To essentially expand Their knowledge And then with that For the knowledge transfer piece We can't do it all with training Essentially just came down The peer program So we made sure that If we had a migration script to do The person that has done Ten migration scripts Also sat on the person who did Zero migration scripts And made sure that they did it together And transferred that knowledge Yes, it costs a little bit more for us It takes a little bit longer But hopefully the next migration That comes in Doesn't necessarily have to be peer programming That person that just learned it Can take it on And maybe transfer that knowledge To someone else And so on and so on The next challenge here Is with business know-how So as you start to transform Into IGL You start to realize that IGL is really good For delivering business objectives When I would be a client They say, Chris Today we're a $25 million organization And in five years we want to do $100 million Can you tell me how much Of this business you have for me? Streaming broad business objectives That need to be overcome And we're responsible for coming up With the technology that's going to do that So the business know-how Comes into play because That conversation doesn't just Happen with me anymore It doesn't happen with their sales And marketing team But it also happens with the developers So the product we work for example Is to be able to sit in the room And understand the vision of the project And be able to speak to the business Of the client But so do the developers When they're saying I recommend we take this approach Rather than this approach It's not just because I believe That this is a very technical solution But this is why Our house might be Your business objective in a better way So for us We have to figure out How is it that we're going to Bring a business knowledge From all these different Verticals and industries For development team For management team That kind of Necessarily kind of touches The goal of the experience And those areas So Yeah, so Let's start with the product owner Which in this case is My role now at Open So product owner came about As half a tech lead And half a business analyst To make sure that In most cases of the technology I was still in those meetings I was still collecting On requirements But I was collecting those requirements Strictly based on Just truthfully Or based on building A custom module That has since Involved into Yes, I still need to know How Drupal works Or how the technology Don't use every day works But put a little Bit more of a business Had on for a business analyst And ask different kinds Of questions So what's your actual Invasion? What's your annual You're paying less To come up with a solution So let's not talk About the solution now Let's talk about Just what you need Like Chris said We're going to pay Your money to transform Our company We need to transform This website We need this as A complete annual So we started bringing The technology to meetings And then the second thing We also did is It wasn't just me anymore That was in those meetings It was the entire team So we all had different Hots on We need to know As the product owner We need to know As the technical background But we also had the Developers And there were Since they're all Generals It was made up of People that Would typically do Design or lack And work from And make sure that They were in the room As well So it wasn't always Coming from a client To a PM To a developing team It was really just Everyone was in those meetings Moving forward Which allowed us Just to make sure that We had that business No house So they knew Everyone on the team Knew what that vision Was What the client Actually wanted What are we Working towards When we go back to our desk Put our headphones on And start programming The next challenge Was on learning So you guys Don't get picked up already That this process Requires a lot of learning The developers Had to work Focus on a particular Product owner To become a generalist And all of the others There were certifications For us as managers To get A hard-to-scrub master And a product owner Certifications But also developers Had to be certified In other technologies Or areas That they weren't Particularly great at So there was An amount of learning That had to be done But also There's a continuous amount Of learning That is the So there's a bunch Of ways That we can continue with So for us to be able To make the best Recognition to our clients And this technology To meet the business objective We need to stay At the innovation curve We need to be constantly Reaching out into Our research And figuring out What is the next great thing What are the options That are available to us So all of a sudden We can hatch out And we can get stuck In our ways And we can become specialists And we can adapt On the very end of each day We can really problem Our vision And what we're learning Our breath What we're learning And we have to go along With professional involvement And ourselves As well as the teams And to make this happen There were few things We did that were possible Yeah so We started by just Like Chris said I'm sure you guys are hearing That a lot of learning Is involved And what we did Is every new employee That came on board It didn't matter What their skill set was Or whether they were Doing their work Senior We still gave them Two or three sprints To learn And fail And try something A little bit differently And find a place in the team And learn how to jive With the team Grow with the team Understand what we were trying to Accomplish So obviously A big investment From the company From Chris To allow people to do that And then As we go through And evolve And say That one person Has now been with us For months Everyone on the team Still has a lot Of learning time So every sprint We try to Still have a little bit Of that learning time Where it's not as much As it was Maybe at the beginning But in every sprint We still have A little bit of time For us to learn And make sure That we have that knowledge And then It comes to retrospectives So for those who Know the agile framework At least know What a retrospective is At the end of every sprint We have a retro Which is essentially The sprint team comes together In a room And talks about How to sprint We learn from each other Not necessarily In that case From a technical perspective But more from Just team management Processes Things like that The next Role change So it's not every day You come to work And your boss tells you That the jobs might be Really different But the job description Is not about day one So agile for us Actually from An HR perspective It was a role change For quite a few people If you were on the operational side Of a company So it would be all on the side If you were technically If you were a product Or if you were used To talking about Like Steve said The requirements In terms of How is this done in Drupal Discovery sessions In vision settings Being able to be comfortable With that change The developers as well There was a big change In their job You guys all of a sudden One You weren't a specialist Like we were mentioning But two You also have to be A lot more social And collaborative We used to be able to Work in our silos We'd show up Or head on the line And just work In your order in a way But now you're involved In a lot more brainstorming Sessions You're going in clients You have to probably dress A little bit nicer The aspects of the job That have changed The managers The developers Everyone in the company So there was a big role change That had to happen With the organization From a formality perspective Yeah, from the Again right from the top down Of the management team And knowing that My role was going to change It made me a little bit nervous It made me a little bit uneasy Making sure that We were all going to sit in the room And define what these new roles meant What were the new Responsibilities of me And not only just that open From my 12-year career As a developer I knew what a developer should do I knew what a techie should do I knew what all these things That the industry Or the old school industry Kind of told us what we needed to do So it wasn't even just the role That opened It was a little bit of just My career path in general And not just for me But for my colleagues There's other product owners And scrum masters Back at Open as well So we all had to sit Essentially just panning Or what does this new role look like What are the new expectations How does it look And then we had the same kind of Exercises that the developers Are you okay with it Since we're changing the role And someone's been with us for years We obviously want to make sure That they're still happy So we went through those same exercises To make sure And that's where we brought up Things like the primary And secondary skill sets And things like that To make sure that In this transformation of roles We still make sure that Everyone was happy Everyone's not in place Everyone was still doing something That they were passionate about And kind of like Such a huge one That's often overlooked So I'm not just sitting down With your entire team And having to talk openly About the mistakes you've made Or the things that you could Become better Or you know Areas that you repeat Can you recognize and believe In your love and concern That I'm improved Not every working environment Offers that Before Open I definitely didn't have That in my career I was a consultant And I sat down with my manager To my client So I was like I feel like how weak in this area They'd be like Why would you be a pretty good character Right So we'll see you later So this environment of trust Was super important to us Because we knew that the retro Was one of those key aspects Where we could continue to improve As an organization Where the team had to be able to talk About how we had that circle of trust What's that movie? The circle of trust With the You can't break a circle of trust You know what we made a mistake When they broke the circle of trust We had a few development teams That opened one of them They had a real bad spirit The bad spirit happens And they were into the retro And the bad spirit met that We didn't deliver What we said we were going to deliver But it did take us a lot of time And we spent a lot of money And the project manager came into That great retro And instead of saying What we've done better Where can we improve At PM Lay down the law You guys screwed up This is huge mistake Your client is so upset What are you going to do And then that circle of trust It was broken So what do we do PM wasn't good enough And that's something you can't do Your scrum master Your project manager They might not be But into your retro And it did take some time When it did rebuild that trust And that PM Is now part of that circle again However The retro And that trust You need to Protect You really really need to protect it Because with that People are not going to collaborate They're not going to share feedback You're never going to get a full Value of the retro-spectrum Yeah Are there any other tricks For trust that you can It just comes down to Positive reinforcement I think And constructive criticism How we've talked to each other In that particular case That Chris is talking about We know that We took longer We're grown adults We're transparent We didn't even get scolded Or say But rather What we do here Get better We all went into that room You're in a retro We can all be transparent And say Yes, I did this That I probably could have done it A little bit better And it took twice as long It's okay for everyone else To share that The end goal of that Just with that positive reinforcement Is just how do we get better In the next time And how do we get better In the next time after that And so on and so on Good back How do we do your Yeah It's just a question Versus me and the parents In one year How much did you guys spend For this transformation What did you spend in training? Spend in training Financially? Yeah The first initial certifications Were 20,000 Management teams certified And then after that We didn't I don't think we even Tracked the overall cost Of all the internal Professional development And things But it's quite so Yeah, so those certs Were 20,000 Okay, the background So how do you do a Fridlisch test To work on one project At a time One Fridlisch individual That's beautiful And everyone else They can laugh So if you work for the agency In the world You've probably come very Possibly to work on Two Five Maybe 12 Probably 12 Simultaneous projects Because you know One client They go on holiday And then you have to Do some more work Right You need to build When your time matters So all of a sudden You might have a Multiple projects That scrubs Say that you're going to have Just one backhaul It's your to-do list Every kind of a team Needs to do top to bottom And then you're starting To ask the question Well, how are we going to do 12 to-do lists And bring them all together Into one And this was actually I had to say We probably spent Five to ten hours In meetings Just trying to hash it With what that process Look like Because we've even got to Do a single backhaul For a team But we had no idea How to take 10 different requirement lists And mesh them together And still treat Our clients Yeah We'll get to the Kind of what we did for it There's a few slides Coming with software And stuff like that So Stories So Carry on from the backhaul So the backhaul We do this With requirements When we started Trying to reply To the sense of vision And objectives All of a sudden Our old way of collecting Requirements Just wasn't the same anymore When they're telling us They want to multiply Reveal Or they want to increase Market awareness In a particular sector Or audience group All of a sudden Kind of that translated To how many concentrations Will be How many taxonomies Will be Doesn't make any sense at all So we had to come up With a new way Of defining our requirements When working with our clients So We borrowed this concept Of stories Which is actually Kind of more popular With an agile office Yeah Do you guys are aware Of what stories are From an agile perspective So instead of just saying The requirement is To build an Event listing page The idea of it And it goes back From that business value That we were talking about before The idea of the story Is as a person I need to go to a website To search for an event In a timely manner So I know what I'm doing On Saturday evening So that one story When we put it in real words That everyone can kind of Understand It doesn't matter if it's Drupal Or any other technologies We put it that way The client instantly knows Yes, that's exactly what I want You hear me loud and clear We're on the same page As the product owner We kind of bring that back To the team We say that to the team Easily the team can be On the same page What ends up happening At that point Is we bring it internally And we break up that story Into actual tasks That we can achieve in Drupal Or in any technology So that one story Which is more of a business Value story And not necessarily tied to Technology or a single task Then gets broken down into Kind of the tech talk Or what we need to do internally And one story might actually Lead to a hundred things That we need to do But those hundred things As we look backwards Should always lead back up To achieving that goal Of whatever that story is Absolutely I'd say when I express Stories that tell people It's a very broad requirement That as Steve mentioned Is volume-based So that we can understand What this requirement is Who is going to benefit from it And then clients will prioritize Which is a very common The next challenge Is prioritization So there is a concept That we might have to take on in a lot But the project manager Can have the iron triangle With constraints We've got our resources Or money We've got our time And we've got our scope You guys can manage And probably store files You're familiar So in the iron triangle Of waterfall Your scope is to this And the other two constraints Are meant to be variable Which means that you have to Have all your clients To be like Hey, we're going to deliver Exactly what you want But I don't know exactly How long it's going to take And it's probably going to cause More or less I'm quoting you today Now, agile is a flip They say We've got a flexible scope We need that You know Your requirements Are going to change From what we think they are Today We can guarantee you On time And on budget delivery Everyone's mind explodes But if we can do it With a more visual project On time And on budget But agile allows you To do that But the biggest trick Is to show the backlog You have your list of requirements And you need to work accurately With your client To manage the priority Of the scope And the flexibility of the scope So that one day You show up to work And Steve is in the product And we're going to say Okay, here's our time to stories Which one of these Is going to bring The maximum business value To your organization today And then from there You would order them all Based on business value And then you have your View list And the theory behind it is that If you only get through The first six Of the time on that list Those six bring the maximum Business value And the other four Are so low on the list That they probably Doesn't even care And now After we are now doing this We can confirm that You know, we can Successfully And keep our clients happy Drop those bottom floor So it's kind of a neat way But it's really prioritized Prioritized Prioritized Prioritized One of my favorite gigs Is having a modeling game You give everyone A thousand bucks And order and play And I'll play dollars You go through your stories And they have to put A lot of audience to it And then eventually They're running money, of course Right And then you can't How much is required In gallery and funding Like big modeling money And then you just Order it accordingly So if it's smart If they want to actually Reserve their money They're going to put it Where they need to go And they have to get In order to backhaul And then as time progresses Maybe the priority is Change You go through this exercise Not once, but every two weeks At our company at least And you read Prioritized your backhaul Maybe the senior management Wants to see something Completely different Maybe before dropping The U.S. subsidiary They don't matter anymore So let's put them In the bottom of the list Whatever might be happening You re-prioritize them In your two weeks And that's how we Finish this scope And we keep this scope flexible In a way that The client is guaranteed To still get on The volume from Estimates Everyone has Estimating problems It doesn't matter What methodology You're following Right Estimates are really The development team The best guess The developer is the best guess That's how long Something is going to take And a top of that You know What's involved In the task Now If you really Are driven on Getting accurate CMS You should probably Try best to finish You try best to the Varian system And then you're working With the developers To try to get more More accurate On those things But everyone Kind of knows Estimates are the Being of all Project management Problems They're like The source of the Problems Because if you miss The forecast Of the project And you can actually Set up at home With any communication That happens You've got a really Good trick for us Yeah, so has anyone Heard a planning poker Before? Couple people So planning poker Is essentially a game That we play We make it fun When we meet as a team And we take that story And like I said We take that overarching Value story And break it up Into tasks So we set as a team And since everyone Is more of a generalist Now Okay, well it means We might need a content Type in a view And a blog And this and that Then essentially We start estimating What we do is play Planning poker at that point Which is essentially A deck of cards With some numbers on it Everyone gets a deck And everyone votes On the estimate For that Each individual task We go as granular as possible And we say Okay, from this story It's task one How long is task one Going to take us And we flip over the card In most cases I was going to say Everyone is different Not everybody is different But in most cases There's some different numbers From a two day to a one day To a one hour To a one week At that point What we do is take The person that has the Highest number And the person that has The lowest number And they need to Explain themselves Why is it going to take A week Versus why is it going To take an hour Then once they Essentially explain ourselves We turn our cards over And we vote again And we vote again You usually get A little bit more narrow And then we still say Why is it the most You have to explain yourself Why is it going to take this Why is it going to take that And that's where Usually the conversation Ends up being Oh for this project Two months ago I actually did something Very similar And it was like this So I know if I did it Again it would probably Be less time The other person Might say I've just never done it before So I'm just guessing Because it's an estimate We still try to narrow those We vote again Until we get to it As close as possible Sometimes we get to a number That everyone can live with One single number That everyone flips over And it's the same In some cases When we flip it over And it's always going to be different We obviously don't Keep on playing that game We usually go with The higher number Just to make sure That we're accounting For risk Or accounting For things that come up Or the scrum master Or myself as the Product owner Will kind of jump in And say okay well We've heard all sides And we think that Based on everything In that final vote We'll put this as the number In our software That's what we'll report back To the client The last challenge Of accounting is software There's actually Two women here Raleigh They got Raleigh by CDA They have a software similar to Jira I'm just going to talk about them But software Was a big challenge for us Before we get this transformation Based on email Those were our primary Go-to's And energy to do lists And tasks Now based on Everyone kind of loves Based on the simplicity The intuitive interface And so on But the minute that we Manages back on The prioritization The cross-functional teams The assignment and tasks The logging and work And so on It all Just completely tells All of us And we knew that We had to take the space To have a portfolio For maturing our software So Steve Tell them what That was working for Yeah so It was extremely painful To be completely honest So we scoured the web My software some colleagues And I want to say We probably tried Every piece of software Out there Or ones that at least came up In a Google search Or things that we heard about And essentially just Tried them out Signed up for the 15 day free trials Knowing that we needed This single backlog Knowing that we had Multiple teams Knowing that we had Multiple projects So on and so on And we just tried the Software to see how Okay if I come in tomorrow And I have to use this Software Doesn't work for us or not In most cases They all failed Some were amazing At one thing But really didn't have Something else Some maybe were A middle ground So at the end of the day We actually settled on Jira So we settled on Jira Because it had the most Of what we needed It's still not perfect It has API So essentially We can program it To do whatever we want It has plugins Although it can be Can get pretty pricey At least there's other People out there Similar to Drupal That at least are contributing Something back Even if you have to pay for it And then we were able to Manipulate it just enough That it did fit into our Day to day Of how we wanted to work Which is what we really Wanted to focus on We didn't want to pick Jira Because the industry told us That Jira is the most popular One and we should just Use it for the sake of using It We truly chose the piece Of software that fit into What we needed to accomplish Of all these meetings And all this transformation And it just ought to be to Jira With that said There's a lot of money In Jira that is So it's not in any sense Think that it's an easy thing One of the biggest states We need as an agency I think is we're very smart To invest in electricity Like a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong And a strong So today's talk, we're going to get into questions. So today's talk was meant to help you understand if you're thinking of switching between agile methodology, we talk a lot about the scrum methodology about an agile framework overall. You know, hopefully it shares some of the challenges that we face and how much that we overcame those challenges as well. I do think that, actually I think we both agree that this transformation has been extremely successful not just from when the morale of the team and the company, but also the happiness of our clients at the end of the day is we're super happy with the results. It was definitely a good amount of work on it and we're still climbing it. So to give you some insight, now we're bringing designers into the mix. We always have a really heavily technically based agency but for the first time we're bringing creative people and really changing things up. And creative work, doesn't necessarily fit into the scrum methodology of agile and agile in the same way. So now we're experimenting with, you know, further advanced business things called LeanUS, if you've heard of that methodology, the definition of ready. So having our design backlog and develop the backlog and then it would just gather the iteration and so on. So all that to say that, you know, agile actually has a really great framework for us that now we can tweak and modify to our own kind of needs and our changes and what we're trying to do as an agency to be more competitive. So yeah, so everything is still evolving. It's everyone going to be like, okay, we're agile, I'm about to consider this again. Keep in mind you're going to have to change as your organization changes, as the market changes and as the technology changes as well. So questions and answers, guys? We're not going to answer any questions. Or we're going to answer them. Sure. So you had the slide on the break. Two or three sprints just being working. Was it actually? Yeah, so we put less of the plans together for all of our entire team. Again, from the person that we just hired to be in the London after years, we all have lesson plans. So we have kind of them already developed in our back pocket of what people should work on how or when, sorry. We also make sure that everyone has ACME certification. So that's a huge help. So we know what at least an end goal is and we know how we can make these lesson plans to get to there. So that's more from like a formalized training, but then we also just do shadowing, peer programming, things like that. Make sure that you sit with the developer beside you then the next day you don't sit with that person, sit with someone else of the diversity. But you can go sit with your PM for an hour and just see what the PM does. Come sit with me for an hour and come do a client meeting that you normally wouldn't come to just to see what it's all about. That's where we say the formal training, but then also in that two or three sprints. It is like you still can do some client work, but at the same time, you can still do some shadowing. So some of the formalized, some of the kind of main property. Do I have an invite? Two questions. What is a feedback to promote people? So right now, we actually have, yeah, it is interesting. So we do have one developer doing a program called Promovior. They can live in a different country every month for 12 months. So she's primarily doing a whole group of issues with being online right now. That's super cool. I'm really jealous. But it was a little bit of an interesting activity. So when I live in our offices, video labels, so we do communications, like there's two platforms for video conferencing as great as it's like you're there. But when it comes to managing local workers, I have definitely heard the world of companies for remote workers to be a remote team. If the whole team is remote, it's really hard to forget one person, for example. We have a remote worker. There's one in a team of seven. It's very easy to get to start a conference call. So for us, it's a bit of just being on top of the line for all the developers just creating on the line somewhere else. There's probably three again at their time when they're trying to connect. So it's more of a spectrum of mindfulness of the remote worker. And then to be trying to be able to do a conferencing on all the dialogue. So that way we have that personal connection, so. You know, she comes back every quarter, so we do see her every three months as well. So there's a lot of like coming to the office, work with us a little bit, and then go back to wherever it is if we're on the floor. Red Bill had a personal connection, I think, to me. But those are just some of the techniques we use, but I really recommend, like, we've been thinking of remote teams quite a bit. I think that if we were really advanced, all of our remote workers would be a remote team together. And that way, it's just natural for all of them to think, okay, let's connect to Zoom, set up that conference, and so we'll just get it. Yeah, the other question was, so if you have these larger teams and everybody, how do you keep your budgets? In which, let's see, go-legit or client-legit? The project, the budget or the project, if you have more heads, you have more open head. Yeah, for sure. So our team got that large, we count them at seven. So a seven-person team had a project owner, a project manager, and five developers, soon to be five, four developers and a designer. So the costs are really small in our company. So it's not, we don't tend to go on and find those over very quickly, especially if you have the two or three projects going on at the same time. And then the project manager's first role of the project is to maintain the budget. So we have budget forecasts, but since day one, we can actually forecast how many sprints are we trying to get at some of these development or generation, and things like that. So we've actually brought that budget over here. But you have four new people going to the client table. Oh, you mean the client needs to take care of it? Yeah, so we do, in our quotes, have to say that there's an additional overwrite that we'll call them ceremonies meetings, first scrum. We just have that articulation in sales process. This is the value that's going to bring. So a lot better than having five people on the table coming up with the best business solution than it would be if you had one. So the client's just, if they take the time to do it. Yeah, so essentially, since we have one backlog, that one backlog consists of all of our project items. And then when we do sprint planning, we pull from that one single backlog. And then we run essentially one sprint per team. So our pods, what we call them, our development teams are essentially just our agile teams. So if we have three agile teams, then we have three sprints running at the same time, each team responsible for their own. And within those sprints, it can be from one to 10 projects, depending on what the agile team is, or what clients they have, or what projects run with them. And what are the models that will work? Yeah, so we still try to accommodate them in the process. So we still put support work into our backlog. But we know that support work can't necessarily wait for two weeks. So in our sprints, we essentially just, I don't like to use the word buffer, but for lack of a better term, we'd buffer them or have a little space for that support work. So we know that if we're starting support work, we go along with something for support. It might come up, or it might blow up, or we have security updates or core updates happen. We need to stop overdoing and help our clients do things like that. We essentially just adjust for them. And that's where I myself as a product owner, that's prioritizing things. We work very hand in hand with the project managers to make sure what are the budgets, what are the allocations, what room do we think we need, are people who adjust for the assumption of someone being sick this sprint, or someone going on vacation this sprint. Those are all things we take into account. I also say that we're a partner for the HACC group. So they're global support talent. They do have SLAs. This is a response that would require any interview response. It doesn't go in there for a working hours. We always have that career right there that will jump in and they always be able to be resolved in certain issues that are just happening. So having a partner, like if your organization can't support the enterprise level, having an enterprise support partner for us, those are the data. So guys, a couple of last minutes. Those are the GOAT conferences coming up. Gapno, Ottawa, Agile, too. Yeah, so it's coming up in October. November, I think, on October. So if you're a project manager or a product builder, recommend definitely check for me there. Elmville Toss will be speaking there as well. It's where we learn a lot about our coach and a lot of the agile coaches in the city get together there. So check that out. The evolving one that's talking to you next, stick around for the last improvement. Thank you. And thank you for coming to Toss. Really great meeting you all. So I'll see you later.