 All right, thank you everyone for joining me here today. So this should be a fun, hopefully entertaining conversation. I want to give everyone here a case study as to how Flixbus has gone through an agile transformation. The pros and cons, the awesomeness, the scariness, the difficulties with it. So to give you a very, very quick introduction of myself, my name is John Collins. I am one of the senior engineering managers slash people manager. I'll be diving into what this role means at Flixbus in our agile environment. Prior to working at Flixbus in Berlin, I worked at Microsoft on the Xbox hardware team and on the HoloLens augmented reality headset. And I also worked at Apple as a program manager for a few years and I also worked at Snapchat as a hardware program manager on the hardware team. So let's dive right into it. How many people here have heard of Flixbus? All right, cool, so about half of you. Okay, so we've recently been expanding into Sweden more. So there was an acquisition of Swibus and there is now Flix Train that's now coming to Sweden, which is really cool. But if you're not familiar with the business model, I just want to briefly give you an overview because that might kind of help you put your frame of mind and as a reference here for why we did an agile transformation. So as you can see in this picture here, across short mobility distances that we have all the e-scooters that you see all around Stockholm, we have Uber, we have Lyft, et cetera. But there's not a lot of competition, not a lot of innovation that's been happening across the long distance travel sector. And so this is where Flixbus comes in. We don't compete against, for example, the within the city transportation modes, it's all long distance. So we do trains, we do buses. We're now doing long distance car travel to compete against blah, blah, car, et cetera. So that's a little bit of the business model. But now let's talk about some of the challenges that's here. So this company has only been around for about seven years, really young. And it started off with just three co-founders and in just seven years, it's now up to about 4,000 employees. So hyper growth, every year we're growing 30, 40% year over year. Question is how do you keep that culture going? How do you make sure that you're retaining and gathering the greatest talent from around the world? We had one simple goal, and that was to paint the world green. And what we mean by that is that we want to Flixbus as in every country as possible. We want to be able to give affordable fun travel to everyone and make it available to everyone around the world. But with that challenge of growing, we realized that we needed the ability to scale. We needed a way, a working mode that would attract the best talent. So that was our big question. How do we grow? How do we retain our culture in this hyper growth state of mind? So we said, yes, we're going to transform into Agile, which maybe some of you are already considering or have recently done. And then let's dive into maybe some of the challenges that came out with this. So we based our decision of Agile on the book Drive by Daniel Pink. Maybe some of you have heard about this. There's a lot of different methodologies and different things, but this is the one that we tried to emulate. So we already had the role of the product owner. The product owner helps the organization to define a purpose. So what we found and based on the book as well, what motivates people for their job, what makes you be able to attract the best talent in the world is not money. Money makes people happy typically for a few months and then doesn't make them as happy anymore. What makes them happy is giving them purpose, mastery and autonomy. So that purpose comes from the product owner. We already had product owners, we retain the product owner role. By going into this new Agile transformation, we now have two new roles that we're coming in. So the first one was the people manager role. We had this leads, we had a bunch of hierarchy before, we had directors, VPs, et cetera. So now we had this new role of the people manager that we're basing this off of the book Drive. And what this is, this is a servant leader position. So instead of being top down, this is now somebody that is going to enable the organization to be successful. Their job is to help people. And then we had this new role of the Agile coach. Some companies might call this scrum master, sometimes this definition gets blurry, but we call them Agile coaches. And their goal is for helping to make teams autonomous. Sometimes this can be really difficult, especially with people that might be introverted, maybe a little bit quiet. What does it mean to stand up and speak or to do retrospectives? This can be a difficult thing. And our Agile coaches that we were gonna be hiring, we're gonna be experts in this area. So this is great, we knew some new roles that we were gonna have in our Agile transformation. We knew we wanted to do this. Now let's talk about how we did it. So we had some concerns about this Agile transformation. Our first concern was that we knew some of the mindsets had to change. As we've been discussing today, Agile is a mindset. And sometimes people might not align to that mindset. And so that can be a difficulty. We also knew that realistically there might be some matrician issues. So maybe some people decide to leave, maybe we need to backfill. These are very difficult problems. It's like, okay, yeah, we wanna take over the world and we wanna have all these buses and we wanna hire 30% every year. But if you have a bunch of people that are leaving because they're not aligned to this or because their roles are changing, et cetera, this can be a realistic challenge in an Agile transformation. Also with this new role of the people manager and the Agile coach, where things aren't always so clear that they have a very strict deliverable with an OKR or a KPI. Sometimes that gets a little fluffy or a little bit blurry. How do you measure the success of those individuals? Those people wanna grow. Those people wanna get promoted. How do you handle that? These were open concerns that we had in our Agile transformation. But we decided to still progress forward with this. So the first thing that we did is we brought all of our employees together into one space. So we rented out a big hotel conference area just like this. This was also a very expensive endeavor. We had to plan out for this and make sure that we got budget for this, et cetera. And we got everyone into a room and all the managers stepped out. And then we had the product owners pitch for what they wanted to work on, what they thought would bring the best business value. And then our staff then, like musical chairs just up there, they lined up and they joined with the products that they felt aligned with their personal interests, what they were passionate about, what they were really interested in, what they aligned with. It could be maybe working with their friends was really important. Maybe it was that they wanted to work in a different office location. Maybe it was because they really aligned with the vision of that team. So we had a self-organization event and that turned out to be super successful. We still referenced this two years later that this was something that we felt like was important to give people autonomy for working on the things that they wanted to do. And everything was self-organized. And out of this, we had these new roles then the people manager, the agile coach, and we had product owners that then had people that were passionate about working in their area. What this also meant is that we needed to prepare that some people might be moving. So our staff was located in Berlin and in Munich, about 50% in each location, and that some people might be moving to Munich and some people might be moving to Berlin. And so we also needed to have that kind of that frame of mind that there's gonna be a cost associated with this. This isn't just free. This isn't just having stand-ups, et cetera. That this is a worthwhile endeavor. So what this meant is that employees then had this new way of thinking. Now that we're in an agile mode, that they could go down the path to their old ways. Maybe that's what they wanna do or that they would go down this new path for us. And we started wanting to think about how do we mitigate the risks of this agile transformation? So the first thing is that if we have people that might be leaving, we wanna make sure that we have recruiters, HR staff, et cetera, then we can backfill as fast as possible, especially because we're in this hyper growth mode. We also wanted to make sure that this agile transformation is not an endpoint. It's actually a beginning point. So what I mean by that is that we're constantly doing retrospectives every three months. How is this working? What do we need to change? What are our goals here? So today we've learned about what's important in agile, like in the manifesto, is that it's transparency. So that's one of the things, for example, that we saw, okay, we weren't being transparent enough. That's one of the things that we need to work on and continuously improve. Also, there was this open question that we had the people managers, and we have these agile coaches, and they're both trying to help out teams. How do we make sure, like, what's the line there? Is an agile coach like a people manager that's just kinda in the team? Are they not? This was a big open topic. We also needed to figure out, for example, that when we were hiring new people, not necessarily that they've worked in agile environments before, but how do they have that agile mindset? Are they prepared that they're gonna own it? For example, if they're developing software and that software breaks, it's not their manager that's gonna be the first one that's gonna be getting on them. It's the teams themselves. The teams are responsible. The teams own it, and the teams themselves are the ones that are gonna enable the product to be successful. But we also were seeing that there could be some concerns about some ambiguity in the roles, especially in a hyper growth startup mode. Not everything is always so clear that people might have to kinda wear different hats, so to speak. So, we didn't wanna be this guy. We did not wanna be managers that were micromanaging, that were very top-down, and so what this meant then is that people that were managers before, we wanted to give them the option that, okay, we're going into this new organization, and maybe you were the most skilled person in the room, and that's normally how it is in a hierarchical structure. Maybe it was that person that was an engineering lead, for example, so they're managing some people, and they're also an individual contributor. But we wanted to make sure that the people that were managers were really passionate about helping people, enabling people to be successful. And so, that was kind of also a different mindset. And we also needed to make sure that if we're gonna be doing this, there's a cost associated with this, and we needed to justify that cost. So, in a standard hierarchy, again, organizations may be plus or minus a little bit on this, but this is just kind of a standard. Is, let's say our organization is 250 people, 240 people, and in a standard organization, we're gonna have about 48 overhead roles, overhead being somebody that is not necessarily maybe like writing software code, somebody that is helping the organization. So, in this example, we're gonna have 40 teams, so typically a team is about anywhere from six to eight people. And then, within those teams, usually there's a team lead, and then there's a director, and then there's a head of, and then a VP, et cetera. In this new agile organization, we have less of these overhead roles. In our case, we have the same number of teams, so 40 teams, and we have 13 of these people manager roles, and we have 13 of these agile coaches. So, I'm gonna be talking a little bit about the breakdown and why we felt like that was the right balance. So, the value creation of having this people manager, why do we wanna do this? What we found is that there's kind of this sweet spot, this right balance of how many people report to one of these people managers and what is their objective. So, if a people manager has typically less than 15 people, we found that they get bored. Okay, they're helping out the team, they're approving their vacation, we kinda joke, and they're helping to get them to go on trainings, but it's like, okay, there's not that many people to be doing that with. We've also found that if you have a lot of teams, that balance is about over 25 people we found, is that you're just trying to keep up to date. Okay, yeah, this person's having this issue, this person is sick. Okay, this person is having a conflict with this team, for example. So, this right sweet spot we found where the people manager can be the most effective is when they have anywhere from 15 to 25 direct reports, and that's across three or four teams. This is the right balance between team effectiveness and people manager effectiveness. So, let's talk about why we decided to break this down and the responsibilities that happen from a hierarchical organization that has team leads in our agile organization. So, in a normal organization that has hierarchy, the team lead, this would be like the one person that's responsible for like the eight people in their team. Maybe they're the most senior person, the most knowledgeable, the most years of experience. They're responsible for team collaboration, the team maturity, getting them, okay, here's who we need in the team. Personal development, maybe, sometimes. They're also responsible for, sometimes firings, if necessary. Hiring is necessary. Also responsible for team budget and growth on top of doing their normal kind of day-to-day stuff of being a member of the team. So, contributing, for example, for writing software code. So, what we found is that typically when people get a team lead role, some people wanna do it, but a lot of people don't. So, what we're having is that we're having like our most senior engineer in the team that's now having to do stuff that they don't wanna do that isn't being used for their passions, their experience, and we're putting them in a role that they're responsible for people development when they might not even wanna do that. And instead, we decided to split these responsibilities. So, now we have the role of the people manager and the agile coach. So, the people manager, and this is a little bit different than the book Drive by Daniel Pink, but this is what's been the right balance for us, is the people manager is responsible for personal development. And at the end of the day, my role as a people manager is not to say no, my job is to help them say yes to things that they wanna grow into. So, if that individual wants to learn something new, maybe join a different team, I do everything in my power to help enable them to be successful because I don't wanna lose this person. And this is something that motivates people when they feel like their people manager really cares about them. Also about the interdisciplinary leadership, sometimes it's a fact of life, sometimes you have to do with firing, sometimes you have to deal with interpersonal conflict, especially when it comes to certain laws of certain countries, you have to have this role. So, that responsibility also falls from the people manager here. People manager is also responsible for the team budget, team growth, trying to get the headcount for things. Why do we wanna place the investment into this team versus another team? But they're not alone in this, they work with the team to be able to justify that. And also, the people manager isn't just doing people management stuff all the time. At Flix Plus, our people managers are also doing some individual contributor tasks. And we base this based on passion. So, for example, I'm really passionate about culture or about how we do compensation or how we do feedback. These are things that we find that the people manager can really help to contribute to. And our agile coaches, on top of doing some of that, like they can help out with the organizational activities as well, they are someone that is deeply in the team for multiple hours a day, and they're helping to transition teams from this forming, storming, norming, performing stages. You might have heard about this before, especially where we have brand new teams in this hyper growth mode. We have a lot of teams that are now forming. And having an agile coach that's there, getting people to talk about their issues, getting people to open up about how to solve these problems, is really, really critical for success of an organization. So, let's talk about the value proposition here. A little bit further about what is the PM versus the AC and what do they bring? So, this is after we did our agile transformation a few years ago. We found that the people manager helps to have a reduction in churn. We've had teams that really haven't had that people manager support. And when they have a people manager, there's less churn. So, there's less turnaround. There's less people that are leaving the organization. They feel like they're being supported. There's also the ensuring sometimes when we have teams, teams might be a little bit of a narrow focus when they're trying to hire. They're included on every one of the hiring decisions, but sometimes they might think, okay, well, we have this problem and this person can fit our problem. But our people manager really tries to identify what's the right cultural fit for the organization. What's the right cultural fit given these other personalities that are within the team? So, looking at a little bit of a higher level, we found that having a people manager and the team both be a part of interviews really, really does help. In addition to that, we found through surveys, through reflection, through retrospectives, that the people manager helps to improve our job satisfaction, especially when we don't have people managers that are micromanaging. This is something that we actively try to avoid. This is also something that as we're hiring people managers, we hire people that want to do people development that enjoy this kind of role. Some of our people managers have come from technical backgrounds. Some haven't. Some have come from HR. Some have come from the hotel industry, totally separate areas. But everyone is really empathetic and wants to help people. So this is also the mindset that we have for when we're hiring our people managers and the value proposition that they bring. In addition to that, our agile coaches help out with team effectiveness. Sometimes you can have people that might be a little bit more introverted, don't always open up as much. And so when we have a people manager, maybe that's the person that's responsible for their paycheck at the end of the day that steps out. People are much more open for working together to help to solve a problem being open about their problems. So in these ways, having somebody that's like a moderator in that discussion really, really does help. And just as I mentioned earlier, that transition of the teams from the forming, storming, norming is incredibly valuable. If we have teams that are all high performing, that's amazing, but that's unrealistic. So across our 40 teams that we have today, especially in this hyper growth mode, we're always gonna have teams that are in various stages. And you can have teams that go from high performing then into being a norming stage and vice versa. So we like to say that as a people manager, as agile coaches, if the teams are all high performing, fully autonomous 100%, then our job isn't needed. But realistically, there's always gonna be a need for us. And so we like to balance out and shift around as needed for the organizations and the teams that really need our support the most. At the end of the day, the agile coaches and the people managers both work to solve problems. So what that means is that our job every day is really different, and that's part of the beauty and the awesomeness of this job. And we're both hoping to scale the organization. So just a few key takeaways in the last few minutes here. In my mind, these overhead roles of the people manager agile coach, especially if questions come up, are they worth it? Yes, they're worth it. We found through surveys, we found through better attrition, et cetera, that these roles are necessary. In addition to that, we're finding that a dedicated people manager and agile coach roles help us to be able to split up that team lead responsibility. And it's also made it so that we can hire people that are people managers and agile coaches with that background that want to do this rather than making a team lead do something that they might not really wanna do or be that great at. In addition to that, just as what's been mentioned throughout this whole day, is that autonomy, trust and transparency are absolutely crucial. We're not saying that this is the end of our journey, we're not saying that we did this perfectly. What's important is that understanding what are we trying to do, what are we trying to do to improve and being open about those issues. In addition to that, teams are empowered. So we give every team a voice through constant feedback. The people manager, my role, is to just listen to the teams to help enable them. So there's never an issue with raising questions or concerns in the team. In addition to that, there's also the constant reflection and adaptation. So we're already trying to think about the future of how this agile journey will go. And is this right thing for scaling our organization? And so far we think, yes it is, but how do we do that? How are we gonna grow when we go from 250 to 1,000 technical staff? These are the open questions that we're exploring now. So in summary, change is hard, but in my opinion, change is worth it. So thank you very much.