Kudos, Motivation & AgileAgnius Paradnikas

1 of 12 Agile principles

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they

need, and trust them to get the job done.

Background

• Visma• Nordic company

• 158 million EUR profit

• 6000 people, 90 autonomous companies

• Product development company

• Distributed

• Visma Lietuva • A development center for Visma

• 24+ Scrum teams

• 145 geeks

Geek?

• Passionate about technology• Expert in the field• Tweak till its perfect• Early adopter• Friendly and social

Stereotype

• Ego centric• Challenging to manage• Hate bureaucracy• Anti-social

• ... because Geeks want to get things done

Environment

Software development company should be ruled by geeks

Environment

Motivation first

Environment

Environment

Hire good people, and leave them alone.- William McKnight, 3M, 1930-1940

Motivated individuals

• Treat your company as a community• Keep people busy

• Pet projects on latest technologies: • codefights.net

• Shrooms

• Different interests• TechieClub

• Travel club

• Micro team buildings

Motivated individuals

• Feed Geeks brain!• CodeMonkeys

• Books

• Mentoring

• Cross team code reviews

Motivated individuals

Geeks hire geeks

Motivated individuals

• Respect == geeks’ currency• You’ll gain respect if you get things done• Success of the project depends on how much geeks

respect each other

Motivated individuals

Can we transform respect into something tangible?

Kudos

To gain kudos is to earn respect and recognition. - UrbanDictionary.com

Kudos, how we started

• Bring a chocolate and get 1 Kudos point.

• No real value from Kudos points. Just for fun.

• The more points you have, the more respected you are.

Kudos, how we started

Kudos, scale out

• We grew and physical Kudos board had to be bigger.• There were more actions we wanted to reward each

other on:• Code review

• Pair programming

• Code Monkey presentation

• Public speaking

• Etc.

Kudos, scale out

• Physically it was hard to manage.• Came up with custom solution on the SharePoint in our

intranet.

Kudos, demo

Other tools to manage Kudos

• White board• JIRA – create feedback form• http://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/01/inside-atlassian-employee-r

ecognition-jira/

• www.KudosNow.com

How to gain Kudos points?

How to gain Kudos points?

How to gain Kudos points?

How to gain Kudos points?

How to gain Kudos points?

What’s in it for me?

• Recognition and respect from peers• Bigger motivation to do more• Fun• Real value exchanging Kudos points to gadgets or other

stuff

What’s in it for me?

• Gadgets for Kudos points

What’s in it for me?

• Workplace improvements for Kudos points (ex. height-adjustable table)

Kudos committee

• Elected annually• Owners of Kudos points system• Implementing changes in Kudos points• Approves Kudos points

What other companies do?

• Kudo box

What other companies do?

• Trophy• Weekend car (fancy)

• Chair

• Yoda

How to change your company?

Start with small changes in your team. Good examples will outgrow to company level

QA

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