se2016 management evgeniy labunskiy "how did we change culture to deliver"
TRANSCRIPT
How did we change culture to deliver
Evgeniy Labunskiy
About
10 years in IT7 years on a management position5 years of Agile experience
IN: ua.linkedin.com/in/labunskiyMail: [email protected]: facebook.com/labunskiy
Who we are
Fortune 500 company, founded at 1864
Financial Filing application, about 1000 CPU cores in Microsoft Azure
Which challenges did we have?
○ Communication gap
○ Complicated Deployment Process
○ Limitations in actions
○ Unexpected changes in priorities
○ Low level of Product management experience
○ Dynamic changes in company
○ Cultural difference
Cultural Difference as a Key
To work with people efficiently you need to understand cultural differences
Difference in self-awareness
US mindset:
I failed cause I did not put required effort
UA mindset:
I fail cause it were some obstacles on my way
Our main approach: the problems are not in them, problems are inside our actions.
If I need something to be fixed I am the only one who can make it
Define the Goal Define Steps Eliminate Risks ExecuteReport the
state
Case: strict deadline pushed from the top. Actions?
Negative/Positive
US colleagues are mostly focused on positive behaviour
UA people has plenty of drama
We avoid negative thinking during any discussions
Difference in Relations
US people always try to understand your position and describe their. They accept alternative opinion by default, but can disagree with it
They hear people from the bottom of company's hierarchy, but only if you speak with the words of arguments
Relations
○ Linear Structure
○ Friendly Communications
○ Commitments
○ Keep Confidence, Build Confidence
○ Hierarchy is on the second place
First Relations, then Business. All the times
Relations based only on Truth
Our “Truth” Rules
Say what you think. Be aware no one will make any judgment
Have sync-ups. Never cancel them as you always have something to say
Be open minded for alternative positions
Process of pushing ideas
Case: low level quality defects from external testing team (duplicates, missed test documents, requirements as bugs). Our team spends time but Product Owner can filter this list for us
Case: release process takes a long time. There is an idea that has resistance on management level
NO Dilemma
How do we understand No answers
In US no means no. There is no other options. You did not have any arguments.
In UA no can mean “no”, “maybe”, “lets see” etc.
Case: we spend the time for cutting SQL server from our component. Management was against it from the beginning.
Good relegations are based on communications. Try to find the real reasons under management suggestions
USA is multinational country. There are so many different way to think. Almost the all situations, they don’t progress without say anything
Difference in Business Process
US Companies focus on Return On Investment (ROI) or the end result. They don’t concern themselves on how it is achieved. US companies spend less time establishing their process.
Be ready to fight for your priority
Business priority change is a natural for US market, that is very dynamic
Case: your component is about to be in production. But business change the priority and say you will release in 2 month. That can cause team demotivation
Remote vs. Face-to-face
Contacting people by email or on the phone seems to be more natural in conducting business relationships.
Case: tons of mails with long text. What did we do about it?
Good ideas coming from the bottom
Only if you prove our expertise
Development teams play the main role in development of business process.
We continuously works over improvements
Key Improvements we suggested
○ Delivery of application using Release Management in TFS
○ Change of Scrum-of-Scrum process
○ New performance testing framework
○ New UI testing framework with SpecFlow (BDD)
○ New reports templates
○ Pre-production checklist structure
○ Various process improvements
Key Factors
Where to start with
○ Understand what is the difference between your release and other people reality
○ Start changes on small things, but not from global. Small changes makes global
○ Building the teams on any level possible only based on truth
○ Use simple tools
○ Automate your process
Thank you!
Lets be in touch!
IN: ua.linkedin.com/in/labunskiy
Mail: [email protected]
FB: facebook.com/labunskiy