done.
Enabled
Enabling Agile Values & Principles
Agile Transformation of Blue Movement a BSH GmbH Venture
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As the internal Information Technology provider of Deutsche Bahn, DB Systel aimed to become more adaptive and responsive to partners' needs, providing state-of-the-art solutions. To achieve this, DB Systel transformed from a traditional, project-focused organization into a self-organized, product team-driven network organization.
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The company-wide transformation introduced three new key roles that collectively encompass the full scope of the target vision. To decode the transformation project, we focused on developing a deep understanding of these roles and empowering their owners. The next step involved systematically rolling out self-organization through a three-stage qualification process.
Enabling new Organisational Roles
Enterprise Network Transformation of DB Systel
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The product teams within BI X have the mandate to validate innovations and product ideas for Boehringer. By developing MVPs, the desirability, feasibility and usability of an idea is tested and, in the event of success, culminates in a pilot that can be handed over to the company.
Within this framework, smaller product teams are continuously formed to validate assumptions, design MVPs and jointly develop pilot projects over an average period of 3-6 months.
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With a minimum set-up of 3-5 people, we held a kick-off to define a clear vision by outlining the "what." Once the "what" was established, we prioritized: What do we start with? What comes next? This led to the creation of baby steps to bring us closer to the goal and vision, resulting in an initial backlog.
After drafting the scope, we double-checked the required skills. In an expectations workshop, we identified needs and wishes for our joint work, deriving a confirmed working approach that reflected the team's needs.
Product Team Building
Agile Scaling Product Ecosystem Platform Boehringer Ingelheim
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The collaboration between the Enterprise IT Department, IT Marketing & Sales, and Boehringer's Digital Lab aimed to deliver internal digital products faster through a modular platform approach.
This ambitious collaboration required a team culture capable of handling various modules in parallel while maintaining a user-centric development focus.
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We approached the "Crucial 5" of a functional team to ensure success:
Shared Vision: Ensuring everyone is aligned with the same goals and objectives to foster unity and direction.
Clear Priorities: Establishing clear priorities to maintain focus and streamline efforts toward key outcomes.
Common Approach to Work: Developing and adhering to a standardized method of working to enhance collaboration and efficiency.
Psychological Safety: Creating an environment where team members feel safe to express ideas, take risks, and learn from mistakes without fear of criticism.
Team Coach: Providing guidance and support to facilitate continuous improvement and resolve any issues that arise.
As this was a non-co-located team primarily working remotely, we prioritized regular in-person team gatherings at least every three months. These gatherings were crucial for reinforcing team bonds, aligning on objectives, and fostering a sense of community and trust among team members.
Product Team Building
Product Development Coaching within BI X E2E Process
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The aim of the Bosch venture is to establish the sharing economy within home applications. Aligning various business units with common goals, developing an understanding of business agility, and responding quickly and proactively to market requirements became crucial.
The German-Dutch start-up employs around 40 people who work together remotely.
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As part of our organizational development, we have conducted training courses that begin with agile principles, explain the values, and then cover agile practices and approaches. Using an onion model, we worked from the outside in.
Believing that learning is hindered by pressure, we introduced the low-threshold "Agile Lean Coffee" format. In weekly meetings, we discussed questions raised by employees on agility and provided insights from our side.
Improved
Agile Leadership Coaching
Agile Transformation of Blue Movement a BSH GmbH Venture
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The Bosch venture aims to establish the sharing economy within home applications. Achieving this requires aligning various business units with common goals, developing a deep understanding of business agility to meet market demands, and enhancing the ability to respond quickly and proactively. The leadership team of the start-up Bluemovement, though young, faces ongoing changes and struggles to establish a fitting workflow and culture.
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We started through regular 1:1 meetings with each leader in order to establish a collaborative foundation to understand their needs and challenges. After that initial stage we accompanied the Leadership Team in different operational cases and facilitated their regular check-ins. To build an effective team from this group, we applied the "Crucial 5" principles of a functional team:
Shared Vision: Aligning everyone with common goals and objectives to foster unity and direction.
Clear Priorities: Setting clear priorities to maintain focus and streamline efforts toward key outcomes.
Common Approach to Work: Developing and adhering to standardized methods to enhance collaboration and efficiency.
Psychological Safety: Creating an environment where team members feel safe to express ideas, take risks, and learn from mistakes without fear of criticism.
Team Coach: Providing guidance and support to facilitate continuous improvement and address any issues.
Product Team Coaching
Product Development Coaching within BI X E2E Process
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As a product team within BI X, your goal is to validate the core assumptions of the product and develop an MVP that demonstrates desirability, feasibility, and usability, culminating in a pilot project ready for handover to the business. The "Genomic Lens" team, staffed with colleagues from across the company, combines those with a strong product mindset with others accustomed to traditional, project-driven approaches. Operating in an agile manner within a waterfall setup presents an opportunity to showcase the true potential of agile principles and values, beyond rigid frameworks.
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Rather than applying a specific framework, we aimed to achieve a common workflow while respecting agile values and principles:
Transparency: Make work visible through clear visualization.
Prioritize: We managed the work by its value and dependencies documented in a prioritized backlog to enable a pull-based approach within the team.
Proactive Communication: Focus on outcomes rather than just completing individual tasks.
Inspect & Adapt: Regularly conduct retrospectives to improve and align collaboration.
Effective Communication: Use shared working sessions for the remote team to discuss approaches and exchange insights.
Scrum Master Coaching
Agile Scaling for DB Data Lake
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The Data Lake was developed to provide real-time customer data and align the activities of various DB companies based on this data. Its product teams operate using the scaled Agile Framework LeSS, with three teams delivering value that must be aligned and synchronized. A recently joined Jr. Scrum Master faced a challenging and ambitious task in facilitating this coordination and workflow.
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In a Coaching on the Job approach, we acted as experienced sparring partners, offering support for self-help. We established an Impediments Backlog to capture and clarify challenges, distinguish between structural and operational issues, and derive solutions. Our focus was solution-oriented, concentrating on achieving the desired target state of a unified product view. We saw our role as providing supervision to help the coachee recognize and leverage their strengths in a goal-directed manner.
Product Owner Coaching
Agile Scaling Product Ecosystem Platform Boehringer Ingelheim
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The collaboration between the Enterprise IT Department, IT Marketing & Sales, and Boehringer's Digital Lab aimed to deliver internal digital products faster through a modular platform approach.
The Product Owner faced the challenge of developing a platform to address use cases delivered by the product teams in parallel. How can one structure a sustainable roadmap in a highly volatile environment while keeping the team aligned and motivated, and managing multiple topics simultaneously?
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To transform former project managers into skilled product owners, we initiated regular 1:1 on-the-job coaching sessions. Our goal was to instill a profound understanding of agile values and principles, believing that once the essence of agility is understood, various practices become simple to adopt.
In the second step, we trained on agile practices such as creating epics instead of overly large user stories and the concept that every need or problem can be addressed in a value-oriented, outcome-driven manner. When applied consistently, this approach results in a structured backlog that always focuses on adding value to the customer. A well-maintained backlog leads to a happy team and, ultimately, a satisfied user.
Scaled
Flight Level Coaching
Digital Transformation of glob. Animal Health Boehringer Ingelheim
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The global digital animal health unit, currently undergoing transformation, envisions optimizing the user experience for veterinarians and animal owners with a platform-based super app store. To structure information and delivery flow, the unit decided to implement Flight Levels.
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As part of our implementation, we communicated the Flight Levels structure to everyone involved and addressed questions about the approach.
We established a meeting flow for all levels to enable both exchange and dedicated work in respective areas. FL3 focused on strategic sessions, while FL2 worked on epics in regular sessions to shape the roadmap and map dependencies. FL1 detailed the user story requirements. Representatives from FL1 joined FL2 check-ins, and FL2 representatives participated in the less frequent FL3 sessions.
At each level, we facilitated five key activities:
Visualize the situation
Create focus
Establish agile interactions
Measure progress
Operate and improve
OKR Coaching
Agile Transformation of Blue Movement a BSH GmbH Venture
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When we joined the fully remote Dutch-German start-up "Blue Movement," powered by Bosch, it had been using the OKR goal-setting system for one year. Initially, employee feedback on understanding the OKR methodology and its relation to set goals was quite diverse. We initiated an OKR reset.
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We began with an intro session, "OKR in a Nutshell," to help everyone understand the method. This was followed by an OKR retrospective to categorize experiences. The leadership team then refreshed the vision and strategy for the coming year and shared the update with everyone.
In preparation for OKR Cycle 1, objectives for the next quarter were developed both top-down by the leadership team and bottom-up by the teams during a two-day digital planning session. We focused on three key questions for outcome-based OKRs:
What user and customer behaviors drive business results?
How can we encourage more of these behaviors?
How do we measure our progress?
The cycle began with a confidence vote and included bi-weekly check-ins to track progress. At the end of the cycle, we held a review to share and discuss results, followed by an OKR retrospective to conclude and start the next cycle.
OKR Coaching
Peer Coaching for AC-Chapter BI X
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The Digital Lab BI X tests product ideas for desirability, usability, and feasibility. Within this framework, smaller product teams are continually formed to validate assumptions, design MVPs, and develop pilots over 6-12 months. The Lab uses Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to align all activities and ensure they are on the right track.
As the Lab is organized in Chapters there have been also Chapter oriented Objectives. This resulted in a focus on achieving these goals and left a potential of synergies and cross-collaboration.
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As a first step, we held retrospectives with all chapters to understand their thoughts on the current approach. This revealed a lack of identification with the set objectives and a belief that they could be more meaningful.
To refine the OKR process, we established a bottom-up preparation phase each quarter. With input from each chapter and an operational perspective on what matters most, the leadership team could begin quarterly planning. To boost collaboration and minimize silo effects between chapters, we proposed designing key results along the E2E process of the Digital Lab.
We focused on behavioral changes we wanted to accelerate: proactive and smoother handovers, a higher focus on product assumptions, more experiments, a deeper understanding of value propositions, and faster user feedback. Emphasizing outcome-driven key results, we learned, is the key to achieving meaningful changes.
Scaling with SAFe
Agile Scaling for DB Data Lake
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The Data Lake was developed to provide real-time customer data and align the activities of various DB companies. Initially a small project, it quickly grew into an internal start-up, necessitating a proper scaling approach for the product team.
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We recommended scaling based on SAFe, as this framework supports maintaining a unified product vision and enables Business Agility. We adopted a single Product Backlog approach, formed three teams (Use Case, Platform, and Analytics), and worked with dedicated Product Owners - to allow high focus on the domains - and a shared Scrum Master to have structural impediments easier identified. We conducted shared and cross-team planning and reviews, while each team had specific dailies and retrospectives. Additionally, we held cross-team retrospectives once a quarter.