Inside Volume #10: August 2015

August 2015 AgileTODAY | 1

Barnardos: Believing in

Children

Hack Your WaY to

SucceSS

AgileTODAYPersPectives for the enterPrise innovator

Volume 10 | AUGUST 2015

WINa Double Pass

to agile

encore!

Re-Live AgiLe AusTRALiA 2015!

Kingswood College: Does Agile work in schools?

Agile at scale Lessons from News Corp, CBA and Australia Post

AGILEencore15WEDNESDAY 21 OCTOBER 2015 | RACV CLUB MELBOURNE

JOIN US AT AGILE ENCORE 2015!Agile Encore brings together some of your favourite speakers with great ideas for managing products,

scaling Agile, motivating teams, and creating a culture of experimentation.

Following the sold-out Agile Australia 2015 Conference which saw 1100 technology professionals gather in Sydney over two exciting days of learning, sharing, and networking, Agile Encore delivers the highlights of

this event in one punchy afternoon!

CATCH UP ON SESSIONS YOUR COLLEAGUES RAVED ABOUT!VISIT WWW.AGILEAUSTRALIA.COM.AU FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

BEN GRACEWOOD

VP of Engineering,

Vend

DAVID MOLEAgile

Coach, Nomad8

ALEXANDRA STOKESFounder,

Agily

SHERIF MANSOURPrincipal Product Manager, Atlassian

SESSIONS INCLUDE: What if there were no rules? Ben Gracewood – Vend • Building the right thing – lessons learnt in Agile product management Sherif Mansour – Atlassian • Scaling Agile to the enterprise – Frameworks and the debate! Alexandra Stokes – Agily • Drive: How we used Daniel Pink’s work to create a happier, more motivated workplace David Mole – Nomad8 • It all starts with an idea – Kicking off initiatives

for success Craig Smith – Unbound DNA

Wednesday 21 October 201512:00pm – 5:30pm

RACV Club501 Bourke Street, Melbourne

$250+GSTDiscounts apply for groups of 5 or more

CRAIGSMITHAgile

Coach, Unbound

DNA

03 Letter from the Editor

04 Hacking Away To Shape Organisational

Culture Brett Wakeman

06 CommBank, Australia Post,and NewsCorp

embark on Enterprise Agility Beverley Head

09 Lightning Letters! Win a Double Pass to

Agile Encore

10 Highlights from Agile Australia 2015

12 Agile Australia Survey Results

14 Top Tweets from Agile Australia 2015

16 Kingswood College Adopts Agile

18 Barnados: Being a Non-Profit means We

Have to be Lean

ConTenTS

Welcome to AgileTODAY – the Community issue!

We are still coming down from the high that

was Agile Australia 2015 Conference held

this past June in Sydney – what a vibe!

When we went through the comments and

feedback surveys from the conference,

we were surprised and delighted by

how many of you are using Agile to

serve your communities – whether it be

in schools, for charity, or for improving

morale within your organisation.

You inspired us to do this community

edition of AgileTODAY, featuring your

stories about improving the lives of others

via Agile methods! Check out BankWest’s

hackathon for wildlife group NativeARC;

and Carsales’ use of hack days to transform

their organisational culture on page 4.

See how child welfare non-profit

Barnardos adopted Agile to improve

outcomes for kids (page 16).

Agile approaches are even making

their way into schools, with Kingswood

College implementing Agile in classrooms.

Read about their journey on page 17.

Another big theme emerging from Agile

Australia 2015 was around scaling Agile in

an enterprise setting, with many different

strategies and perspectives being shared.

Read our exclusive feature on scaling

Agile in three of Australia’s biggest

organisations – News Corp, Commonwealth

Bank, and Australia Post – on page 6.

You can also check out the results from

this year’s State of Agile survey on page 12,

highlights from the national Agile conference

on page 10, and go into the draw to win

a double-pass to Agile encore, held on

Wednesday 21 October 2015 in Melbourne!

Best wishes,

Zhien-U Bakarich editor

PS: We welcome your feedback and

contributions to the AgileTODAY magazine.

Please send us comments and article

ideas to [email protected]

Letterfrom the

editor

4 | August 2015 AgileTODAY

A few years ago, the leadership

team at Carsales were surprised

to discover that developers in

the Product & Technology team

felt that Carsales was not an

innovative company. They were

taken aback, because Carsales

had a long and proud history

of delivering innovative and

industry-leading products and

services.

But the original ideas for these

were coming from our leadership

team, not the development team.

So our first Hackathon was

born, to offer the development

team an opportunity to innovate.

The idea was simple: No rules,

no direction, just freedom.

The result was nothing short

of amazing. Great ideas can come

from anyone and, given the right

environment and opportunity;

everyone can bring their ideas to

fruition. A pleasantly surprising

fact is that over 50% of Hackathon

projects to date have actually been

released to production.

What do you get when you give 100+ techies the freedom to ‘hack’ away for two days and work on whatever they like? Brett Wakeman shares the results.

Hacking Away To ShapeOrganisational Culture

“The idea was simple: No rules, no direction, just freedom.”

Brett Wakeman is the Iteration Manager within

the Membership Tribe at carsales.com.au


BankWest’s Community Hack for Native ARC rikki Lee vrankovich – DigitaL exPerience Manager, BankWest

We run three Hack Day events each year and they have grown larger and delivered better outcomes with each event, with more colleagues joining from beyond our IT departments.

Being an iconic institution with a risk-averse culture we really challenge ourselves to extend our scope a little wider, ensuring that we continue to deliver a unique event that inspires our colleagues. The most important and powerful feedback received is our colleagues love the opportunity to support the community they live and work in. This inspired us to try our first Community Hack event, where we partnered with native ARC, a not-for-profit

organisation which looks after Australian wildlife. native ARC had no technical capability, so we worked over two days to build them a management system and database which allows them to record and report the animals that they care for.

It gives me immense pleasure to organise the Bankwest Hack Day, I love being able to give our colleagues the opportunity to work on diverse ideas that inspire them to look differently at their day-to-day tasks and to challenge them to think outside the box to make things easier and simpler for our customers.e to help colleagues; share information openly and proactively

Rik

ki L

ee

“This is a statistic we are very

proud of,” said Carsales CIO,

Ajay Bhatia, “because it shows

everyone at Carsales that they’re

empowered to bring their ideas

to life and encourages them to

continue innovating day-to-day

during the Hackathon off-season.

The benefits to us as a business

have been beyond what we had

imagined.”

The buzz generated during a

short two-day period, continues

well beyond the actual event.

“One of our core values

at Carsales revolves around

innovation and our hackathons

have been instrumental in

bringing innovation to life. But

the best part is not what happens

every quarter during the few days

of the actual Hackathon, but the

value delivered post each event

and the positive cumulative flow-

on effect.”

One of these flow-on effects

has been a renewed focus on

our customers. Following the

involvement of our Customer

Service team during our second

Hackathon, every member of

the Product & Technology team

now spends two hours every few

months listening to customer

support calls. This has led to the

implementation of a number of

initiatives that have significantly

improved the customer

experience for the millions of

visitors to Carsales’ network of

sites.

We extended the invitation to

participate beyond the customer

service team and experimented

with a number of different

approaches to involve the entire

business. The turning point was

our Jumpstart event, where

teams had to take a ‘start-up’

approach to executing their

ideas.

The major difference between

Jumpstart and our other

Hackathons was that it wasn’t

only about the ‘code’. Teams

had to consider elements such

as marketing, commercialisation

and revenue opportunities,

go-to-market strategies and

how to pitch their idea to bring

investors on board. The real key

to success was branching out

and collaborating effectively with

people from across the business.

Jumpstart helped in breaking

down of barriers across our

different departments and gave

everyone an opportunity to get to

know people that they may have

otherwise not met, with carsales

now having close to 400 people

in our head office.

At Carsales, our initial

objective was to address the

perceived lack of innovation

within our development team, but

what we didn’t expect was the

cultural innovation it created in

the process.

Putting the customer first, a

renewed sense of empowerment

now felt by everyone to

bring their ideas to life and

greater collaboration between

departments, are now all key

aspects of our culture.


It’s hard to imagine a more

digitally disrupted trifecta of

Australian businesses than News

Corp, Commonwealth Bank

and Australia Post. All have

seen internet enabled start-ups

encroach on their territory, and

all are turning to Agile to provide

a means to respond rapidly and

effectively.

At Agile Australia 2015,

executives from each of these

organisations participated in a

panel session helmed by Agile

coach Lachlan Heasman to

explore the challenges associated

with bringing Agile to the

enterprise.

Not so long ago, Agile

practitioners were considered

enterprise Australia’s fringe

dwellers; techno-geeks who

would slyly cover office partitions

with Post-It notes as they learned

the lingo of the scrum.

Today Agile is out and

proud, and its capabilities are

rapidly percolating beyond the

IT department as enterprises

grapple with digital disruption

and the need to respond rapidly

to morphing market conditions.

Leveraging the full impact

of the Agile approach, however,

requires a commitment to

update corporate cultures, flatten

hierarchies, rethink budgets and

KPIs, and blow up a few sacred

cows along the way.

Pete Steel, then

Commonwealth Bank’s retail CIO,

who has since taken on the bank’s

lead digital role, explained at Agile

Australia 15 that the bank now

had 1,000 people working on 144

Agile projects, noting that the

approach had been a “massive

success” but was not without

speedbumps and stormy waters.

It took management foresight,

he said, to accept that Agile

mandated a “change in the

way you work, the rhythm, the

disempowerment of senior

leaders who think they know best

and instead making the decisions

where they are made best, on the

floor in the scrum.”

While CBA’s Agile engagement

began in technology and

particularly in customer-facing

innovation, he said that some

senior bank executives had now

begun to adopt Agile practices to

nut out bank strategy objectives.

“It’s really interesting to see that

sort of engagement – refreshing

to see it creeping out beyond

software development,” he said.

It also signals the impact Agile

can have on corporate culture.

And culture is crucial

according to Australia Post’s

Cameron Gough, general manager

of the organisation’s digital

delivery centre.

After using Agile techniques

to rapidly roll out a post office

locator app, Gough said he

paused to analyse the value that

had been delivered to consumers

and the enterprise at large.

It delivered, he says, an “aha!

moment” when he realised that to

fully leverage the value of Agile,

Post had to step back from just

“doing Agile” to instead creating

a culture in which Agile could

flourish across the enterprise.

Establishing an Agile-friendly

culture was also increasingly

essential, he acknowledged, in

terms of being able to attract and

retain skills.

Getting the right culture,

he said, also meant taking a fresh

look at funding models, moving

to a continuous rather than

staccato budgeting approach;

securing organisational support

for experimental methodologies;

and focussing on creating value

for the enterprise rather than just

getting product out the door.

Like CBA, Post has developed

a significant Agile capability.

Having originally had 40 to 50

Agile specialists working in the

technology group, Gough said

that Post now had “around 250

working in 15 Agile teams across

three tribes.”

To help with the transition

to an Agile enterprise culture,

Post has deployed the SAFe

framework which Gough said

gave a degree of structure to the

Agile at scale: Lessons from the frontline at News Corp, CBA and Australia Post

Leveraging the benefits of agiLe requires a corporate rethink, writes beverLey head


Lachlan Heasman, Alisa Bowen, Pete Steel, and Cameron Gough speaking at Agile Australia 2015, June Sydney.

process that was helpful in that;

“It’s a sort of mediation layer into

the organisation. But it equally

gives us a lot of space for the

teams to evolve.”

Alisa Bowen, group director of

digital product and development

at News Corp said that the

company was; “very very early

into the stage of making the

entire organisation Agile, and

all organisations would say they

aspire to be more nimble and

able to learn more quickly.” But

she acknowledged that was

“incredibly hard to do.”

One of the approaches she

said had proved valuable was

to strip away some of Agile’s

specialist language and replace it

with enterprise-friendly terms.

“The first piece of advice I

got was if you want this to work

in the enterprise then avoid the

fundamentalists.”

Bowen said News Corp

had focused on; “the spirit of

the principles, on the learning

outcomes, breaking down large

monolithic projects. We talk

about milestones and phases

rather than sprints, because as

soon as you start talking about

that people think it’s just for the

technologists.”

She added that part of the

rationale for implementing Agile

processes was to attempt to

break through the bureaucracy

and layers in a large organisation

such as News Corp, delivering

teams with more flexibility,

autonomy and empowerment to

get closer to the customer.

Bowen said that there were still

funding challenges. “The process

of acquiring funding is still a bit

of the tail wagging a dog. But the

bigger challenge for us has been

stakeholder management in the

wider organisation.”

She said that it was important

that the broader enterprise

appreciated and got comfortable

with the “ambiguity” that can

accompany Agile projects and

instead of being focused on the

issue of ‘what was being delivered

by when’, to turn the discussion

to the business outcome that was

being sought.

As she noted; “Once everyone

is focussed on the outcome and

the steps that might get us there

it changes the conversation.”

“ You are not here to build software. You are here

to change the world.”

LiNDA RisiNg Agile Australia 2015


AgileToDAY is giving one lucky reader a double pass to Agile encore 2015 – Wed 21 october 2015, Melbourne!

For your chance to win, get your thinking caps on and send us your most creative caption for this photo of Agile Australia 2015 speaker David Mole and Scrum Master Jono Elkin. The winner will be announced on the Agile

Australia blog (agileaustraliablog.com)To enter:1. Get creative with a colourful, comic

caption for the photo2. Email to [email protected] with CAPTION in the subject line3. Include your Name, Job Title, Company,

Email, and Phone Number4. Tell us who the lucky

person is that you will be taking to the event

Competition closes 23 September. Winner announced 30 September.

WiN A DOuBLe PAss TO

Agile encore 2015

WINa double

pass to agile

encore

Featured lightning letters

Thank you to everyone who put through lightning letters from our last edition, which was around maximising work. Here are a couple of the featured letters:

I maximise work not done by asking:– If it is really required before i start. Work items often become out of date, but are not updated, so check before you commit any effort to it. A quick question can save you days of unnecessary work. – The question why? If the owner of the task cannot justify why they want it, then why am i spending time on it? Leanne Howard, Agile Practices Consultant

We (Team) play design marathons with our UX in the initiation phase to give the complete team an in-depth understanding of the features and stories we are going to work. Each of us do a presentation of our wireframe or sketch to explain what was the thought behind the drawing and how we are addressing the value requirement. On top of this, the activity also puts the team into a commanding position to understand the Vision and objectives of the product or service. This understanding empowers the team to take valuable decisions and come out with creative alternatives during the sprints (if required). We are sure this is valuable insight clearly puts the age old debate to rest if designers lead the sprint plan or the developers. It also allows us a team to be more productive in the starting sprints of a release. Sumit Chowdhury, Lead BA for Project MCC, Westpac

titLe sponsor pLatinuM sponsor goLd sponsors siLver sponsors

AgileAusTRALiA15

August 2015 AgileTODAY | 11other


Highlights from AgileAusTRALiA15hO sPreAdTwo-thirds say it was

their ‘first time’66% of ‘STATe of AGIle’ SURVeY ReSponDenTS HAD neVeR Been To An AGIle

AUSTRAlIA ConfeRenCe BefoRe. HeRe IS WHAT YoU SHAReD WITH US.

Familiarity to AgileYou organisation

new to Agile 9.44% 20%

fairly familiar with Agile 25.84% 32.81%

Very familiar with Agile 46.74% 32.58%

Agile expert 17.54% 14.38%

From 445 survey responses, as many as 46.74% respondents were very familiar with Agile followed by 25.84% who were fairly familiar with Agile. These results were echoed by the organisation’s familiarity to Agile as shown in the table above. Interestingly, as many as 20% of respondents’ organisations are new to Agile.

Impact of AgileWhen respondents were asked “What aspect of Agile has had the most impact on the way you work?” 28% of the answers mentioned collaboration/teamwork. This was followed by rituals like scrums, stand-ups, retros, sprints at 18%. Other aspects of Agile that popped up to note were ease/efficiency, iteration/flexibility, speed of delivery and transparency/visibility.

Similar to last year’s statistics, culture has emerged as the biggest challenge:

‘Culture – the mindset that this is not how we have always done it so why are we doing it now. If a process is not broken why fix it’

‘General culture shift hasn’t been achieved and in some cases the change has been rejected’

This was followed closely by issues with management, who are not embracing the process and working at the same pace as the rest of the team:

‘Old-school management thinking, habits, behaviours’

‘Management, long standing practises and operations bogged down in the current way of working, ineffective change agents, lack of techniques’

Resistance to change was highlighted by 12% of respondents, which can be attributed to a lack of understanding, fear of the unknown, and refusal to accept or having the will to change:

‘The uncertainty. Resistance to investing fully in agile and making it work. Larger, traditional organisational processes which are hard to change’

‘Fear of the unknown and a reason – why’

Highlights from AgileAusTRALiA15hO sPreAd

Thank you to all those who participated in the ‘State of Agile’ 2015 survey handed out at the conference!

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

66.08%

Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Twitter

76.06%

23.44%32.17%

16.21%8.23%

2.49%

Google+ NA Other(pleasespecify)

LinkedIn and Facebook are hands down the people’s choice of social media platform

More than 50% of attendees who answered the survey work in large organisations

1,000+ employees

NALess than50 employees

50 - 200employees

200 – 1,000 employees

lack of funding being made available comprised 7% of responses.

‘The funding model does not lend itself to the achievement of the advantages that can be gained by working in an agile environment’

‘The current policy and process they fund for projects. The current project framework execution for projects limits funding for agile right now – large projects’


Top Tweets fromJohn carroll @john_bouyThanks to everyone for making the #agileaus conference happen! highlights had to be @ldavidmarquet and @risingLinda

tony Palmer @tony_a_palmer Lots of great sessions at #agileaus, esp. @berndschiffer @anders_ivarsson @risingLinda @ldavidmarquet @robpyne well done to the organisers

em campbell-Pretty’s notes during Linda rising’s workshop gained 13 reTweets and was favorited 21 times

paulangov @paulangovLove hearing from ppl who have solid things they’re going to follow up in their org’s after coming to our #agileaus talk. cc @MrPommyGit

sue hogg @planetsuzie Big thanks 2 all #agileaus speakers especially @ldavidmarquet @risingLinda @anders_ivarsson @jamesshore @evanderkoogh @berndschiffer #genius

Dominik katz @dominikkatz had the weirdest dream last night of a proud red-booted tiger. Cat shoe, sic! Thanks @berndschiffer @erdbeervogel, great talk #agileaus

Jono elkin @Jonoelkin Yeeeeeah #agileaus would have to be one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to. shattered now though!

greg Willis @gwillisVery impressed with the quality of speakers, attendees and thinking at #agileaus last 2 days. see you next year! @slatteryit

Paris cowan @parisbcowan #AgileAus conference hands out drinks before last session starts. #Genius.

kim B @kb2bkb reminding us that not all learning is incremental @adamboas @nxdnz #agileaus

steve si @stephensi Inspirational – Lisa Frazier @CommBank embracing the culture of experimentation and welcoming failure as part of learning #agileaus

rikki-Lee @rlvrankovich exciting & encouraging to hear hack day cultures being mentioned in so many talks at #agileaus #doingitright @m1k3_br33z3 @anders_ivarsson

anthony Boobier @antboobier “A bad manager is worse than a dysfunctional leadership team” #agileaus

herry Wiputra @hwiputraLeadership is all about supporting the team. It is a behaviour, not a role. #agileaus

erwin van der koogh @evanderkoogh I love how the spotify people always cringe when someone mentions the ‘spotify Model’.It was a snapshot, never meant to be a model #agileaus

Mike breeze @m1k3_br33z3 Big thanks to #agileaus organisers! @snowwhere and I had a great time speaking, listening and watching over the past few days. Awesome!

Marty andrews @martinjandrews First time in years that I feel like I missed out by not being at #AgileAus. seems to have been reinvigorated nicely.

This tweet received 84 reTweets and was favorited 47 times! Bernd schiffer @berndschifferd’oh! #agilefluency #agileaus #userstories /by @jamesshore

James shore @jamesshore A great end to a great conference. Thanks #agileaus! Now on to Melbourne for a reprise of my #agilefluency coaching workshop.

helen kelly @hels_kel Thanks @slatteryit and #agileaus for the prizes, excellent timing for all onboard!


Transform the way you work atService Management 2015!

MIKE CANNON-BROOKES Co-founder and co-CEO

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DR JASON FOXBestselling author and

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Service Management 2015itSMF Australia’s 18th Annual National Conference

BUILDING CUSTOMER VALUESOFITEL SYDNEY WENTWORTH, AUSTRALIA | THURSDAY 20 - FRIDAY 21 AUGUST 2015

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ALAN ARTHURCIO, GoulburnMurray-Water

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Explore how to apply innovationto maximise business value at thepre-conference workshop day

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As a global community we must think differently

about education and the future, because the

future our children face is fundamentally different

from that of any previous generation. Kingswood

College is using research into how humans best

live, learn and flourish to create contemporary,

future-focused learning experiences and programs

for our students.

The education industry is a hotly contested

marketplace. There are calls for education to

combat obesity, mental health, financial literacy,

the methamphetamine crisis and radicalisation – to

name a few – alongside a focus on values education

and the traditional reading, writing and arithmetic.

This pressure does not often make for schools

characterised by their energy and flexibility. Quite

the opposite. Amidst the education debate one

thing has emerged to which educators cling –

curriculum. The collection of concepts about what

KINgsWood CoLLege AdoPTs AgILe To PLAN sCHooL CuRRICuLuM

Kingswood College

loCation: Box hill, MelBourne

size: approx. 600 students & 100 teaChing staFF

type: independent, Co-ed Kindergarten – year 12

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentationCustomer collaboration over ‘contract’ negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items onthe right, we value the items on the left more.

Schools

curriculum

Engagingcurriculum

contractmindsetStudent

co-creation

‘Factory’curriculum


KINgsWood CoLLege AdoPTs AgILe To PLAN sCHooL CuRRICuLuM

students need to know and be able do by the end

of their schooling. It’s so perpetually added to that

it is known as the ‘crowded curriculum’. It is so vast

that no school can cover it in the detail they know it

deserves; it contains ideas of depths that cannot be

sounded in the time available to teachers; and despite

being continually expanded, is curated by educators

and their managers who reluctantly, if ever, prune old

concepts.

The best educators know this has to change. Students

must be viewed first and foremost as individuals; the

things they need to know as fluid and evolving, and

the school seen as a community of learners.

When we attended Agile Australia 2015 we were

surprised to see presenters starting with similar

messages and familiar slides that we use in

education that encourage educators to stop teaching

students using the factory model and truly embrace

individualised learning and a curriculum that prepares

students for our rapidly changing reality.

The Agile Manifesto and the mindset that

accompanies it has a significant parallel to the journey

that we are exploring. This year we have dared to

ask: As a school that wants to be world class, what could we learn from world class organisations in other fields that could help us drive curriculum improvement, enshrine staff collaboration time, and make our school more fast-paced and flexible?

One of the concerns we had regarding the structure

and flow of meetings was that operational details

were obstructing valuable projects. We combatted this

by splitting our meeting into a 60 minute strategic

discussion of ideas, initiatives and pedagogy that

would inform and drive our educational agenda,

and our own version of scrum. That is, a 20 minute

standing meeting that would allow people to provide

updates on particular initiatives and programs and

introduce new ideas, which may be tabled for future

strategy meetings. The scrum was complemented

by a Kanban board designed to reflect the team’s

progress and each person’s responsibility.

The intention was to restructure the way we talk

about curriculum beyond the traditional subject/

faculty construct, talking about the ‘why’ of learning

and teaching at Kingswood College, not just what and

how. Tools like display boards enables us to visualise

the process from idea to execution and evaluation and

make that information available to our colleagues. We

can easily see obstacles and gaps. We can identify

areas that need greater attention. Perhaps more

importantly, we can foster a climate of trust where

our work is promoted and scrutinised beyond the

scope of one group of people in one meeting room by

encouraging the transparency and openness that agile

thinking offers.

We are not there yet; but we are committed to

continuing to adapt agile thinking to our setting

and explore these ideas. At Kingswood College,

the vision of an agile curriculum, and agile school

is one that responds rapidly to continual change;

that is lightweight without being lite; that is flexible,

manageable and adaptive without being reactive.

It is one of continual innovation characterised by

the enthusiasm of practitioners at the peak of their

profession.

Liam King, Deputy Principal (Learning and Teaching)

Grant Exon, Pedagogical Leader (Collaboration)

We would love to hear from others in the community

who are interested in continuing this conversation

in relation to the implementation of Agile in an

educational setting.

Please email us at [email protected]


Being a non-profit means we have to be leanBen liquete, Tech lead & Sharmili Someshwar, IT Dev Manager, Barnardos

Barnardos Australia has a long

standing focus of putting the child

first, and saw a need for a whole-

of-life child welfare / child services

management system.

Barnardos Australia created

MyStory from the ground up – a

cloud-based SaaS, designed by

practitioners for practitioners.

It features case planning tools

with guided practice notes to

give workers: shared information;

enable best decisions; and

preserves ‘life story’ information.

It’s a digital memory box for the

child/young person in foster

care housed in one central

location; because greater detail

and accurate information results

in better informed placement

decisions for individuals.

We don’t have the luxury of

being a non-agile heavy weight.

The financial pressure alone

brought on the project.

When the MyStory project

began, the focus was on

connecting users with working

software they could use straight

away. We worked to establish

collaboration with multiple

business units, industry experts,

and academics to understand

requirements rather than follow

general sector processes, and we

kept the end-user in the loop with

focus groups to test the ideas and

gather more.

We started with a number of

Scrum tools: online backlogs and

Scrum boards; User Stories; and

we automated our whole delivery

infrastructure to the cloud: build,

test, deploy, backup; the whole

shebang.

We have tried many different

strategies to improve team

throughput, like organising tasks

and workflow, breaking big stories

into granular stories, defining

processes and check-lists to

ensure similar understanding

surrounding completed tasks, what

to expect when a story is moved

between stages, velocity and

work-rate charts and many more.

what worked

• Definition of Done

• Smaller Stories – collected

under an ‘Epic’

• Story Champions

• Upcoming Functionality (Future

Requests)

• Internal Communication

• Short focussed Stand-Up

what didn’t work /

isn’t working

• Tracking points per developer

• Retro without action items

• Too many rules and overbaked

processes

• Checklists as a process

• Skipping Retro on non-

deliverable sprints

Our whole team feels the need

to take care of the project. As

an example, our Development

Manager plays Product Owner and

attends the Daily Stand Up. They

see the sprint progress as well as

any hiccups the team is struggling

with. They see where bugs are

interfering with development flow,

so they can choose to play the

bug fix or not. This has helped

management to re-prioritise

stories.

We are co-located with the

PDC our main “Customer” so

communication, visibility and

transparency and organisation have

all benefited from thinking agile.

One of the simpler things we

pursue is ‘Thank You notes’ for

peer recognition, acknowledging

that Feelings Matter, recognising

via words and appreciation rather

than via monetary value.

After having sent four members

of our team to Agile Australia 2015

we’ve queued a few initiatives. We

went through a Key Points exercise

rating ourselves against some of

the common key points raised in

many of the Agile Australia talks.

We rated it high if we felt it was

something we valued and pursued,

low if we’re bad at it or needed

to add focus to it. Based on the

outcome we’ve created a number

of follow up activities to get us to

where we want to be for those Key

Points.

key points

• Adaptability

• Don’t Fear Failure

• Simplicity

• Communication – Internal

• Communication – External

• Innovation

• Trust within the Team

• Freedom to Create

• Highly Valued Team of Highly

Valued Individuals

• A Team of Leaders

As maturity goes, we’ve been

together for long enough now

that we are creating an identity

for MyStory IT Dev team. Yes, we

have different opinions in some

areas like Simplicity, Leadership,

Freedom to create etc, but we

believe these ideas, as well as

understanding our responsibility

and accepting it, is our priority

as a team and we’re committed

to that.

BARNARdos

. An industry leader with advice and connections to share . Working in enterprise and need to know what is coming next . Someone whose job is going to be disrupted and wants to know where innovation is headed . Looking to get ahead of your competitors and aware innovation is the best bet

. An up-and-coming impresario looking for your big break . An investor scouting for your next smart investment . Interested in finding out where you fit in Australia’s innovation ecosystem!

DATE Tuesday 17 November 2015VENUE The Auditorium, 37 Reservoir St, Surry HillsTIME 9.00am – 5.30pm

followed by networking and awards ceremony

SAVE THE DATEAND BE THERE WHEN THE NEXT BIG THINGS

IN AUSTRALIAN INNOVATION TAKE FLIGHT. {FIRST SPEAKERS ANNOUNCED

Tony BoydChanticleer Columnist,

Australian Financial Review

Dr Larry MarshallCEO, CSIRO

Dr. Michelle DeakerFounder, Managing Director

& CEO, OneVentures

Cyan Ta’eedCo-Founder & Executive

Director, Envato

Tech23 2015 is for you if you are:

JOIN US FOR THE SEVENTH TECH23 EVENT WHERE CONNECTED PEOPLE, CLEVER IDEAS AND INNOVATIVE COMPANIES COLLIDE!

www.tech23.com.au

Sponsored by Supported by

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Documents

Inside Volume #10: August 2015