Greg Willis - Agile Innovation
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Agile Innovation Greg Willis CTO. Product & Technology Advisor
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Transcript of Greg Willis - Agile Innovation
Agile Innovation
Greg Willis
CTO. Product & Technology Advisor
2004 - 2015
A 2 year journey at CarsGuide…
• Establishing an Agile execution culture
• Establishing an Agile innovation culture
The need for Agility
1. Agility is required to be responsive to the speed of change
2. Agility is also a pre-requisite to building an innovation culture in an established venture
Year 1 focus – Execution
Purpose
People
Place
Platform
Process
“Five P’s”
Scorecard - October 2013
Purpose
People
Place
Platform
Process
Negatives • Lack of internal trust • Loose delivery process • Inflexible roadmaps • Missing roles and poor morale • Legacy platform and operations • ‘No time’ to innovate
Positives • Some good technical people • Strong audience and brand
name
Purpose
Simon Sinek (TEDx) https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en
Purpose
People, Place, Platform, Process
Products & Services
Purpose at CarsGuide
People
• Created small, cross functional teams (product + technology)
• Adjusted mix of roles and skills where needed • Accountable as a team for meeting KPI objectives • Diversity of backgrounds
Place
• Co-location – leveraged wherever possible
• Collaboration - essential to support Agile work and innovation
Platform
• Significant focus in year 1 at CarsGuide
• Agility requires platform to be scalable, robust and to allow for experimentation
• Content and search platforms, analytics and operations all needed refresh, along with a major brand and product relaunch
Process
• Key issue in Year 1
• Adopted Lean-Agile principles
• Deliver business value early
• Learn with incremental delivery
• Build in Quality
• Collaborative re-prioritisation
Lean-Agile methods
Scrum Kanban
Retrospectives DevOps
Scorecard - October 2014
Purpose
People
Place
Platform
Process
Positives • Internal trust improving • Purpose clarified with brand
relaunch • Clear Agile process + DevOps • Significant platform progress
(CMS, search, cloud, responsive web)
Negatives • Some roles still new (e.g. UX) • Some burnout in teams • Office space still sub-optimal • Technical debt hampering future
agility
Year 2 focus – Innovation
1. Innovation is 99% iteration to discover best way to create value
2. Innovation is typically a team sport
Agile culture supports both of these well
Sources of Ideas
“750 Global CEOs reported that only 14% of their innovation ideas came from traditional R&D. Instead, 41% came from employees and 36% came from customers…”
Innovation Methods
1 day Envisioning Workshops
2 day Hackathons
An observation on Scarcity
• Scarcity fosters innovation - look at startups
• Understand value of constraints – time, resources, money etc.
• If you don’t have scarcity in the right areas - create some!
Scorecard - October 2015
Purpose
People
Place
Platform
Process
Positives • Mutual Trust • Customer and data driven
feeding product roadmaps • Office space more collaborative • Native apps launched on API • Sustainable pace and velocity
increased
Negatives • More to do on platform to be
fully agile (expand API + Test Automation)
Summary
1. Agility is essential to respond to speed of change
2. Agility requires investment in Purpose, People, Platform, Place and Process
3. Scarcity fosters innovation – embrace (and apply) constraints
