Page 1. Page 2 TOPICS About Ferguson Why We Changed How We Transitioned Team/Project Selection...

AGILE DEVELOPMENT:TALES FROM THE SPRINT!

HOW ONE IT GROUP WENT FROM SWIMMING TO SPRINTING

TOPICS

•About Ferguson

•Why We Changed

•How We Transitioned

•Team/Project Selection

•Ferguson Agile

•Continuing Challenges

•What We Achieved

•Parting Thoughts

•Q/A

WHO IS FERGUSON• Largest distributor of

residential and commercial plumbing supplies and pipe, valves and fittings (PVF) in the U.S.

• $11.6B sales in fiscal year 2014

• More than 20,000 knowledgeable associates

• Ferguson is a subsidiary of Wolseley, plc

• Markets we serve:– Commercial Plumbing &

Mechanical

– Residential Plumbing

– Waterworks

– HVAC

– Industrial

– MRO

– Fire and Fabrication

US Market Positions

Blended Branches #1Waterworks #2Industrial #3HVAC #3

DC’S AND BRANCHES

• 1400 branch locations

• 10 regional DCs, 3 pipe yards

• 6 million square feet of storage

• $463M inventory investment– 7.5 average turns

• 96% average fill rate

• 98,000 lines picked daily

• 95,000 unique SKUs

• Same day or next day service

• Daily departures– 158 full truckloads– 7,600 parcels

WHERE WE ARE

Counters ShowroomsDistribution Centers

FERGUSON IT

Over 400 IT Associates•170 focused on business apps•200 focused on operations•Various on/offshore associates

IT Work:•Ecommerce(B2B,B2C, EDI)•ERP Systems & Enhancements•Warehouse Management•Business Intelligence•3rd Party software integrations•Data conversions & acquisitions•Software/Hardware upgrades•Emerging technologies•Networking•Desktop computing•Keeping the lights on work

ABOUT ME

I Am:

• 19 years in IT

– 11 years Project/Portfolio/Program Manager

– 5 years Business Analyst

– 3 years Agile Implementations Manager

• 10 years in Wholesale Distribution Management & Operations

I Am Not:

• A hired gun/agile expert/agile consultant

• Selling a book or offering my services for a fee

• Telling you what worked for us will work for you

SWIMMING TO SPRINTING WHY?

FERGUSON IT PRE-AGILE

Our Challenges

• Business partners felt IT was slow to deliver

• Final product did not meet business needs

• Our customer saw product very late

• Changes were costly

• Teams were slow to respond to change

• Identified problems late in the project

• Needed to reduce admin overhead

• Customer not really engaged with team

• Slow to deliver value

• Teams lacked empowerment and ownership

Waterfall

Requirements

Design

Build

Test

Deployment

Project Initiation

SWIMMING TO SPRINTING TRANSITION

AGILE TRANSITION

Formed Transition Team

GO Decision Enterprise

Rollout

Initial Project & Team

Added

Multiple

Projects

2-3 months

3-12 months

1 year +

1-2 months

Developed Agile

Foundations

I wish we had picked the initial team first

AGILE TRANSITION

FORMED TRANSITION TEAM

Transition Team• Senior IT Leadership• PM Group Manager(Me)• Agile Consultant• Key Business Partners• Initial project team

Key Deliverables• Which Agile Methodology• Initial Process Decisions• Initial Team Selection• Types of Projects• Communication• Training and Education• Organizational Changes• Culture

The transition team must be disciplined, unified, empowered and

resolute in the implementation

AGILE TRANSITION

EARLY EDUCATION

• Intro to Agile Class

• Certified Scrum Master Training

• Reading and Research

Agile Alliance

Scrum Alliance

Scruminc

Mountain Goat Software

Agile Samurai

Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process

• Scrum Master(Contractor) An experienced Scrum Coach will help with learning and

understanding best practices and help with the transition

AGILE TRANSITION

EARLY DECISIONS

• Selecting the right transition team members

• Empowering the transition team to implement the necessary changes

• Selecting an agile consultant and dedicated scrum masters

• Selected Scrum as our initial agile methodology

• Getting executive buy in early

• Co-located team members, fully dedicated

• Establishing selection criteria and determining rollout plan

• Organization, personal, process change management & communication

I wish we had investigated Kanban in

more detail

SWIMMING TO SPRINTING INITIAL SELECTION

INITIAL SELECTION

• Established selection criteria(20 items in total)

• Evaluated each team and project for suitability using selection criteria

• 17 projects were initially considered

• Team composition, stakeholder engagement, associates personalities

• Discussions held with key IT execs to review the top 3 candidates

• Once we had our finalists, we discussed changes with key stakeholder

Avoid using the word Pilot, Test, Proof of Concept or any other

terms that might denote this is not a permanent change to the

way IT is going to do business in the future.

It will change your associates behavior

SELECTION CRITERIA

Initial Team

ImportantWork

Duration

Co-Location

StabilityTech Needs

Single Team

Stand Alone Work

SWIMMING TO SPRINTING FERGUSON AGILE

• Well documented with lots of resources available

• Fit our culture

• Scales well based on needs of the project

• Answers the question “When will it be delivered?”

• Basic concepts easy to understand

• 2 week sprints are more productive, 4 weeks yield higher quality

Evaluated many flavors of agile, eventually chose scrum

WHY SCRUM?

WHAT IS SCRUM?

Scrum is:

• Well defined requirements

• Standardized process

• Flexible to future changes

• Team led

• Well coordinated

• Collaborative

• Well documented

• Agreed to direction

• Feature driven

• Small deliverables

• Self sufficient teams

Scrum is Not:

• Undocumented

• No requirements

• Meeting Free

• Command and Control

• Process Free

• Sprints open to changes

• Us vs. Them

• One size fits all

• Cowboy Coding

• Big Bang

• Shared team members

ChangesProcess

• Demand Management• Portfolio Planning• Requirements Gathering• Status Reporting• Release Planning• Capacity Planning• Estimating• Tools• Metrics

Organization• Senior Management• People• Hiring• Training• Line Managers• Seating• Vocabulary• Cadence of work

IMPACT TO IT

ROLLOUT

I think we could have gone faster

SWIMMING TO SPRINTING ACHIEVEMENTS

AGILE ACHIEVEMENTS

3 ½ years sprinting

476 sprints completed

+6000 user stories completed

11 scrum teams• +150 sprinters

8 new teams planned for 2015• Estimated +200 sprinters by the end of 2015

BENEFITS• More engagement• Highest priority first• Better meets customers expectations• Value delivered sooner

Customer

• Produce working software every 20 days• Demo working software every 10 days• 40% increase in YOY delivery• 25-30% faster

Delivery

• More focus and dedication• Open communication and transparency• Higher level of ownership & collaboration• Face-to-face communication

Teams

• Transparency & flexibility • Enhanced planning capabilities• Problems identified early• Higher quality

Process

SWIMMING TO SPRINTING CHALLENGES

CONTINUING CHALLENGES

• Old guard wanting to maintain the status quo

• Line managers want to retain control

• Offshore team members

• 3rd party’s running waterfall projects using agile teams

• Some associates may not be a good fit for an agile organization

• Associate empowerment and engagement

• People and non-agile processes have to adjust to a faster pace

• There is a lot of “bad” agile information on the internet

• Breaking down the project work into smaller chunks

• Dedicating resources to scrum teams

• Finding the right scrum coach

• Command and control types are bad for scrum teams

SWIMMING TO SPRINTING PARTING THOUGHTS

PARTING THOUGHTS

• An agile transition is a pretty disruptive and emotional journey

• Protect your teams and make them feel safe

• Pace of work is extremely fast

• Over communicate and sell the agile benefits to everyone, often

• Teams need time to adjust and grow their agile skill set

• You will wreck early sprints, it’s okay, set expectations accordingly

• Maintain a strong agile discipline early on in the transition, it is too easy to go back to old ways of doing things

• Teams need to be focused and dedicated

• Teams need to be self sufficient and balanced across resources

Despite all the hard work,

tough times and gnashing of teeth,

We would do it again!

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