Client
An outsourcing company in Bulgaria developing and maintaining software products with main customer ASML, the largest supplier in the world of photolithography systems for the semiconductor industry. In 2014 the company had about 150 employees, software developers and integrators.
Summary
Scrum was the main methodology for team management used by the client. The management stimulated the performance by celebrating successful sprints. But in big part of the teams the sprints was rarely successful.
The analysis showed that those teams the business had strong external dependencies (waiting for access, waiting for review and approval) on each project phase and they failed to have successful sprint despite all the efforts.
The solution was to transform Scrum to Kanban. Once adapted, the team started to handle more projects than ever before. Celebrations were only on project completion but happened much more often than before.
Challenge
The team had to learn how to manage external dependencies instead of simply waiting for feedback. It required Communication trainings and supervised practice on-the-job. Hopefully the task management system allowed a relatively smooth transformation of the project backlog management.
It became clear that team member had more administrative functions than developers expected. This generated frustration during the process of work.
Process
The change started with adaptation of the projects communication strategy. The communication was not only responsibility of the Project manager but also to each team member.
Initially the project manager supported team members when conducting the client communication. Then everybody get used to it and asked for consultation only in special cases.
All team members passed training on communication.
Following the re-definition of the skills set needed, the team roles were adapted and the team restructured.
Results
The company acquired one more team management methodology which made the management strategy more flexible.
On team level, the celebrations were much more often even if they were only on project completion. As a result the teams’ happiness increased.