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

Questions?

Greg Willis

• Email: greg@leanslate.com

• Phone: 0418 919098

• Twitter: @gwillis