Vodafone Transformation
Vodafone’s structure and operation has followed traditional project management method for decades. Realising that they needed to change the way that they operate and deliver solutions in order to maintain its market position they needed to fundamentally transform to not just become an Agile organisation, breaking down the silos and giving greater autonomy to its teams, but also to completely change its thinking on how to work with its customers and provide cutting edge solutions.
The Requirement
Working through partner consultancy, Kumoco; Agilistic were bought in first of all to coach the Vodafone team tasked with revamping their mobile Start App. Not only was this a brand-new team, but they were split across 2 continents, with development, test and integration based over in Pune, India, and architecture and design based in London, UK.
Problems solved

The first thing to do was to bring the teams together for a formation bootcamp in order to provide introduction to Agile training, run a Measurable Outcomes workshop in order for everyone (including management) to align on the vision for the team and define key measurements for its success, and also to create a baseline of Agility so as to identify key areas for growth, but also to review progress at the end of the engagement. The team then spent the next 5 weeks together which was really key to develop relationships and also to build the foundations for the product together, face to face.

Once the technical part of the team returned to India it was vital that their Agile focus did not drop and so Agile Coach, Steve Martin followed them out there 4 weeks later. This visit was helpful for the team to get some on-site coaching, also workshop facilitation, but in addition for Steve to build relationships with the Pune based management and help solve some of the problems that they were having in the development cycle. One of the great wins was setting up a Lean Coffee event that would run weekly and purpose being to share knowledge and learnings across development teams on site.

The important factor of the success of The Start App team was not just in coaching the scrum team on the ground, but also in training its management in Agile and Cultural Transformation. So the Pune and London representatives were bought over for a 2 day course which would prove vital in helping managers to understand the needs of its teams and change mindset to a more Servant Leadership approach.

In 3 months of working with the Start App team, Steve helped develop the team’s Agile practices so they were able to think and act differently of working with its customers with a clear focus on value and solving problems, also breaking down large requirements into manageable chunks, but most of all, that they became a cross-functional unit, working together for a common goal.