Lean Transformation The Moonpig Story (so far) - Agile Business Conference

Lean Transformation
 The Moonpig Story (so far)

About Me and the Mooni-verse
About Moonpig

 ★ Moonpig - we’re in the business of joy
 ★ Photobox Group - largest personalisation business in
     Europe

About Me

 ★ Head of Agile Coaching at Moonpig
 ★ Successfully introduced agile to Product Engineering
 ★ Now leading a lean transformation across the wider
     business
 ★ My background is in TV

Today’s talk
What I’ll cover

 ★ Our vision

 ★ The journey so far

 ★ Next steps

Our vision
What are we trying to achieve

  ★ BETTER - increased ROI

Minimise wasted investment by adopting a customer-focused, data-
driven, experimental approach.

  ★ FASTER - shorter lead times

Deliver value quickly by aligning relevant people around key outcomes
and removing conflicting priorities and dependencies.

  ★ HAPPIER - increased engagement
Create a culture of autonomy where teams have clear goals and are
empowered to use their collective skills to achieve them.

The Journey Begins
“Let’s try this Agile thing”

First Steps
It all began in 2013...

 ★ A “real” Product team

 ★ Product Director reporting directly to MD

 ★ Teams of developers & QAs practicing Scrum

 ★ Introduction of Jira and real backlogs

Transforming Tech
Applying agile technical practices

 ★ Investing in our platform - reducing tech debt, re-architecting

 ★ Continuous integration and delivery

 ★ From developers and QAs to cross-functional engineers

 ★ Emphasis on XP practices and software craftsmanship

 ★ From Scrum to Kanban - velocity to flow efficiency

 ★ Empowered engineering teams

Alignment
The Honeycomb Framework

Why we needed to change
The problems we faced (circa 2015)     JFDI!

 ★ Tactical over strategic

 ★ Top down HIPPO prioritisation     I wan
                                          t it b
                                        I wan ecause
 ★ Lack of focus                               t it!

 ★ Value unclear

 ★ Output dominant

The Honeycomb Framework
Honeycomb principles

 ★ Designed to align product, tech and business partners around

     key outcomes

 ★ Cross-functional “honeycomb” working group

 ★ Clear focus and goals

 ★ Autonomy and empowerment

 ★ Dedicated engineering team to deliver honeycomb goals

Pros & Cons of Honeycombs

             Worked Well                                 Didn’t Work

★ £7 million in incremental revenue         ★ “Two jobs” for some

★ Cross-functional collaboration            ★ Too many goals

★ Clear focus and goals                     ★ Conflicting goals

★ Autonomy                                  ★ Lack of alignment

★ Alignment around product priorities       ★ “Do-ers” and “Deciders”

Evolving Honeycombs
Introducing Lean principles beyond Product Engineering

The case for change

Principles of cross-functional teams

 ★ Organise around outcomes, not functions

 ★ Remove dependencies

 ★ Optimise for flow efficiency

Making the change                                         Business strategy
Reorganising around goals

 ★ Identify long term business goals and metrics   Goal         Goal          Goal
 ★ Reorganise people around strategic goals

Setting up cross-functional teams
Key principles
                                                  North Star
 ★ Long lived mission and metric for each team
                                                   Metric
 ★ Autonomy to decide how to achieve their goal

 ★ Resourced to achieve goals independently

 ★ Leadership, sponsorship

Functions in a cross-functional world
Maintaining strong skills communities
                                                        Goal   Goal   Goal
 ★ Strong functions are still critically important

 ★ Consistency, quality, excellence

 ★ Shared standards, principles and guidelines

 ★ Knowledge sharing and visibility

 ★ Recruitment, line management, personal development

                Creative Function

                Engineering Function

Steps to organisational change

        1                           2                       3                       4

        ALIGN             WORKING PROCESSES        EXPERIMENTATION       CULTURE OF LEARNING

Reorganise around clear      Reduce lead time      Customer-focused,        Growth mindset
        goals                                         data driven,        Collaborative learning
                             Embed culture of        experimental
                          continuous improvement                             T-shaped skills
                                                     Fail fast culture

engineering.moonpig.com