Lean Transformation The Moonpig Story (so far)

About Me and the Mooni-verse

About Moonpig

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

★  Moonpig - we’re in the business of joy

★  Photobox Group - largest personalisation business in

Europe

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.

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

★  FASTER - shorter lead times

★  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)

★  Tactical over strategic

★  Top down HIPPO prioritisation

★  Lack of focus

★  Value unclear

★  Output dominant

JFDI!

I want it because I want it!

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

★  £7 million in incremental revenue

★  Cross-functional collaboration

★  Clear focus and goals

★  Autonomy

★  Alignment around product priorities

Didn’t Work

★  “Two jobs” for some

★  Too many goals

★  Conflicting goals

★  Lack of alignment

★  “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 Reorganising around goals

★  Identify long term business goals and metrics

★  Reorganise people around strategic goals

Business strategy

Goal Goal Goal

★  Long lived mission and metric for each team

★  Autonomy to decide how to achieve their goal

★  Resourced to achieve goals independently

★  Leadership, sponsorship

Setting up cross-functional teams Key principles

North Star Metric

Functions in a cross-functional world Maintaining strong skills communities

★  Strong functions are still critically important

★  Consistency, quality, excellence

★  Shared standards, principles and guidelines

★  Knowledge sharing and visibility

★  Recruitment, line management, personal development

Goal Goal Goal

Engineering Function

Creative Function

WORKING PROCESSES

Reduce lead time

Embed culture of continuous improvement

Steps to organisational change

ALIGN

Reorganise around clear goals

EXPERIMENTATION

Customer-focused, data driven, experimental

Fail fast culture

CULTURE OF LEARNING

Growth mindset Collaborative learning

T-shaped skills

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engineering.moonpig.com