Page 1
TOPICS
• About Ferguson
• Why We Changed
• How We Transitioned
• Team/Project Selection
• Ferguson Agile
• Continuing Challenges
• What We Achieved
• Parting Thoughts
• Q/A
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WHO IS FERGUSON
• Largest distributor of
residential and commercial
plumbing supplies and pipe,
valves and fittings (PVF) in
the U.S.
US Market Positions
Blended Branches
Waterworks
Industrial
HVAC
#1
#2
#3
#3
• $11.6B sales in fiscal year
2014
• More than 20,000
knowledgeable associates
• Ferguson is a subsidiary of
Wolseley, plc
• Markets we serve:
–
Commercial Plumbing &
Mechanical
–
Residential Plumbing
–
Waterworks
–
HVAC
–
Industrial
–
MRO
–
Fire and Fabrication
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DC’S AND BRANCHES
• 1400 branch locations
• 10 regional DCs, 3 pipe yards
• 6 million square feet of storage
• $463M inventory investment
– 7.5 average turns
• 96% average fill rate
• 98,000 lines picked daily
• 95,000 unique SKUs
• Same day or next day service
• Daily departures
– 158 full truckloads
– 7,600 parcels
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WHERE WE ARE
 Counters
 Showrooms
Distribution Centers
FERGUSON IT
Over 400 IT Associates
• 170 focused on business apps
• 200 focused on operations
• Various on/offshore associates
IT Work:
• Ecommerce(B2B,B2C, EDI)
• ERP Systems & Enhancements
• Warehouse Management
• Business Intelligence
• 3rd Party software integrations
• Data conversions & acquisitions
• Software/Hardware upgrades
• Emerging technologies
• Networking
• Desktop computing
• Keeping the lights on work
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ABOUT ME
I Am:
• 19 years in IT
– 11 years Project/Portfolio/Program Manager
–
5 years Business Analyst
–
3 years Agile Implementations Manager
• 10 years in Wholesale Distribution Management & Operations
I Am Not:
• A hired gun/agile expert/agile consultant
• Selling a book or offering my services for a fee
• Telling you what worked for us will work for you
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SWIMMING TO SPRINTING
WHY?
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FERGUSON IT PRE-AGILE
Waterfall
Project
Initiation
Requirements
Design
Build
Test
Our Challenges
•
Business partners felt IT was slow to deliver
•
Final product did not meet business needs
•
Our customer saw product very late
•
Changes were costly
•
Teams were slow to respond to change
•
Identified problems late in the project
•
Needed to reduce admin overhead
•
Customer not really engaged with team
•
Slow to deliver value
•
Teams lacked empowerment and ownership
Deployment
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SWIMMING TO SPRINTING
TRANSITION
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AGILE TRANSITION
Formed Transition Team
Developed
Agile
Foundations
1-2 months
2-3 months
I wish we had picked
the initial team first
Initial
Project
& Team
Added
Multiple
Projects
3-12 months
GO Decision
Enterprise
Rollout
1 year +
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AGILE TRANSITION
FORMED TRANSITION TEAM
Transition Team
• Senior IT Leadership
• PM Group Manager(Me)
• Agile Consultant
• Key Business Partners
• Initial project team
Key Deliverables
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Which Agile Methodology
Initial Process Decisions
Initial Team Selection
Types of Projects
Communication
Training and Education
Organizational Changes
Culture
The transition team must be
disciplined, unified, empowered and
resolute in the implementation
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AGILE TRANSITION
EARLY EDUCATION
• Intro to Agile Class
• Certified Scrum Master Training
• Reading and Research
 Agile Alliance
 Scrum Alliance
 Scruminc
 Mountain Goat Software
 Agile Samurai
 Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process
• Scrum Master(Contractor)
An experienced Scrum Coach
will help with learning and
understanding best practices
and help with the transition
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AGILE TRANSITION
EARLY DECISIONS
• Selecting the right transition team members
• Empowering the transition team to implement the necessary changes
• Selecting an agile consultant and dedicated scrum masters
• Selected Scrum as our initial agile methodology
• Getting executive buy in early
• Co-located team members, fully dedicated
• Establishing selection criteria and determining rollout plan
• Organization, personal, process change management & communication
I wish we had
investigated Kanban in
more detail
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SWIMMING TO SPRINTING
INITIAL SELECTION
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INITIAL SELECTION
• Established selection criteria(20 items in total)
• Evaluated each team and project for suitability using selection criteria
• 17 projects were initially considered
• Team composition, stakeholder engagement, associates personalities
• Discussions held with key IT execs to review the top 3 candidates
• Once we had our finalists, we discussed changes with key stakeholder
Avoid using the word Pilot, Test, Proof of Concept or any other
terms that might denote this is not a permanent change to the
way IT is going to do business in the future.
It will change your associates behavior
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SELECTION CRITERIA
Important
Work
Stand
Alone
Work
Duration
Initial
Team
Single
Team
Tech
Needs
CoLocation
Stability
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SWIMMING TO SPRINTING
FERGUSON AGILE
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WHY SCRUM?
Evaluated many flavors of agile, eventually chose scrum
• Well documented with lots of resources available
• Fit our culture
• Scales well based on needs of the project
• Answers the question “When will it be delivered?”
• Basic concepts easy to understand
• 2 week sprints are more productive, 4 weeks yield higher quality
WHAT IS SCRUM?
Scrum is:
Scrum is Not:
• Well defined requirements
• Undocumented
• Standardized process
• No requirements
• Flexible to future changes
• Meeting Free
• Team led
• Command and Control
• Well coordinated
• Process Free
• Collaborative
• Sprints open to changes
• Well documented
• Us vs. Them
• Agreed to direction
• One size fits all
• Feature driven
• Cowboy Coding
• Small deliverables
• Big Bang
• Self sufficient teams
• Shared team members
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IMPACT TO IT
Changes
Process
• Demand Management
• Portfolio Planning
• Requirements Gathering
• Status Reporting
• Release Planning
• Capacity Planning
• Estimating
• Tools
• Metrics
Organization
• Senior Management
• People
• Hiring
• Training
• Line Managers
• Seating
• Vocabulary
• Cadence of work
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ROLLOUT
I think we could have
gone faster
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SWIMMING TO SPRINTING
ACHIEVEMENTS
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AGILE ACHIEVEMENTS
3 ½ years sprinting
476 sprints completed
+6000 user stories completed
11 scrum teams
• +150 sprinters
8 new teams planned for 2015
• Estimated +200 sprinters by the end of 2015
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BENEFITS
Customer
• More engagement
• Highest priority first
• Better meets customers expectations
• Value delivered sooner
Delivery
• Produce working software every 20 days
• Demo working software every 10 days
• 40% increase in YOY delivery
• 25-30% faster
Teams
• More focus and dedication
• Open communication and transparency
• Higher level of ownership & collaboration
• Face-to-face communication
Process
• Transparency & flexibility
• Enhanced planning capabilities
• Problems identified early
• Higher quality
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SWIMMING TO SPRINTING
CHALLENGES
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CONTINUING CHALLENGES
• Old guard wanting to maintain the status quo
• Line managers want to retain control
• Offshore team members
• 3rd party’s running waterfall projects using agile teams
• Some associates may not be a good fit for an agile organization
• Associate empowerment and engagement
• People and non-agile processes have to adjust to a faster pace
• There is a lot of “bad” agile information on the internet
• Breaking down the project work into smaller chunks
• Dedicating resources to scrum teams
• Finding the right scrum coach
• Command and control types are bad for scrum teams
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SWIMMING TO SPRINTING
PARTING THOUGHTS
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PARTING THOUGHTS
• An agile transition is a pretty disruptive and emotional journey
• Protect your teams and make them feel safe
• Pace of work is extremely fast
• Over communicate and sell the agile benefits to everyone, often
• Teams need time to adjust and grow their agile skill set
• You will wreck early sprints, it’s okay, set expectations accordingly
• Maintain a strong agile discipline early on in the transition, it is too
easy to go back to old ways of doing things
• Teams need to be focused and dedicated
• Teams need to be self sufficient and balanced across resources
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Despite all the hard work,
tough times and gnashing of teeth,
We would do it again!
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