Creating Customer Focus with Agile at Vodafone

Vodafone, as an organisation is about connections. With an increasing demand for digital services and solutions, Vodafone provides Kiwis with the ability to make those connections in all aspects of their lives. Radically worked closely with Vodafone Consumer to adapt existing ways of working, with the transparency of work and prioritisation being key focus areas. Upon implementation, increases were seen in these areas, with significant progress also made around team engagement.

Challenge

How might we increase engagement and productivity a the business side of an organisation using Agile?

Results

  1. Increase in squad engagement
  2. Quicker delivery cycle since the implementation of Agile WoW
  3. Increase in the customer focus

Approach

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Applying Agile in business teams

The Vodafone Consumer Agile Pilot started when Matt Williams, then Director of Consumer business unit decided to bring agile mindset and ways of working to his business teams. The success of his Mobile Prepay, Mobile Postpay and his Broadband portfolios hinged on making the transition smooth and efficient. Vodafone experience with Agile change was limited so partnered with Radically to bring our expertise and knowledge to support the business goals.

 

Kicking-off Agile Pilot Teams

The Consumer Agile Pilot was designed, and this required a ground-up build of everything. Teams rebuilt in a cross-functional manner. New ways of working designed and rolled out to these new teams. From there the day to day coaching and support proved invaluable across the board, from the stakeholders and leadership team all the way to the teams working on the customer problems on a day to day basis.

There were some challenges along the way, understanding what Agile methods and practices worked best for the teams and what would not be necessary, deciding those in true Agile fashion by running experiments on a sprint by sprint basis. Figuring out how to handle the friction caused by high performing Agile teams dependency on non-Agile teams and vice versa. Deciding the best way to handle critical impediments the teams were not able to resolve and what the role of leadership was in the whole process.

 

Using Learnings from pilot to start Agile Transformation

Through all of these challenges though, everyone involved in the pilot grew. The team was learning by identifying the best fit for purpose processes and methods, and leaders got to flex their Agile muscles and this would be needed when Vodafone moved to scale the Agile transformation to a much wider set of the business.

“What we’re seeing already after just a couple of sprints, is that the squads are now starting to really get their hands around the work but also how to deliver outcomes through that working process and the outcomes are looking very promising. Our cycle time seems to be moving faster, the customer focus is increasing, and we’re very excited about the potential of this for the future.”

Matt Williams
Consumer Director

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