At the beginning of the year, our Managing Director Jürgen Egeling approached the POs and ScrumMasters at punkt.de with an idea: what if we made the whole company agile and took it to the next level?

I admit that this idea puzzled me, as I was of the opinion that agile methods were already firmly established at punkt.de: Didn't all our client projects work agile? Didn't we have stable development teams, each with its own PO and its own ScrumMaster? And weren't we already much further along the road to becoming an agile company than many other web agencies I know? But I was wrong - and Jürgen Egeling was right. Sure, our development was already agile. But there's more to an agile company than that. Our managing director was involved in many decision-making processes. Which gradually turned out to be a bottleneck. With almost 30 employees, it became increasingly difficult for our Managing Director to make well-founded decisions. Because he is not close enough to what is happening in the teams. And he simply lacks the necessary information.

Let's take the example of training: If an employee of punkt.de wanted to take part in a training course but was unsure whether this would be approved due to the subject area, the date or the cost of the training, they would ask the managing director. The decision is much better left to the teams

Regarding the subject area: As already described in the blog post on the technology and skills radar, we have tried to assess the skills of the individual developers and display them graphically using a skills radar. As a result, their strengths and weaknesses are known - and the teams are thus able to independently assess whether the training will help their own team move forward

With regard to the deadline: The team itself has the best insight into the delivery times of a team. And can therefore judge better than the managing director whether a training course is possible or not in terms of scheduling

Regarding the costs: Admittedly, we at punkt.de have a very experienced managing director in Jürgen Egeling, who often has a good feeling for the cost-benefit ratio of a training course. However, he is not alone in this. And colleagues from the development department in particular, who have already taken part in many training courses, often know even better what is worthwhile and what is not.
Of course, training courses are just one of many examples: From water orders to employee salaries - there are many things that need to be restructured on the way to becoming an agile company. Too many to tackle alone: That's why Dr. Jürgen Hoffmann and Heiko Stapf from the agile management consultancy Emendare are supporting us as coaches.

And what exactly do the individual steps look like? Well, first the whole company got together to formulate a common goal: "The future of punkt.de - the focus is on self-organized teams that take responsibility for each other." Various backlog items were then developed on the basis of this goal - starting with the question of decision-making processes, the question of our feedback culture and our communication structures through to the question of strategies and technologies. A transition team was also formed, which meets at irregular intervals to drive forward the "reinvention" of our company and refine the reinventing backlog. Apart from this, the upcoming tickets are discussed and decided in small groups on a regular basis. Last Friday, the entire company got together for the second time. Interim results were presented and an OpenSpace was organized to address some open questions

However, we have not yet reached the end of the road. We will be taking a few more steps in the coming weeks - and presenting our results here. A presentation on the topic at T3Con15 in Amsterdam is also on the agenda. So: stay tuned!