In this episode we focussed on how Evgeniy and Denis came to be at PandaDoc and how their LeSS Huge journey began:
- Evgeniy Began in 2019 - everything was going smoothly for Pandadoc, but they felt they could do more with what they had, so they spoke with Evgeniy to see how he could help.
- The teams were made against the business components, making it challenging for each area to push out any value. No one area frequently owned the end-to-end delivery of the customer journey.
- So not, unlike "tradition component teams" that are based around technical components, these were based on business components. The net effect was very similar.
- They decided to move towards feature teams so that teams could own the end-to-end value delivery.
- They got everyone together for a workshop covering the company strategy & vision, problems seen through many different lenses, what parts of the structure could be changed, and output. The main show-stopper was the component teams.
- As each business component had many backlogs, the idea was to minimise these to create a better customer focus, full features for teams to work on and more straightforward prioritisation.
- They choose not to speak about LeSS. Instead, pick the bits that worked but not call it LeSS - this was for 30-40 people.
- The LeSS explanation came later once it was working. At this point, they introduced it to the whole org.
- They decided not to send people on "Formal" LeSS training as Evgeniy believed the company would not have wanted to make the investment.
- (You can adopt LeSS well without formal training)
- They also felt that the certificates would not have made that much difference.
- We learned the negative side effect of not getting the formal LeSS training was that as the org grew, people challenged the approach, so they needed to embark on training again.
- Pandadoc has a cultural fit interview to ensure they are getting the people for the organisation. Many people are not used to working in a genuine product company.
- Denis shared what it was like coming into an organisation that was using LeSS Huge, starting in a specific area with one team (to be split into two)
- PandaDoc had an outstanding engineering culture that has sadly fluctuated over time due to 5 x Growth.
- They could have invested in how to work on software at the scale. When they grew, it created many problems.
- How PandaDoc thrived in the face of a global pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
- They have built a resilient organisation by not investing in managers.