It’s 2015, and ING Bank is about to start an exciting transformation. A new Agile Way of Working is introduced for the entire domestic bank in the Netherlands. The Way of Working also requires a challenging cultural change. Delivery goals and delivery approach are no longer directed top down. Feature teams that are formed everywhere in the organization have to learn how to deal with a much larger set of responsibilities. Fortunately they are not alone: there’s a new Agile Leadership team that provides guidance, helps them to develop craftsmanship and shows how to deal with their autonomy in an Agile organization. This Agile leadership team is the “POCLAC”.
In the new organization, the Product Owner, Chapter Lead and Agile Coach form a virtual team supporting the Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy of the feature teams. Each role has its own focus area, but together they share one goal: making sure the feature teams can flourish. That all may sound easy, but the reality is very different. How do you make sure these three roles truly collaborate? Which conditions should be created to make this work? And how do you prevent this virtual team from being perceived as a traditional management team by their environment?
In this talk we will follow the journey of one POCLAC during the past two years. We will see how people with very different backgrounds explore their common grounds in the first meetings. We will look back at the ups and downs, while we will learn that good intentions not always lead to the greatest results. For sure it has been a bumpy road, but there’s a lot to be proud of today. This POCLAC has become a leadership team that is widely recognized for the example they give of the mindset and behaviour needed in an Agile culture.
