Lindsay Velecina: 0:03

Welcome to the scrum.org community podcast, a podcast from the home of Scrum. In this podcast we feature professional scrum trainers and other scrum practitioners sharing their stories and experiences to help learn from the experience of others. We hope you enjoyed this episode.

Leslie Morse: 0:20

Hello, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the scrum.org community podcast. I am Leslie Morse and I'll be serving as the host for today's conversation. We're going to be unpacking the story behind a paper that has recently been published on scrum.org about a Belgian company called strobo. This paper details how they've used professional scrum to accelerate go to market by creating a learning culture, fostering transparency and building trust based leadership. It is fantastic to be joined by three people central to this story, Bert Neil's strijbos. Co Founder, Michael forehand, which is strijbos Product Owner and Steve engineer who's a professional scrum trainer that supported their journey. Thanks for joining me today, guys. I'm excited for this conversation.

Michael Voorhaen: 1:06

Thank you.

Bert Neels: 1:07

Thank you.

Leslie Morse: 1:09

Awesome. Well, we are going to kind of do incremental introductions as we get into today's journey. So Bert, we're gonna start with you. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? Your struggle journey and what strobo does is a company?

Bert Neels: 1:27

Yes, so I started my career as a as an IT consultant. And I had to look back a bit to give you the correct timeline. So here it goes. It all started around 2007. I was still in school by then together with the co founder of Stovall, Nick. Yes, he was a classmate of me. So yeah, at that time, we both worked in a local restaurant. And we happened to both be responsible for the planning in that restaurant. So that's where the idea grew to build a solution to plan that colleagues in the restaurant. And we built that actually as a as a school project by then, in 2007. So yeah, that's that's actually where the first version was created. And, yeah, after that, we use it. Of course, in the restaurants where we worked. We got good grades at school, so that was nice as well. But then, yeah, it's slowed down a bit. And we, we just parked it and went our own way. I went into consultancy, Nick was, I'm gonna say it, but you're not gonna like it. But you became a project manager at that time. But then yet we kept in touch, it was still used in the restaurants where we worked. And then in 2012, around the time, we decided to pick it up again, the both of us. And then yeah, we slowly picked it up. And then just the two of us in 2013. already. We had like around 10 clients at that point, we were just doing it on the site. Next to our full time, day to day jobs. So we want to pioneer awards in the hospitality fair, the biggest hospitality fair in Belgium, at that time, still, we only had like 10 customers, and we're doing it on the site. But here we saw some old thing, they have been kept working on it. But actually, it didn't get picked up by the markets. Mostly I forgot to mention 2007 was actually the time when you didn't have internet on your smartphone, at least in Belgium. In 2013, it was a little bit better, but not that good. And also people were afraid to have the data in the cloud. There was that period. So actually, around 2016, we were still trying. So we didn't give up. In 2016. They came along in Belgium, and forcing people to use a registered cash registry. So it besides that, when they did it, they were able to use flexible employees. But they had to use the cached registry. And so actually, that was the point where the whole sector was the hospitality sector was professionalizing. And we saw the opening the app, and that's when we jumped on it. So we started hiring people, even though we were still doing our day jobs. Besides that, we started hiring people and in 2017 We already got an innovation grant The flag more than 100k. And also, we were admitted to the IMEC eyestalk. Program. It's a well known program in Belgium. So yeah, that gave us a big boost. And around 2018, we were having more than 400 customers, and a team of eight people at that time. And that's the point where we sold the company to the SD works group, because we were in search of more money. They didn't find it at a bank. At that point in time, we found a good partner. And as the works, we were because we already linked the system with as the works at that point. So yeah, that that's actually how it's all started. After that it got a big boost. That's what you can see in the story, we're now in total struggle is a team of 4550 people now with the technical team of 25 plus people at this point, so we have a serving still, our main focus is still the hospitality sector. But we're also focusing a bit on retail right now, because it has a lot of openings there. And of course, we started together with as the works group, go into a more international context right now. So yeah, maybe the last thing and most people that started with us, I think almost half of them came right from school and started with us. So yeah, it's a plus. And then they get if they don't know anything else, then it's terrible. As an employer as a place to work. But yeah, it's like a really close group on that's also very important in the in the whole story. Yeah, I

Leslie Morse: 6:45

appreciate you sharing that sort of that timeline, because it puts into context that what the real life is for a co founder of an organization, bringing a technology product into an early adopter sort of thing and how you've grown incrementally over time, you talked about how struggle is sort of focused in on a core of hospitality, but also into retail, can you just sort of give us that summary of what like the core value proposition and functionality of the product is.

Bert Neels: 7:21

So the core value proposition is still in planning, that's where it starts. And after that, to get the whole link, you have to time registration. And so when you start working and working, and then we linked it to the government in Belgium, because for the flex workers, you need to have the contracts sync directly. So we have 15 minutes to do it. And then, in the end of the month, everything comes together the time registration absences and planning, we create the basis for the payroll of these people. That's actually what struggle does in a nutshell.

Leslie Morse: 8:00

So it's really hospitality and retail kind of business process management, related to employees and payroll, and all of that sort of stuff. And that's cool. Very cool. So Stephen, you know, Bert enough to have gotten engaged in helping on the journey, as strobo was looking to change their ways of working and stuff. So tell us about kind of your origin story with Bert and how you got involved. I've kind of also curious, like, what was that challenge, he said, before you as y'all started working together. All

Steven Deneir: 8:35

right. So in fact, bear joined one of the trainings I facilitated to boost your Scrum and that was somewhere 2020. And shortly after, also, Michael joined one of the sessions, but we only started collaborating on on the struggle challenges. I think, if I recall it well, 22. But meanwhile, we stayed in contact. And I got some messages from birds from Michael after the trainings. But at the moment, it was Bert, who called me and he said, I want to have a chat and see, see how we might collaborate to improve a bit on struggle. And the challenge I got initially from, from birds at that moment was about the teams are not really motivated, sometimes even pessimistic about reaching targets that have been set at the moment that struggle was bought, taken over by as the works. Team members that were massive. While there was quite an important challenge at the hand to deliver the solution and the new technology, if I recall that well. The team was also fully depending on Michael SPO to give them all the inputs, all the details, and on birth on on approaches on process on ways of working. And so what I heard at that moment was that birds wanted that it seems to get more enhance to free up on the one hand his time but also the time from Michael Moore. So when I heard all that, to me, it was pretty clear that if these people would take more ownership live more values as we know them and Scrum, collaborate more, focused more on quality, that definitely scrum which held them forward. And so we had a great chat. And since then I coached but and a bit later, I started also coaching. Michael as product owner, that's in somebody how we got started together on the telephone.

Leslie Morse: 10:29

Very cool. So So Michael, Steven gave us a great segue there you're serving as product owner for is the way I understand it was five development groups. There weren't any explicit Scrum Masters. So how did you get to strobo? And what were like your challenges in those early ways of working before you kind of got on this professional scrum journey?

Michael Voorhaen: 10:52

Yeah, but I joined strable, about five years ago. So it will probably have been like 2019, I guess. I actually came from a developer role, where I previously always before that, as a full stack developer, I navigated a little bit, we were a little bit more supports front end development, because I really liked building products that customers can use and work together with them get get feedback and and start improving on it. With Okay, I think at that point in time, I was getting a little bit while losing the challenge at my current job. And then I came across the opening at strobo. And the line for line, it was like a description of the things that I felt like I was either good at or I wanted to improve. So the product owner part was maybe a part of it. But there was also the thing that's stupid was going from an old technology stack to a new one, which I had a lot of experience in because I was doing exactly the same thing there. And I already did it a couple of times in the past. So I knew that I could help the team a lot there with the struggles that they were having. But the fun thing was I reacted, it was very close by the home. So that was a big win for me no more traffic jams. I got to struggle. And while I we embedded started talking and it was not a job interview. I mean, like 10 minutes in we were already planning like we wanted, we could do it like this. And then we were thinking and I ended up walking out three hours later. And I think there were just some financial details to figure it out. But I already knew I wanted to start there, because it looked so much fun. So I ended up joining the team was a lot smaller than but we knew that the growth was coming. And once it started growing, okay, we already started experimenting a little bit. But actually, I had scrum experience before, but not in a in a kind of leadership role. So So for me, that was also a new thing that started occurring. We managed to split the teams a little bit into smaller groups to create focus, but it was all very mechanical. And as a product owners, I was mostly running into a lot of problems with really needing to be very active with the teams and not being able to spend a lot of time with customers with stakeholders on working on the long term strategy and vision part. It was mostly about smaller stories and all their details and trying to figure it out with the team and then repeating it the next next day, because everybody already forgot. And we were really struggling at that point in time. We, we've managed to finish features. But yeah, at that point in time, that was also a little bit of a bottleneck because he is still still very involved in the release process. So by the time the code actually really hit production, yet, issues started popping up because the team wasn't really always 100% aware of what was happening. And because of the delay, they were already working on something new when all of those little small problems started to pop up and you could see all of the cracks in the foundation popping up. And I think that's the point in time where Bo better than me said like, Okay, we need to do something we need to figure it out. I think the big the big thing there is is that I think the that we have pump points realize that people bought becoming the bottlenecks in the company. So I think a big driver there was to make sure that we were not the bottlenecks anymore and that we put the responsibility to the teams. Of course yet then the entire thing started. How do we get the responsibility and ownership to the teams without overloading them, because like they said, there were a lot of junior starters there. So So we also knew that we had to work on technical excellence and at various different levels. And that's where, of course, Steven then came came into the picture, because we went through training. I already knew some ex colleagues of Steven at that point. So I think I pointed that out. That's the direction like, let's go to some trainings. And I think there was also a Cliquot, Steven there like, like we were on a good level, we knew that we could trust them with with with this.

Leslie Morse: 15:39

That's great. The yield talked about a variety of the different challenges. You both your Burton Michael being you guys being bottlenecks, having needing to free up your time to focus on different stuff and all of these things. But we know that accelerating time to market is one of the outcomes you achieved. And so what I'm kind of curious about is, at the beginning, when you engage Steven, did you have an intentional objective of accelerating go to market, or is that just sort of a happy consequence of all of the other challenges you were working to navigate? I

Michael Voorhaen: 16:17

think it's actually one of the one of the side effects, it was not really or intense. One of the problems that we were having, or at least one of the things that we noticed was was that the company was growing so fast, that we were having as a product group, very much difficulty just keeping up. And in combination with the fact that we needed to rewrite all of the code. So I think one of our main drivers was was to make sure that we could support that quote. And then, of course, yeah, a lot of things that little bit circle around that. We wanted the teams to be autonomous. So we wanted them to be proud of what they were doing. And I think as a little bit of a side note, there, we were also very much aware, because of the acquisition, that there's some pressure on us that if we do not perform, there's a very big opportunity that we lose that autonomy as as as a as a group in the organization. So we kind of came up with the strategy, we really want to be a showcase within the SD works group, so that we also can keep, keep doing and working the way that we actually enjoy working and have that level of autonomy. And then, of course, yeah, the fact that everything with with accelerating the code the market of new features now and and making sure that we have a closer customer contract is a sight is a side effect of our that already started, of course. Now we are actually matching the growth. And maybe we're even coming to the point where we can actually with the development team go a little bit further. So I think that's a much more comfortable position that we're now in than we were in before.

Leslie Morse: 18:09

Yeah, and it just it makes me wonder how different the journey would have been if the primary goal had been accelerate, go to market, right? Finding that as a happy outcome versus the thing you're trying to make happen is such a very different mindset. Because it was like, it sounds like you were really focused on solving the challenges that were making work hard. And thus, as a result, you got the faster time to market versus sometimes just engineering for faster time to market could make work even harder. And so I just I do wonder what that would be like, if it if it had been different? I

Michael Voorhaen: 18:52

think I think it's a very, it's a very good question. And I think I think for me, it ties in a little bit with very, it ties in with the culture of struggle. And also one of the reasons why I joined the company. It's a very young company. So there's a lot of young people. When I joined, I was I was immediately the oldest person in the company by several years, except maybe Barefield. We don't differ that much. But with some people the gap was like, Okay, it's getting very close to they could be my children. That's okay. I liked the atmosphere. There was very there was a dynamic with the team to really just go for it. But as time progressed, and as we grew, it made it made it more difficult to do that. And I think there's a very big family feeling. So we people at struggle and the team, they really care for each other. And I think that's something that we wanted to nurture and also make sure that that we could have Have all of those young people grow and flourish, make sure that we could have fun doing it and still deliver a lot of work. If we would have gone the other way, like we want to do, we want to become a very feature factory where everything is going out very fast. I think at the end, we would have lost a lot of people. And I think I think right now, there's a lot more cohesiveness in the team a lot more dedication to, to commit to the goals that we want to work on and make sure that we that we reach them. But it's because we actually started from from I'm making it fun for everybody to work at struggle, and not really immediately thinking about the financial gains. Yeah,

Leslie Morse: 20:45

feature factory was exactly kind of my negative manifestation of how I thought that could have played out if the goal would have been different. And I'm gonna guess, Burt, you're going to tell us a little bit about the fact that because you're a startup, that this was different, because the story we normally hear is, the co founders experiencing these struggles, they hire an Agile coach, and that Agile Coach goes on, like, works with the teams. But you deliberately took an approach where you're like, Steven, I want you to come in and work with me, and I want to lead the change and be the one that shows up differently, that creates a different way of working within these development teams. So like, what was that motivation for you? And why did you make that intentional decision?

Bert Neels: 21:34

Yes, yeah. So I'm gonna be very open about it. It actually wasn't an intentional decision. It was really just the situation we were in, we were really focused on develop development. And the whole team existed of developers, including Michael, as product owner, he had the development background. He was at a certain point in time, I think the best developers we had within the team. Then again, I tried to keep him from developing. Yeah, so actually, I didn't think about it to me. It also, with regards to the budget is it was just, for me the logical thing to do, ask help and try to do it myself as much as possible. Yeah, also to not have to convince the board because at that time, we did have a budget that we had to fight for a little bit. So yeah, it just went that way. And I said, let's try to do it. And see what comes up.

Leslie Morse: 22:52

So what was that relationship like between the two of y'all the paper does a good job of kind of outlining. The coaching Kata is a basis for the conversations. But why that technique? And what was the dynamic between the two of you as you're like, working to unlock the new leader within Bert?

Steven Deneir: 23:11

Yeah, so maybe, briefly, we first had a in our first session, I recall it vividly. The idea for me was, what's the real challenge, but what are we really trying to achieve? On the one hand, and also what is blocking us to get there? And having that clarity, in bats mind already, because we had quite quite an intensive conversation about it to dig that deep. Already allowed. But that was my impression anyway, to say, Okay, this is where I need to go. It was not that clear. And from then on, it was each time question, what will be the next step? What will be the next step? What will be the next step?

Leslie Morse: 23:53

Or what was your experience?

Bert Neels: 23:56

Yeah, I was gonna say, Steven, let me complain, like, half an hour. And then he said, like, yeah, now it's time to maybe focus on what we should do to stop the complaining. But yeah, my experience was like, Steven was more or less. Yeah, a friend, but with a lot of experience, and maybe most beneficial for us an outside view on the situation. And that's also when I reflect on the Agile coach, I, I think it would have been very different with something someone within our company within our team, because he would, we would become biased towards some things where Steven always had the outsider's view. So for me, that was a very important, dynamic, and besides that, of course, even as a good listener, but it can also indicate when you're starting to repeat Eat yourself and then you can facilitate that in the right way.

Leslie Morse: 25:04

Yeah. Can you compare and contrast maybe the some of the leadership style that you embodied before working with Steven and the deliberate things that you changed throughout this journey?

Bert Neels: 25:20

Yeah, maybe the most important one is I always tried to be on I think I succeeded in that. One of the team members, that that grew from the start, as Michael told you, I was a big bottleneck, because I did all releases at a certain point in time, which also made the procedure lacking some structure, let's put it that way. So yeah, till the point, I was really the only one who could do it with a little confidence. So yeah, my style was I was the one who was there on Saturday, if needed on Sunday, if needed on evenings, if needed, I think only until, like a year ago, some people worked in a weekend where I didn't work. So that style, I think I still kept it. But what changed the most, during the coaching is that I didn't try to solve everything myself, but actually learned how to involve the group from the start. That that's, I think, the biggest thing that really changed in lifestyle. And, yeah, I just learned how to be open about the problem and not try to come up with the solution for the, to the problem, but just come with a problem and have the courage to do that. Without having the solution in line. I think that's the biggest change in style. Yeah.

Leslie Morse: 26:51

And there's so much as being a co founder, that you have to kind of deconstruct within yourself around being that locus of control. I, my stomach hurts a little bit for you, when I think about the work you had to do to make those changes.

Bert Neels: 27:09

Yes. It was, of course, also a bit of a personal journey. Right? Yeah. Learning how to let go. And yeah, yeah.

Leslie Morse: 27:21

Well, I mean, they had the headline of a case study is really about like, you know, trust based leadership, right. And, and we're putting that trust in the teams to allow them to self manage. So Michael, you were kind of working within the teams as Bert was going through his own transformation. What what became different for you, and what did you observe changing throughout that period of time?

Michael Voorhaen: 27:48

A lot of things. It think it starts, it probably started small. We started doing some some small experiments. But as we progressed, I, gradually I was no longer needed to actually help the teams detail out every story that they were going to plan in the sprints. And my, my role as product owner, really started to shift. And I was no longer in this kind of, how would you call it a kind of role of functional analyst where I was analyzing everything and then chewing it up and giving it to the teams, but more giving direction to the team's like, this is this is like the most logical next step that we need to take, how can we build it, and there are steps in between that, but that's, that's how it how it goes at the moment. Like if we, if I look at our sprint planning, it's really very much like, this is the this is the long term goal. This is these are our short, short term goals. I think that for the short term goals, we probably should be doing this. And then the team is there's a little bit of a talk about it, but usually it's like, oh, yeah, we can do that. And then they go off and they make the detailed planning. So I'm not really involved in to date into day to day anymore. But that gives me a lot of freedom to start working with the stakeholders. So I can I can do things like organizing co creation workshops around or our roadmap where everybody from the company is joining in from different roles from different levels. And we really seek alignment to where do we want to go in the next couple of months and every couple of months we update that. I I've been able to work with our support and onboarding teams to kind of start cataloging all of the customer feedbacks we have raw data to to work on that. And and generally just bringing more transparency regarding our roadmap and backlog, being able to step into a position where I can help the rest of the business. Bring also bring them into contact with the development teams, and not really being that involved with the development teams. Because I need to be, it's more of a choice. I can I can join, and I can I can start listening in and talk with them. But I also have the feeling that if I go on holiday for a couple of weeks, I know that it will be okay. And that the right decisions will be will be taking. So, there's a lot of things that progressed in the in a very good order there. I think I mean, looking back in it, I think it was a very good thing that that, that that started the coaching sessions with Steven. And I think maybe just the one comment that I want to pick out for there is that is that I think Stephen was also really able to get the best out of bed in the sense that he has always been a good team lead for the team and and is even a better team lead now because he empowers them that much. So for me, that was a very positive evolution to see.

Leslie Morse: 31:17

That's awesome. That's awesome. So Steven, you are kind of the oz behind the curtain. I don't know if that is even a valuable metaphor, given the way it all played out. But like, what, what would you say? Because it wasn't just coaching and mentorship that you were providing. There was also training for the whole teams in in Scrum and other interventions you used. So what choices were you making and helping Burton Michael, as leaders kind of show up differently and engage differently so that the teams were better able to be autonomous and self managing? Yeah.

Steven Deneir: 31:55

So So all in all them you had people follow training yoga, I did some other interventions. But I was always because it was bad choice. So during our coaching sessions, we always look to what could be next good step. What options do we see? Which one do you choose? And I always let it in his hands because after a short while, I knew he knew his people. I knew he had trust from the people. I knew that he would them at after, after a very short period I was really wet then could decide what was the best option. So it was never my choice to do this or that. I always followed the coaching kata, like what's the best next step? What options do you have? What do you choose? And sometimes at when great, sometimes it was a bit more difficult. And the week after, it was like this didn't work. And we took another option well, but took another option. So nothing spectacular there from myself. The

Leslie Morse: 32:55

were there any kind of seminal decisions or choices that were made? Bert, either you or Steven to give gives them some common commentary on around like, these were really key decisions that enabled change to happen.

Steven Deneir: 33:14

Better, you might think about your sprint reviews, how these changed.

Bert Neels: 33:19

Yeah, so that was a big one that put a lot of other things in motion. But yeah, bringing transparency outside of the development team, because we had been keeping our kitchen hidden for a long while. And that's a bit yeah. It's a bit self defense mechanism I think of of a developer and other development team to just show the good things and hide all the rest. So yeah, the point where we started shifting that and really just started inviting people from outside of the development team into the sprint review. And we just really showed this was our sprint, you can inspect it now. Or even at some occurrences there's nothing to inspect. That's maybe the the thing that that had the most impact of

Leslie Morse: 34:34

the eye net in the in the restaurant metaphor of the kitchen versus the front of the house is such a wonderful metaphor to use there because it is very different when that's an open kitchen, completely viewable by the front of the house where all the guests are versus when that kitchen is closed off the culture and everything of that can be very different. I think it's a great metaphor for for a lot of the the changes that we about an organization's.

Lindsay Velecina: 35:06

Wow, what a great story. This is Lindsey here at the scrum.org community podcast. We are actually going to continue this episode next week. So stay tuned, they're going to share some final thoughts and Leslie is posing two really interesting questions. So please tune in next week and we will wrap things up and leave you with some final advice to from thievin and Bert and Michael. All right, thank you scrum on