Jimdo

How Jimdo scales their agile organization to 180 people (which is beyond dunbar’s number.

• culture, communication, kaizen to scale a chaorganization.
• life is a broccoli to embed purpose, principles, practices at all levels of the chaorganization.

Kaizen

• kaizen is core to install continuous improvement and the habit of changing habits in the chaorganization’s DNA.
• visual management to organize work and have the right conversations.
• daily standup to update each other on progress, resolve any problems, and to collaborate to ka-ching a day makes product owner hurray.
• external moderator to include the whole unit implement kaizen is core.
• retrospective gathering to .

Communities of Practice

• guild to
  • regularly share knowledge, art, and expertise, and innovate;
  • coordinate all the subject matter experts located at various places;
  • maintain a common understanding of standards;
  • stay up-to-date with current trends, technology, and tools.
• moderator guild to excel in kaizen is core.
• pool of moderators to always have an external moderator available.
• outcomes controlled by same level to foster ownership, {{p|aligned autonomy}, and responsibility.
• internal internships to improve mutual understanding and organizational resilience.
• pair work to spread knowledge.
• cocreate experiments to increase understanding, support, and ownership about experiments in the context of kaizen is core.
• slack speeds up to create ample space and freedom for kaizen is core.
• fridays are different to foster real company and weekly inspiration and knowledge exchange.
• hackathon to work outside your regular context on uncommon topics with ‘foreigners’ on something new and innovative.
• act first, ask for forgiveness later to be intelligently disobedient and free to work on things that support the intent at least two levels up and the unity of purpose.
• kaizen guild to professionalize and tackle problems that cannot be solved on the level that created them.
• retrospectives all over the place to foster the culture of kaizen is core.
• retrospectives deeply supported at top level
• founder participates in retrospective to resolve multi-team or bigger system issues.

Communication

• system as product of interactions between its parts together with life is a broccoli to direct attention and actions to those places where they matter most: interfaces and protocols.
• stable team to encourage cross-functional, pi-shaped people.

Teamverløtung

• teamverløtung to
  • synchronize the company during a weekly roundup;
  • keep everyone in the zone of healthy tension or eustress; that is, it avoids distress because of big heaps of work that needs to be done;
  • facilitate direct face-to-face communication over ‘communication’ through a (ticketing) system;
  • enable valuable conversations about what matters most;
  • build trust;
  • catalyze mutual understanding;
  • know the reasons why some items will be worked on and others not;
  • educate everyone on the intent at least to levels up, the big, hard, aggressive goals, and the company’s strategy;
  • take advantage of the incredible amount of knowledge and experience from different disciplines gathered in this obeya.
  • discover simple and creative solutions immediately.
• feel good manager (or feel good fairy to install a culture that keeps the happiness index at a high level with a casual face-to-face meetup of 20–30 minutes.
• ??? café right after the teamverløtung to allow small groups to discuss certain topics and coordinate their efforts.

Open Prioritization Meetings

• open prioritization meetings to improve inter-team communication and coordination in 20–30 minutes of time.
• stakeholder pitches request and start with why to explain the value of their idea.
• spice girls question to only commit investments on items that we really, really want and avoid wasting scarce resources, the one thing that's most important for the whole company right now.
• start what you finish and finish what you start to get things done.
• teams that finish early accelerate faster to get hyperproductive.
• just say no to make your ‘yes’ mean something, and to make explicitly clear which requests will not be done at all in order to eliminate false hope and disappointment.

Goal #1

• aligned autonomy to to maintain, or regain, alignment, increase maneuver, and have everybody move in the same direction in order to achieve outstanding feats.
• intent at least to levels up to to
  • keep the flow and keep things moving;
  • subordinate everything else, and at times delay achieving local goals;
  • bring crystal clarity;
  • instill company-wide aligned autonomy;
  • allow a incessant decision stream;
  • take care of impediments immediately;
  • foster self-awareness and feeling of togetherness.
• captain chaos to equip everyone with the best working environment possible—like in Pixar.
• mission order to focus all forces on victory.

Culture

• everyone can do great things to ….
• retrospective prime directive to set the stage for a retrospective.
• true north to calm focus that guides you through sometimes murky waters of continuous change.
• values and principles at all levels to .
• lead by example to nurture, strengthen, and evolve the culture.
• Cultural values at Jimdo:
  • we do not make mistakes, we learn.
  • if you are not having fun, do something else.
  • always do your best.
  • encourage wild ideas.
  • no ‘dog eats dog’ mentality;

Sources

• InfoQ » Arne Roock » Culture is the True North - Scaling at Jimdo