One Direct Rhythm

We designed the One Direct Rhythm aiming to optimize the whole, no one single squad.

The idea is to test it in Q1 2022 to validate if it is useful (if not then we can do a rollback) and it helps us to mitigate some symptoms:

“There are many meetings”

“I don’t have enough time to do my tasks”

“It’s difficult to find a free time-slot for a meeting”

“It’s very hard to create a recurrent Chapter meeting, people agendas are a nightmare”

“I don’t have time to improve my skills and capabilities”

Why a Rhythm Alignment? How is a Rhythm Alignment going to help us?

In previous experiences from other companies with similar organizational approaches (Squads, Guilds, Chapters...) we learned that
Squad members (incl. P.O.s and CLs) do not have enough time to work on their squad tasks if they all have their individual meetings
(not Squad related) meetings at different moments. That is why they decided on the same rhythm in the organization.
Squad members need dedicated time to learn from each other (e.g. in Chapters, Guilds, Communities of Practice)
We have the best possible flow in our work by having one rhythm which simplifies alignment.
We can make appointments easily without disturbing the Squad rhythm and also reach people from other squads or areas.
We align the timing of our Cross sessions with the timing of the Company Alignment sessions to get the outcome/overview/impediments
of Teams/Squads into the Cross Boards and the other way round.
Squads must have time to, as much as possible, work together undisturbed and focused.

Please note:
If someone has to deviate from the standard by exception, plan something at the beginning or end of a day to keep the Squad’s focus
time and to minimize task switching.
The exact times are not binding; it is of course up to a squad, at which exact time they would like to start/end/take their lunch etc.
This initiative is based on:
Having a balanced amount of events per Sprint: 1 week is the Sprint start week, the other week is the Cross session week.
Maintaining the Demo routine on Wednesday and having Retro and Planning done by Thursday 14:00.
The morning is the Squad focus working time, so the squads can focus on working together (This implies also their own refinement
sessions, design discussions, etc.)
As the Chapter meeting is on the same day, all squad members are taking part in their Chapter meetings at the same time. This
allows more time for the squads to work together.

Rhythm
Sprint from squad perspective:
Sprint from PO & CL perspective:

How does it work? (Example of what could happen)

Even Week - Stop/Start Sprint

Wednesday.-
Morning with your Daily meeting and finishing work.
We will have our Demo (14:00-16:00).

Some retrospectives could take place after that.

Thursday.-
Morning for Retrospectives and after that Planning. (Daily meeting no needed)
16:00 Start New Sprint (In Jira).
Friday.-
Full day squad focus time (including their own sessions like Daily meetings, design sessions, or technical discussions)
Odd Week
Monday.-
Morning squad focus time (including their own sessions like Daily meetings, design sessions, or technical discussions)
CoPs time (It doesn’t mean that you have to be in a Community of Practices or that the CoP meetings must last 3 hours, it’s just
to save this time-slot for this purpose). More details in Professional Development
Tuesday
Morning squad focus time (including their own sessions like Daily meetings, design sessions, or technical discussions)
At 13:00 we will have a meeting (Timebox 30 minutes, but 15-20 minutes is a realistic target duration)
Guilds time (It doesn’t mean that you have to be in a Guild or that the Guild meetings must last 3 hours, it’s just to save this time-
slot for this purpose). More details in Professional Development
Wednesday
Morning squad focus time (including their own sessions like Daily meetings, design sessions, or technical discussions)
 Alternatively, At 14:00 we will have 2 cross sessions:
Roadmap follow up (Helping to move from the projects vision to the product vision). The idea is to unify all the meetings that
we already have where we talk about Roadmaps in this one single meeting to be every team on the same page. And we also
will have OKR/KPIs review.
QBR for Next Q Check-in. To align the construction of the next Q roadmap with global priorities, identify dependencies and
confirm realistic workload
Thursday
Morning squad focus time (including their own sessions like Daily meetings, design sessions, or technical discussions)
Chapters time (It doesn’t mean that your Chapter meetings must last 3 hours, it’s just to save this time-slot for personal
development inside the Chapter). If you are a Chapter Lead and you have 1to1 sessions with your people, you should try to find
another timeslot for that purpose, something like “coffee-breaks time”. More details in Professional Development
Friday
Full day squad focus time (including their own sessions like Daily meetings, design sessions, or technical discussions)
Even Week
Monday
Full day squad focus time (including their own sessions like Daily meetings, design sessions, or technical discussions)
Tuesday
Full day squad focus time (including their own sessions like Daily meetings, design sessions, or technical discussions)
At 13:00 we will have a meeting (Timebox 30 minutes, but 15-20 minutes is a realistic target duration)
Wednesday
Go Up

More details
Professional Development

What about time for professional development? Are we investing enough time to grow?
One Direct Rhythm is also designed to help in that way.
The slots for Communities of Practice (CoPs), Guilds and Chapter are all meant for professional development.

Starting with Chapters...You (should) have already discussed with your Chapter Lead where you want to grow in the upcoming months. You
agree with your CL how are you going to grow (trainings, PoCs, pair-programing with a side project, participating in Guilds or CoPs etc...).
So Chapters afternoon is time where you can participate in a Chapter meeting, or working with a colleague in a PoC (that should provide a
benefit to AZDIR). How to invest your time, it is something to agree inside each Chapter.

We also have CoPs and Guilds as spaces where you can learn and grow. So if in your agreement with your CL you agree that an ACTIVE
participation in a Guild or CoP is align to our growth path, you will be able to participate in one of them (always with common sense, for
example it doesn't make sense having 50 people in a Guild).

So, you can invest your time in CoPs and/or Guilds regular meetings. But we also have more time in those slots (You are not going to have
3-hour meetings each afternoon) and even there isn't CoP or Guild that fit with your specific topic, you can use those slots to work in your
professional growing goals.

At the end, we are investing 3 afternoons, around 9 hours, which makes approx. 10% of the sprint time in your professional development.

And last but not least, remember that the way you growth should provide a benefit for you, your squad, your Product Team and AZDIR.

Meetings

Meetings Comments
 What we are now doing (Trio + Anian + Des + Jorge) is NOT a POCLAC…the idea is start doing “real” POCLACs.
The POCLAC is a coalition, which usually meets once a Sprint, at which the Product Owner, Chapter Lead(s) (thy may involve more than one CL) and Agile Coach
New POCLACs of each Squad discuss the developments in a Squad. POCLAC meetings are a way to work on optimum Squad capacity and competency development.
Goal: During the POCLAC:
(We are NOT going to implement them right
PO is owner of functional leadership, the what and the why
away)
CL is owner of the growth of individual chapter (and therefor Squad) members, for ongoing professionalization.

AC is owner of turning Squads into High-Performance Teams, for continual improvement and for safeguarding the Agile/Lean values.

Together, they ensure that Squads are qualitatively properly staffed.

What kind of topics can we tackle? Agenda:

1.- Why this POCLAC (ad hoc/regular)).- Normally it will be a periodic meeting, a regular POCLAC... but if something urgent arises there is also the option of
having an ad-hoc POCLAC requested by anyone (PO, CL or AC).

2.- Update last POCLACs actions.- The actions agreed in the previous POCLAC will be reviewed to confirm their status. It is convenient to have a shared
resource (e.g. an Online Dashboard) with the actions to follow up on them.

3.- Retrospective outcomes.- Anyone can bring up something that happened in retro that's worth mentioning here, is there an action beyond the squad's control
that we can push from here?

4.- Purpose.- PO, Any relevant updates regarding the purpose of the squad? Is there any action to be taken that will help achieve the purpose of the squad? It is
something that should be very punctual, it is not a usually point to tackle frequently in POCLACs

5.- Mastery.- The POCLAC is a key point for CLs to receive feedback about their Chapter colleagues from the POs, who are working with them on a day-to-day
basis.

PO is there something to highlight from the team members performance? Is there any need in the future? Has the team raised deficiencies in any competence

or skill? so that the CLs can take that information with them and organize training or can raise the need for a specific profile that the team does not have right
now to their meeting with other Chapter Leads. Correct staffing is important to anticipate in order to hire on time. i.e. “Next Q we are going to have ‘Frontend’
tasks, and we only have Middleware Engineers”

CL can also bring relevant information to the PO to take into account in future Sprint planning. Is there any planned training that the PO has to take into account

to plan its sprint? Is there any news to comment on any hiring process that is underway? i.e. “During the Chapter meeting we saw the need to improve our skills
in Kafka and we are going to have a workshop.”

6.- Allianz Direct Values.- Everyone, we provide answers to "Are we honoring the values of AZDIR?" In this point, possible problems usually arise in
"coexistence", attitude problems, conflicts between colleagues that have not been able to be resolved autonomously inside the squad. i.e “There is a conflict, one of
the members of the squad is having a bad attitude.”

AZDIR Values:

Entrepreneurship

Disrupt now and never stop

Courage to be curious

Get shit done

Collaborative Leadership

Everyone is a leader

We only win as one team

Sharing is caring

Customer & Market Excellence

We are a Tech Company

We are customer-obsessed

We are the future of insurance

Trust

Trust each other

Trust yourself

Trust the process

7.- Agile/Lean Way of Working --> Anyone can raise something in this point and AC should tackle this. Is there any deviation or improvement in Way of Working?
do we have some kind of waste that we can eliminate without impacting others? Here we must not lose the fact that we must have a systemic view, aiming to
optimize the whole, since in the platform development, squads are not 100% independent. i.e. “We have lot of problems in order to accomplish the DoD”

We can use the following motto to reach aligned autonomy:

“Squad over I, Product Team over Squad, AZDIR over Product Team and Customer over AZDIR”

8.- Actions.- In the end, we must review the actions that have been arising, clearly identifying the owner and the deadline to address it.

Participants: PO, CLs, AC

CoPs Nowadays we are using Guilds as a very open concept and we believe it is appropriate to define it clearly and also add the concept of Community of Practice that
we are already using for Facilitators and POs.

Communities of Practice.- People with the same interest, for example, Product Owners that want to grow in their role exchanging experiences, asking
for help, discussing trends, etc. Here the impact use to be only for the people inside the CoP.
Guilds Group of experts that can be consulted whenever a decision has to be made in their particular area of expertise, imagine, the Testing leading the QA Strategy
regarding standards and guidelines. The impact of their decisions use to affect the whole organization. The Guild members preferably meet on a regular basis to
discuss the latest developments of their expertise with respect to usability and feasibility within AZDIR.

Guild members:
• Share current problems to get good practices and support.
• Standardize for AZDIR on processes, terminology, tools and templates.
• Share (main takeaways of) relevant conferences and events.
• Identify occasionally needs or opportunities for training.
• Share knowledge with AZDIR organization.

Chapters A Chapter is a group of Squad members, as professional development and craftsmanship is organized. They are formal “groups” of up to 9 people with the same
job-role / expertise deciding on how things need to be done, regarding their area of expertise.

In the Chapter there is a Chapter Lead who is responsible for the professional development, craftmanship and allocation of people.

They, above all, perform squad tasks like coding or designing software solutions. The other part is act as mentors helping people to continuously improve their
abilities.

Something to highlight is that we are performing a Professional Development Process, and we provide also opportunities to jump to other Career plans. For
example, a Software Engineer who want to move to a Product Owner position.

Any person must be in a Chapter. (E.g. POs are a Chapter and Anian is the CL)

Risk & Impediments In this session teams will:

Scale risks & impediments that you cannot solve at Squad/Product Team level and define actions to solve them. Examples of risks categories: staffing, legal

changes, technical (r)evolutions, critical dependencies…

Make requests, take decisions and reach agreements.

Capture and share decisions made during the session.

Participants: Trios, POs, Delivery Leads, Des, Anian, Matthias, Jorge, ACs

Roadmap Review In this session we will:

Check if we are meeting our commitments with the Epics as determined in the QBR (Any deviations or changes? Do we have any new impediments? Is there

any success to celebrate?)

Respond to new developments that may impact on our roadmap.

Respond to impediments we could encounter in the way

Participants: Trios, POs, Delivery Leads, Des, Anian, Matthias, Jorge, ACs

KPIs/OKRs Review In this session we will:

Discuss the metrics where current state does not meet the AZDIR's OKRs (KPI’s in a first stage)

Define improvements and action owners to structurally solve the deviations

Discuss status of problem-solving actions of previous sessions

Participants: Trios, POs, Delivery Leads, Des, Anian, Matthias, Jorge, ACs

QBR for Next Q Check-in In this session we will:

Check any change in our priorities

Share epics that are forming the roadmap for the next Q

Confirm that epics are aligned with global priorities

Confirm that the workload is realistic and will be manageable based on the capacity of the team in the next Q

Identify dependencies between squads

Respond to impediments we could encounter in the way

Participants: Trios, POs, Delivery Leads, Des, Anian, Matthias, Jorge, ACs