(light piano playing)
My name is Johan Van Hall.
I was at ABN Amro last year, I'm one of the executive board.
And the role in the board was COO, CIO.
In that last years at ABN Amro, I focused
especially on the digital transformation of the bank,
and also our changes in the way of working and moving
to agile at scale.
We had a couple of reasons to move to agile.
The first one was a strategic one,
the bank and especially the board perceived itself in
very slow decision making and implementing.
And we said if we would like to be competitive
in the next decade,
I would like also to compete but not only the incumbents
but especially also new entrance digital banks
and what have you.
Then we have to significantly change our way of working,
including our culture in leadership.
A second reason was that when the bank started to face
recruiting issues for IT and digital talent.
The third reason for us as board moving to agile
was that staff told us,
time and time again,
that we were especially very bureaucratic and hierarchical.
(light piano playing)
We took three basic foundations as saying,
"Okay that's the way agile at ABN Amro will look like."
The first one listed that we said,
"Everybody in agile will work in teams of ten,
seven of IT and three of business."
And depending of thoughts of the IT platform
and the business the teams were working for,
there was a little bit mix in
what kind of business people and
what kind of IT people.
The second decision we took is to have
the teams will work full time,
because then we know that people
are really focused and dedicated
and actually can really perform and
can improve their performance.
The third one was we said,
"All these teams will be co-located at the business."
That will also enormously help giving us and them
discussion which we've had before
between business and IT.
Now everybody felt we are apart of one team.
Further more what happened in the roll out
was there was a lot of effort in energising the teams.
So communication, educating, training,
giving all kinds of opportunities to
all kinds of skills in
getting ready for the next phase.
Managers had to unlearn actually also to waterfall
way of working, in which,
most of the time the style is
command and control.
Sitting in all these steering committees,
reading these progress reports,
these REC status reports,
and all the things you have,
and all these things disappear.
You have no steering committees anymore.
It was hard for managers to make a change,
and for me personally, as well.
And the thing is they have been successful,
and myself as well.
In the old way of working, we were successful,
and steering committees where we used to work there
to give our orders.
We believed our progress reports although
we never of course knew that these progress reports
were not giving a fair view of what a projects worth.
Otherwise we wouldn't have had these exceptions
very late in the programme.
So we knew there was an illusion of control
that people were dishonest to us,
but the point was that, that was the way of working,
that was our role,
that was how we engaged with our projects and our change.
Now we had to learn to be a participant in these projects
to simply ask for feedback and also give feedback.
You have a totally new experience of engagement
with all your colleagues and employees.
The outcomes were actually very positive,
let me start with the HR side.
First of all the employee's satisfaction was significantly
up for people working in the agile environment,
compared to the rest of the bank
and compared with before.
Secondly, the recruiting issues actually quickly disappeared
and from an employer branding point of view,
ABN Amro was again in the top five
of most wanted companies to work for,
also in IT and digital was actually also surprising, for us.
A third one was that in quite a number of teams
were indeed faster in delivering more
and also consistent in more productivity and faster.
But also, to be honest,
quite a number of teams after the transformation
had to learn it and were still struggling with it.
So the journey of agile also began after the transformation
and had to be continued.
We were not there, yet.
Another benefit is that ABN Amro took the decision
up front that from all people in scope for working agile,
we would take a cut.
We took out 20-25% of this staff
of moving to agile.
A lot of people were for instance project managers
and project managers of a project management office jobs
which we did not need anymore of course
in the agile way of working.
(light music fades)