WEBVTT

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(light piano playing)

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My name is Johan Van Hall.

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I was at ABN Amro last year, I'm one of the executive board.

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And the role in the board was COO, CIO.

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In that last years at ABN Amro, I focused

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especially on the digital transformation of the bank,

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and also our changes in the way of working and moving

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to agile at scale.

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We had a couple of reasons to move to agile.

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The first one was a strategic one,

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the bank and especially the board perceived itself in

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very slow decision making and implementing.

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And we said if we would like to be competitive

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in the next decade,

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I would like also to compete but not only the incumbents

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but especially also new entrance digital banks

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and what have you.

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Then we have to significantly change our way of working,

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including our culture in leadership.

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A second reason was that when the bank started to face

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recruiting issues for IT and digital talent.

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The third reason for us as board moving to agile

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was that staff told us,

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time and time again,

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that we were especially very bureaucratic and hierarchical.

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(light piano playing)

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We took three basic foundations as saying,

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"Okay that's the way agile at ABN Amro will look like."

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The first one listed that we said,

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"Everybody in agile will work in teams of ten,

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seven of IT and three of business."

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And depending of thoughts of the IT platform

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and the business the teams were working for,

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there was a little bit mix in

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what kind of business people and

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what kind of IT people.

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The second decision we took is to have

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the teams will work full time,

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because then we know that people

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are really focused and dedicated

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and actually can really perform and

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can improve their performance.

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The third one was we said,

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"All these teams will be co-located at the business."

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That will also enormously help giving us and them

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discussion which we've had before

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between business and IT.

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Now everybody felt we are apart of one team.

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Further more what happened in the roll out

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was there was a lot of effort in energising the teams.

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So communication, educating, training,

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giving all kinds of opportunities to

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all kinds of skills in

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getting ready for the next phase.

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Managers had to unlearn actually also to waterfall

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way of working, in which,

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most of the time the style is

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command and control.

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Sitting in all these steering committees,

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reading these progress reports,

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these REC status reports,

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and all the things you have,

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and all these things disappear.

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You have no steering committees anymore.

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It was hard for managers to make a change,

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and for me personally, as well.

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And the thing is they have been successful,

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and myself as well.

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In the old way of working, we were successful,

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and steering committees where we used to work there

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to give our orders.

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We believed our progress reports although

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we never of course knew that these progress reports

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were not giving a fair view of what a projects worth.

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Otherwise we wouldn't have had these exceptions

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very late in the programme.

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So we knew there was an illusion of control

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that people were dishonest to us,

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but the point was that, that was the way of working,

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that was our role,

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that was how we engaged with our projects and our change.

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Now we had to learn to be a participant in these projects

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to simply ask for feedback and also give feedback.

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You have a totally new experience of engagement

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with all your colleagues and employees.

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The outcomes were actually very positive,

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let me start with the HR side.

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First of all the employee's satisfaction was significantly

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up for people working in the agile environment,

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compared to the rest of the bank

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and compared with before.

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Secondly, the recruiting issues actually quickly disappeared

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and from an employer branding point of view,

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ABN Amro was again in the top five

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of most wanted companies to work for,

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also in IT and digital was actually also surprising, for us.

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A third one was that in quite a number of teams

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were indeed faster in delivering more

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and also consistent in more productivity and faster.

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But also, to be honest,

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quite a number of teams after the transformation

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had to learn it and were still struggling with it.

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So the journey of agile also began after the transformation

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and had to be continued.

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We were not there, yet.

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Another benefit is that ABN Amro took the decision

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up front that from all people in scope for working agile,

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we would take a cut.

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We took out 20-25% of this staff

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of moving to agile.

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A lot of people were for instance project managers

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and project managers of a project management office jobs

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which we did not need anymore of course

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in the agile way of working.

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(light music fades)