Different People
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I concluded my previous blog post – “Good Riddance” – with mentioning one of our NetWeaver R&D “8 ton” lighthouse showcases in our transformation to Lean and Agile Software Development: “Technology Group Innovation Friday” (or TGiFriday). As you will probably make similar experiences as we did when transforming our NetWeaver R&D organization towards Lean/Agile methodologies, TGiFriday – while still an experiment in a way – might be worth a thought for you as well.
I used this quote before, but it is so amazingly adequate to what I am writing in this blog post, that I dare to repeat it:
1. Our Situation
When we started our massive transformation in NetWeaver R&D towards Lean & Agile Software development in early 2009, we were basically acting out of a strong sense of urgency: the global economy was shattered by the financial crisis, hitting our customers, hitting SAP and finally also hitting NetWeaver R&D as a consequence. We started to ask ourselves very fundamental questions about our product portfolio and the way we were developing it. We concluded that in order to better set us up to address our customers’ needs – now and in the future –, we needed to first fix our working mode and – with that being tackled – then address the future of our product portfolio in close cooperation with our customers as a second step.
2. Our Problem
3. Our Approach
For me, the proposal of “TGiFriday” has been a means to address the two problems mentioned above. Luckily and after quite some discussions, we were able to get a “Go” “from on-high” for piloting the concept in my unit “Technology & Innovation Platform Core” for one year. The pilot officially ended in December 2010 and we’re still applying the concept today in all of my organization. Now what is it?
The basic idea behind TGiFriday (i.e. “Technology Group Innovation Friday” – or to the more desperate ones amongst us – “Thank God, it’s Friday!” 😉 is by no means new or rocket science. We just allow all developers to allocate a certain percentage of their working time on a more or less arbitrary, self-selected project idea (arbitrary? Well, it has to serve the larger SAP vision and mission – which is broad enough a field for most of the part). It can be anything from learning something new about software development, developing the next great product idea, improving your standard product with a few new features you were hanging around with for a while. If you team up across scrum team or unit borders: perfect! If you want to have colleagues contributing to your project: make it public (we actually have a dedicated Wiki space for this purpose), show enough entrepreneurial spirit to create enthusiastic followers to your idea, present to management if you want to get official funding or turn it into an official part of the product portfolio. Until then, every single developer is allowed to officially spent Friday afternoons on working on her project: no need to justify this specifically with your Scrum Team, your Product Owner or Line Manager. That’s all. Ready? Set? Go!
We have taken the freedom to get inspired by Google’s “20 percent projects”– which is not to state in any way, of course, that we want to compare SAP with Google from a business model perspective. But one has also to see that both companies are sharing the desire to be #1 in their markets, need a constant feed of innovative product ideas, have both the ambition to attract a growing number of users to their products and – in order to do so – win or at least retain the most skilled and motivated employee base possible.
While this might sound as a nice, relaxed atmosphere at Google, Google is putting quite some pressure behind getting results out of this process. Google runs a very stringent business internally according to B. Iyer and T. Davenport [Bala Iyer and Thomas H. Davenport: Reverse Engineering Google’s Innovation Machine; Harvard Business Review; April, 2008].
4. Our Top 3 Motivations
In short, our own motivation behind introducing TGiFriday was driven out of the current Lean implementation considerations, based on our SAP value system and our company history and culture, the permanent need to sustainably work on employee motivation in times of a global “hunt” for talent and in order to provide some “sunlight and water” to “grass roots innovation”.
But here are a few more background thoughts around it:
Reason #1: TGiFriday proves the Lean vision of “respect for people” and “team empowerment”
Is there any more powerful expression of respect for people and team empowerment than trusting your employees to spend their full potential on elaborating “the next great idea” for your customers’ success and hence your company’s future?
Yet another argument is brought up by Henrik Kniberg [Scrum and XP], consultant for Agile Development practices, that Scrum can be an exhausting experience for the team, so you must provide official time to “rest” from the Sprints and do things “off topic” like “read up on the latest tools and APIs, study for a certification, discuss nerd stuff with colleagues, code a hobby project, etc.”
Finally, if you believe in “respect for [your] people” and think of your own team as you probably think of yourself, then you will probably agree that the following holds true:
Reason #2: You have hired great people all over the place
Why not give them some more freedom to bring their full potential to life?
Great ideas can come from everybody anywhere – not only separate research organizations. In fact, many brilliant ideas made it into existence not by sheer managerial and analytical will, but by fostering creative “accidents” – just think of Tesa adhesive tape, Post-Its, Penicillin, X-Rays, Teflon, Nylon or porcelain, to name just a few of it. TGiFriday can be such a “breeding ground” for “grass roots” creativity and innovation.
Reason #3: Don’t underestimate the value of collective learning
If people start engaging in self-organized, community selected, meritocracy-based projects, they learn from others outside their current team or organization, they meet with people from different backgrounds, they have to think entrepreneurial, they think outside their organizational boundaries, become used to change in topics, learn something completely new, exchange their ideas with colleagues, think outside their title/roles/place on the org-chart, get to know other working approaches, etc..
As cited before: “Good people, good products!” [Craig Larman and Bas Vodde: Lean Primer]
In order to promote collective learning – “the learning organization” – the effect of TGiFriday projects is probably priceless. We couldn’t think of any aspect SAP promotes in terms of employee development that would not somehow be promoted by “TGiFriday” projects as well.
5. Conclusion
I agree that some of the above statements may sound a bit idealistic to one or the other person. Perhaps even irritating. Also, it is still to be proven how many real innovations – and not just ideas and inventions – are created with TGiFriday in the long run.
Our internal Wiki shows around 100 TGiFriday projects, from colleagues sharing their research about best practices of quality assurance in Lean environments, Web Sockets protocol support for the ABAP Application Server, a Javadoc plugin for Maven, an ABAP JIT “experimental compiler” to evaluate potential benefits through JITting, Quartz scheduler integration into Lean Java Server, a lightweight “JMS” look-alike for ABAP, a Web-based toolset for consumption-driven service discovery and adaptation, and many more. And there are likely even more projects around that just weren’t listed in the Wiki.
The feedback we have received from our colleagues based on our assessments/surveys is very positive, but there are also requests to e.g. provide better forums to present project outcomes and turn great ones into new products or product features. So there are always areas to improve.
While we allowed each and everybody in the organization to spend 10% of their working time on TGiFriday, it turns out that less than 5% of capacity gets actually invested. Not everybody is participating, even though they could. Which is fine. For most, one may assume, to know that they could if they wanted to, seems sufficient. Different people. Furthermore, if there are critical deadlines dooming or commitments at risk, people normally know how to set priorities: product and company comes first – which is also an indicator that people do actually act responsibly with the empowerment and freedom given.
So TGiFriday remains – admittedly – an experiment that we carefully watch. But it is safe to say that it was and is an important ingredient in our NetWeaver R&D transformation to Lean and Agile.
Looking forward to your feedback on Twitter (@_bgoerke) or as comments to this post here on SCN.
Björn Goerke | Technology & Innovation Platform Core
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Scrum puts some really high pressure on developers. A sprint done means the next is already going on. Justifying your work every day, growing backlog. Hard to get some time off to celebrate what was achieved. Even great work gets rendered to something tiny when you look at the sprints coming and the backlog.
Love this concept and the implementation. I actually heard that the first company to give their employees some freedom was HP in the early days allowing their engineers to tinker on Fridays with open access to tools and supplies. Could not find a reference, but may be someone else does.
For me the key feedback/take away is from SAP's employees is: "provide better forums to present project outcomes and turn great ones into new products or product features."
Currently it is such a missed opportunity, similar to the great ideas bubbling up from the InnoJams all over the world.
We need a dedicated team that is smoothing the ramp from prototype to product. Their only taks is to give the prototyps the rockets they need to lift them to our customers.
Can't wait to discuss this during during our public SAP Mentor Monday Webinar 27th of February http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SAPMentors/SAP+Mentor+Monday
Join us then, Mark.
absolutely. The good thing is that all the innovations that happen close to the existing products pretty easily make it into the next release. It is more the topics that are a bit off the usual product tracks, that need more nurturing and we have started to think about means to make them happen. But even here: with the right people pushing their idea, you can make it happen.
Looking forward to our SAP Mentors Monday Talk on Feb 27th...
Björn
thanks for this great series of blogs.
If I ever get the chance to interview you again for SAP TV we wont be talking about technology - we will be talking about organisational change.
Very interesting stuff.
Cheers
Graham Robbo
thanks for the positive feedback. But you don't want to tell me that it's not interesting to talk with me about technology, or do you 😉 ?
Looking forward to our next SAP TV interview sometime :-),
Björn
I am just curious why you chose Friday afternoon as the time for employees to take for themselves. Were the employees asked what 10% of the week they would like to use for their own innovation work?
Most people are pretty tired by Friday afternoon after a hectic week's work - and will not be very productive. The last thing I (probably isolated case) would want to do on a Friday afternoon will be innovation.
I can understand from a management point of view that this is the least risky time in the week to give employees to do their own thing, since there is already a chance they are not very productive in that window. It might even be a psychological boost for people to do something useful in a generally unproductive time.
But, since your blog gives me the idea that people have made good use of the TGIF - maybe my "management point of view" theory above is not true.
Looking forward to understand your thinking behind choosing Friday afternoons
thanks for the feedback. Very valid considerations.
First of all, let me emphasize that being innovative is of course not limited to TGiF time on Fridays. Creativity and innovation should have a place the whole week long. It is only a matter of when you arrange some time for all people to "wander off" into topics that are not that closely related to innovation in their usual product space.
Now we're not all having TGiF at SAP and obviously we have to consider that normal business has to efficiently continue. So taking Friday (afternoons) where normal meetings are usually less likely to happen is just easier to do than taking a Wednesday afternoon where business is in full steam. Having all people take the same day comes with the same motivation -- less interruption of "usual business" and also more likelihood that people's TGiF time is not eaten up by cross-team alignment meetings, steerings, etc.etc.
Also, if the energy level has a tendency to go down towards the end of a busy week, going for your TGiF passion on Friday perhaps allows you to let the stress of the week calm down and do something that you particularly enjoy because it is "yours".
BTW, our colleagues in Israel do an TGiS (Sunday) as Friday is weekend. So they actually start the week off with their Innovation time...
There's probably not one right way to do it... We also had questions whether not to allow people to take a full sprint in the year rather than half a day every week... But finally, let's put it that way: it is not for granted that we were able to carve out this TGiF time. So we have to always consider the impact on "normal" business... And believe me, sometimes our internal (and external) stakeholders don't care that much about us being overly creative and just need to get certain functionality/capabilities delivered in a solid manner 😉 ...
Regards, Björn
And so... At what point do you move from it is a technology project to do ABC. To the project is a success, everyone should use the new technology when faced with mno problem? Or do you? Is the bases of creativity simply letting each person do something different?
Technology projects are tricky. They do not bring in more revenue. Most likely your company is not a technology company. So getting the troops excited about it, maybe a bit of a challenge.
Just some thoughts - looking forward to more of these posts,
Michelle
Thanks for these blog series. The blogs are very interesting reads and surely inspiring.
I'm looking forward to the SAP Mentor monday webinar that is coming soon. I might be watching the replay due to the time difference but rest assure I will watch with great interest.
I have to pick this up and try and do something with it so I will do exactly that and I hope I can get it introduced in our own organization.
Best regards
Tom
thanks for sharing your thoughts about this topic.
When we started the Innovation Center team here in Walldorf we also had longer discussions about "free innovation time". As most of the team members came from NW knowing the TGiF this was no surprise for me.
We agreed on more or less half a day in the week. The only "wish" from my side was that everybody shares his ideas from the very beginning with the others (e.g. in the daily standup). This was not about controlling them but to ensure that everybody in the team knows the ideas from others and - even more important - could also inspire the others with some other ideas about the ideas of the colleagues.
Over the last year several ideas were created and some of them were directly integrated into our "offical" projects.
One idea I would like to add to this: providing a Wiki is for sure good. Looking to all these very interesting ideas about "co-working labs" (e.g. betahaus in Berlin or also AppHaus within SAP) it could be also very interesting if colleagues working on an idea could come together in some "co-working areas" also within SAP to work together during the "free innovation time".
Not at their regular desk but in some "innovation room" where they can collaborate with other colleagues. This is for sure also possible in the standard rooms but if we would have "co-working areas" also within SAP this could even push these ideas further.
Betahaus in Berlin is a good point to learn as in such locations almost everything is about "sharing ideas, working on new ideas, learn from others, combine ideas to new ideas, be inspired from others and inspire others" ...
One of the best concepts I've found is the concept of "Manage your energy, not your time", which can be found both on an article publicized by HBR and also on a book, from same authors, called "The power of full engagement".
Since I began to read the book I managed to have longer periods of relaxation, reconstruction and, why not, re-inspiration. It it's paying way too much good!
I highly recommend reading this book to anyone interested in understanding and becoming capable of boosting individual and organizational human performance.
Share your toughts!
Best regards,
Douglas Cezar
SAP SD and ABAP Consultant
Brazil