Case Study: High Performance in the e-Commerce Sector
In our example, 18 teams spread across Europe work closely together for "RELIAL" (name changed), a German e-commerce giant. The e-commerce business is very price-sensitive, international and requires constant innovation. Although agile working methods were introduced, the desired success was not apparent. "RELIAL" recognised that, not just the working methods, but the way in which managers and teams interacted with each other was essential for project success. "RELIAL" therefore wanted to ensure that its teams and managers had regular access to a coach in order to manage their work and products more efficiently.
The Enterprise Coach Team
The coaches from the HOOD Group were commissioned to provide focussed support to the teams and managers.
The "RELIAL" Enterprise Coach team was involved....
- when teams could not solve their team challenges on their own,
- when managers could not find a solution to team or product-specific issues,
- when neutral viewpoints and new, innovative approaches were required.
The team consisted of 3 HOOD consultants and 2 employees from "RELIAL". This unique combination of broad expertise and internal understanding enabled bespoke support. The regular consultations led to the team becoming part of the organisation. The Enterprise Coach team advises in a trusting and collegial manner, and provides supervision in order to continuously improve the coaching services.
How we support „RELIAL“:
Managing Director:
- Team Overview:
- Maintaining an overview of the current state of the teams
- Ensuring that teams have the prerequisites to fulfil the demands placed on them
- Identifying necessary adjustments at organisational level
- Knowledge transfer and cultural change:
- Promoting knowledge transfer and the sharing of experience within the organisation to overcome the skills shortage
- Developing a corporate culture that leads to becoming self-organised and innovative in the long term
Chief Product Owner:
- Empowerment:
- Developing leadership qualities
- Developing teams to take more responsibility themselves
- Introducing systemic ways of dealing with product requirements
- Visions:
- Getting teams to commit to a common vision
- Working out the strategic alignment of product content with product owner
- Promoting cross-team collaboration
- Promoting innovation
- Credibility and communication skills:
- Improving communication between chief products owners and teams
- Walking the talk in respect of the desired company culture and achieving behavioural change
- Strengthening product owners in their roles
Product Owners and Teams:
- Productivity
- Improving how internal conflicts are dealt with
- Creating a common understanding of team roles and tasks
- Improving the handling of difficult conversations concerning team performance and atmosphere
- Promoting the growing together of an international and Europewide dispersed team
- Agreeing common ways of working and team standards
- Reviving and optimising agile meetings, particularly retrospectives
- Prioritising product requirements
- Promoting knowledge transfer
- Cross-team project management
- Optimising cooperation with external partners
- Promoting innovative approaches in the redesign of product elements.
- Integrating teams into a common way of working as effectively as possible
- Implementing product initiatives successfully
- Effectively managing team dependencies
HOOD’s philosophy: focus on sustainability
As we cannot be permanently onsite, we focus on sustainable measures. Our holistic approach enables individuals, teams and large groups to deal with similar situations and problems in the future independently and in the long term. Thus we improve the effectiveness of both the teams and leadership, which results in a more innovative, faster and more flexible organisation.
Talk to us about your goals.
From analysis to implementation, we have the right experience, practices and methods for you and your engineering and product management throughout the entire product lifecycle.
