Customized and sustainable transformation

Agile Consulting

The challenge

One Unity Consulting in Gersthofen offers high-quality solutions for the digitalization of business processes. The ECM and DMS projects are implemented by technical consultants and developers after consultation with the customer and the creation of a catalog of requirements. In the past, only classic project management methods were used, but the increasing project size and duration as well as the continuously changed in requirements during the project, led One Unity Consulting to strive for a transformation towards agile project management. As a recognized pioneer of agile and modern working methods, our task was to support the company in this transformation.

One Unity Consulting

As a expert for digital business processes, One Unity Consulting has been paving the way to digitalization for its customers since 2016. Their mission is to simplify business processes and provide their customers with exceptional support in the field of ECM and DMS. The interests of their customers always come first, which is why the team works passionately every day using the most innovative technologies.

How we helped

Sustainable and continuous change works best from the inside out – which is why one of XITASO’s agile experts accompanied One Unity Consulting for a year and helped it to transform itself. Together, we were able to develop new structures and processes – without a blueprint, 100% tailored to One Unity Consulting. The result is a focused, aligned and high-performing organization: distributed responsibility, continuous improvement and a new type of guidance ensure that all employees can reach their full potential. The future can come, One Unity Consulting is ready for it!

Methods

Holocracy Sociocracy Management 3.0 UnFix Team Topology Scribble OKRs Strategic Consulting Workshop Moderation Decision Facilitation Coaching

Get ready to go

Recognize pain points, define rules

The first step in any transformation is to build momentum and break away from the status quo. With this in mind, we conducted a 360° retrospective and worked with all colleagues to discover the biggest pain points. Then, we used our XITASO-Experiment-Canvas to identify concrete action points that we wanted to try out. People often have a natural tendency to resist change. Having clear rules helps to be able to engage more easily with experiments and new approaches, which means defining:

A defined Experiment Owner who is responsible for the processes
A fixed time frame within the experiment is reviewed
Clear success and failure criteria to maximize transparency
A veto right for everyone that can be used if the experiment jeopardizes the company or project goals

Culture follows structure

Do-it-yourself transformation

The successful transformation to agile project management must take place in a holistic manner and also includes a change in corporate culture. As the culture follows the structures, redesigning the daily collaboration along the entire value chain was the key to a successful transformation. Following Conway’s law and based on holocratic principles, all stakeholders were involved in shaping their own communities and roles.

As a result, One Unity Consulting has managed to create an antifragile structure with new processes and roles. Naturally, this structure needs to be constantly developed further and to this end, a continuous process of improvement is managed directly by the employees.

Distributed responsibility

Leadership reinvented

With the right structures, the right roles and the right processes, One Unity Consulting has already taken a big step on the road to agile transformation. To ensure that the new structures remain scalable for future growth, the topic of leadership had to be redefined. Not as a position or role, but much more as a competence that enables and promotes decentralized decision-making and distributed responsibility. This involved making a number of targeted adjustments and innovations.

The new role “Visionary” can be filled transparently with any suitable person
The new role “Mentor” ensures guidance in the area of personal development
The OKR framework replaces a rather inadequate “Management by Objectives”-Process
Salaries are no longer linked to the achievement of annual targets

“Holacracy, mission statement, OKRs, mentoring – One Unity has evolved to face the challenges of the future while remaining true to its roots.”

Orazio Di Marco
Managing Director
One Unity Consulting

“The collaboration with XITASO was great. Baptiste’s expertise and coaching really helped us to unleash the potential in our organization. “

Rainer Ottinger
Managing Director
One Unity Consulting

What’s next?

The foundation for a successful agile transformation has been laid: With new processes, structures and roles, One Unity Consulting is ready for further growth and the future scaling of the organization. On the way forward, much is now in the hands of all employees: continuous improvement, distributed responsibility, mentoring, collective strategic management… and of course the value-adding services!

But even self-organization needs to be guided, hence XITASO will continue to provide support to ensure effective and efficient development.