How an agile organisation enables scaling

The changing demands on IT processes also entail adapting the organisational structure. At the beginning of 2019, the Business Intelligence Division was realigned and transformed into an agile, systemic organisational unit. The stand-out feature of the new model is its clear customer and product focus as well as a shared lateral leadership (leadership without disciplinary authority). BI is designed to help build the necessary control and automation capabilities for OTTO’s platform business model, while removing the current limitations on scalability on the organisational as well as the technological side.

Around 300 colleagues in twelve BI Business Domains as well as Data and Infrastructure Foundations handle a wide range of technologies and BI products. They apply cloud technologies that enable rapid roll-outs. The objective is to make the existing data treasure trove available on demand to as many internal users as possible in real time, and to develop suitable BI applications rapidly to serve the OTTO business model. Through self-service analytics we offer colleagues the opportunity to create their own analyses and reports: this makes it easier and faster to gain data-driven insights collaboratively, take decisions and generate greater business value. On the journey from OTTO to becoming a connected company, the BI Division relies on data, algorithms and AI but especially on the people within its organisation.

Figure 1: Organizational structure in business intelligence

The Product Development teams work in sprints and receive regular feedback from the business units. To keep productivity high and maximise the learning effect within the team, they can independently schedule so-called ‘slacktime’ up to half a day per week. Slacktime helps teams to think out-of-the-box about their approach by applying agile methods to encourage them to open up the problem and solution space even further. For overarching topics and coordination in the tech teams, the ‘scrum of scrums’ format is often used for regular exchange across teams on the latest developments, changes and obstacles. This promotes cross-team collaboration and solution-orientated thinking in the product supply chain. The management teams are responsible for removing any identified operational obstacles from the learning cycles. The product supply chains, the organisational units and the infrastructure are continuously optimized within a product, architectural and organisational process Circle. These Circles consist of experts with differing roles and hierarchy levels from across the BI organisation; the Circles thus define governance for the IT infrastructure, data, products and cross-team collaboration, thereby helping to drive operational excellence.

Figure 2: shared leadership in business intelligence

To further optimize the adaptable, agile organisation, the management teams are to be further supported in their shared leadership by coaches over the next few months, so that everyone can contribute their own leadership dimension and responsibility even better towards strengthening the team mindset and therefore give the Product Development teams better orientation.
Another important tool for interpersonal learning is the feedback culture. As an official HR tool, 360-degree feedback is provided as a development format for all colleagues. In addition, the Agile Coaches offer regular feedback trainings to help promote constructive feedback discussions and lower inhibitions. Through the learning cycles at all levels of the organisation, across teams in the product supply chain, in the Circles as well as in the management and Product Development teams, we identify necessary structural changes at team, process and strategy level at an early stage. This makes the BI Division an adaptable and scalable organisation. The perfect organisational structure for us is the one that is adapted at all levels based on joint learning.