kudos, motivation & agile

Kudos, Motivation & AgileAgnius Paradnikas

1 of 12 Agile principles

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they

need, and trust them to get the job done.

Background

• Visma• Nordic company

• 158 million EUR profit

• 5600 people, 90 autonomous companies

• Product development company

• Distributed

• Visma Lietuva • A development center for Visma

• 100 developers and tech QAs

• 22 teams

• 2 full time managers

Environment

Software development company should be ruled by geeks

Environment

Environment

Hire good people, and leave them alone.- William McKnight, 3M, 1930-1940

Environment

Everybody is equal

Environment

Doesn’t matter how you dress

or look

Environment

NO to open space office

Motivated individuals

Hire by yourself

Motivated individuals

Good people like to work with other good people.And they like to give Kudos to each other.

Kudos

To gain kudos is to earn respect and recognition. - UrbanDictionary.com

Kudos, how we started

• Bring a chocolate and get 1 Kudos point.

• No real value from Kudos points. Just for fun.

• The more points you have, the more respected you are.

Kudos, how we started

Kudos, scale out

• We grew and physical Kudos board had to be bigger.• There were more actions we wanted to reward each

other on:• Code review

• Pair programming

• Code Monkey presentation

• Public speaking

• Etc.

Kudos, scale out

• Physically it was hard to manage.• Came up with custom solution on the SharePoint in our

intranet.

Kudos, demo

How to gain Kudos points?

How to gain Kudos points?

How to gain Kudos points?

How to gain Kudos points?

How to gain Kudos points?

What’s in it for me?

• Recognition and respect from peers• Bigger motivation to do more• Fun• Real value exchanging Kudos points to gadgets or other

stuff

What’s in it for me?

• Gadgets for Kudos points

What’s in it for me?

• Workplace improvements for Kudos points (ex. height-adjustable table)

Kudos committee

• Elected annually• Owners of Kudos points system• Implementing changes in Kudos points• Approves Kudos points

How to change your company?

Start with small changes in your team. Good examples will outgrow to company level

QA

?

Discussion

• Does it sound relevant to you?• What do you do the same/different in your

company/team?• Any good ideas how to motivate people?• Kudos points – would it work in your case?