Kiran Kanchan

Transition Coach, Spark New Zealand

Leading change

Building LARGE Agile teams

Scrum does not specifically dictate a number, but it still proposes a maximum team size of nine people. In this talk, Kiran Kanchan presents a case study of how he and his team have worked to defy this mindset at Spark New Zealand.

Spark started its Agile journey in 2014, focusing on transforming the technology teams. In 2018, Spark finally decided to go all in and transform the business as a whole into an Agile organisation. During this transformation, Spark wanted a solution to fit its existing IT Agile delivery, which was running in a hybrid SAFe-LeSS model fit into the Spotify model adopted by the business teams. At Spark, they have now achieved this: not by following the rules, but by breaking them.

The result: Spark has a tribe of 80+ people with five teams, and team size varies from 12 to 24 people. They can now deliver the highest priorities for the business every release and with no defects. Additionally, employee happiness within the teams is high, with an employee NPS (eNPS) score of +68.

About Kiran Kanchan

Kiran Kanchan is a skilled process improvement and transformation specialist with more than 14 years of enterprise level experience in coaching teams along with defining IT organisation frameworks, methods, policies and standards. Kiran has worked in various capacities such as an Enterprise Agile Coach, Trainer, Auditor, Process Consultant, Transition and Ways of Working enabler, to list a few. Kiran is currently working in Spark New Zealand enabling the Agile transition within the organisation by coaching and mentoring tribes to form high performing end to end squads.

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