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Customer Story

Power to the Product Teams:  Enhancing Connection, Purpose, and Professional Development at Northpool

Driving Employee Happiness, Efficiency, and Quality through Agile and Scrum Methodology and a Product-driven Organization
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Related Services
Agile Transformation

Industry
Public and Utilities

Company
Xebia 

Northpool is a commodity trading company with a strong focus on energy products. Northpool’s core business is trading European power and gas combined with expertise and knowledge of a broader range of energy products such as oil, coal, and emissions as all energy-related products.

Northpool plays an important role in the energy transition to Renewable Energy Sources. Energy supply from Wind and Solar Power is subject to fluctuations due to weather conditions and seasons. Smart energy trading plays a bigger role in maintaining the balance between supply and demand.
Why
Growth and need for faster product delivery required a different way of working
What
Moving from a project-oriented dev organisation to a product-minded set-up
How
Consulting, training, and direct team coaching for a successful and sustainable change within the organization

Embracing a Product-Oriented Mindset

During the last few years, Northpool faced tremendous growth, doubling its team of data scientists, engineers, and developers almost every year.

To scale projects and initiatives accordingly, Northpool committed to shifting from a project-oriented organization to a product-oriented set up, working in an Agile way and following the Scrum methodology.

Partnering with Northpool was deeply rewarding. By redefining their structure into value-driven product teams and viewing energy traders as true customers, we fundamentally changed how technology served the organisation. The enablement of multidisciplinary teams to collaborate more effectively accelerated iterations and maximized the impact on trading operations.

xebia_logo-large-transparent
Rutger de Wijs Product Management Consultant | Leveraging AI in Product

A Transformational Journey through Value Stream Orientation and Agile Training

Xebia helped set up the organization in a new way. We implemented value stream orientation in product teams. With a combination of Consulting and accompanying training initiatives, Northpool’s development organization transformed within a year into a scalable product-minded organization. 
Xebia Consultant Rutger de Wijs coached different dedicated teams for several sprints, one team at a time. This way, they learned the new way of working, and adapted to it, until they could work in this way on their own
Trainings included:

  • Agile foundations
  • PAL Professional Agile Leadership for management
They consciously moved from identifying resources needed for projects to a clear roadmap with deliverables within the cadence of Scrum.
The combination of Consulting, training, and coaching led to a sustainable change within the organization.

Elevated employee happiness, faster product delivery and better quality.

Fostering a Culture of Value and Flexibility

The dedicated teams are more connected to the value they deliver within their product. They exchange knowledge in topic-driven chapters.

This way, the organization is more flexible and can react faster to changing client needs and product requirements.

The roadmap guides the teams while working with Scrum providing them with fast and direct product feedback from their stakeholders. This transparent way of working substantially reduced the overhead workload in terms of reporting.

Consequently, managers have more time to directly deal with the team. Developers and data scientists experience a higher sense of connection and purpose within their work and less cognitive load.

Within the new organizational setup, they also have a clear vision of how to develop professionally, e.g. in the role of Product Owner or Scrum Master.

This results in elevated employee happiness, faster product delivery, and better quality.

Now, Northpool’s data scientists, engineers, analysts and developers collaborate together in multidisciplinary teams that can quickly bring value to Northpool’s different trading desks.

 

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