The typical recommendation is that role of software leaders is just empowering teams and removing roadblocks. While this can work in organizations where small teams can work independently, I believe it is just wrong for large complex organizations. In these cases, if the organization is going to deliver the results the business deserves leaders are going to have to play a much more active and adaptive role. Since this is contrary to everything you are hearing in the industry, I will start with a case study of a transformation I led at HP with 400-800 developers that resulted in 2-3X improvements in productivity to show the types of changes and the impact leaders are uniquely positioned to influence. Then I will lay out some very common-sense principles that you can leverage and adapt to address your unique challenges.

Gary Gruver is an experienced executive with a proven track record of transforming software development and delivery processes in large organizations. As the R&D director over the HP LaserJet FW team (~800), he led productivity improvements of 2-3X. Then, as VP of QA, Release, and Operations at Macy’s.com, he managed the journey toward continuous delivery. His current passion is helping as many people as possible achieve similar results through consulting, webinars, presentations, and books. Gary’s consulting approach is unique in that he stays engaged with organizations during their journeys to provide guidance when they hit specific challenges and to learn about what is and isn’t working during as many different transformations as possible. This experience enables him to help clients avoid common mistakes and share approaches that have been proven to deliver business results for a variety of companies. He is the author of Engineering the Digital Transformation, Starting and Scaling DevOps in the Enterprise and co-author of Leading the Transformation: Applying Agile and DevOps Principles at Scale and A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware.