Voyagent, Inc.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for ASML, supporting Cymer, which is a light source business within the ASML corporation. We’re tool providers in the lithography industry, producing laser-based deep ultraviolet light sources that create etching in silicon wafers. I’m responsible for data and analytics services in the IT organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with Voyagent?

We were looking for a flexible, right-sized, agile coach to help us restructure both our mindset and some of our working habits. We wanted to move toward delivering more value on a consistent basis. In data and analytics, the visibility of our work to our clients and our ability to deliver on commitments were becoming challenging. We needed to change our way of working and become more predictable, consistent, and transparent.

We also have some large projects that were pulling on team resources, starving the operations side of things. The intent was to move toward a scrum DevOps team that could handle both project and operational work but do so transparently and consistently. Our team is 10–15 people, so we’re not huge. I needed a partner that was the right size, with the right experience and flexibility.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They began by assessing where we stood, conducting some interviews with my team and our key stakeholders. A part of that was inquiring whether the stakeholders could take on more responsibility as product owners. The first phase ran for about two weeks, after which Eric (Virtual CTO, Voyagent) partnered with the ASML agile DevOps-CoE. We’re part of a bigger team of resources who came to our site for a week-three decision-making process. Eric worked out how we needed to restructure, how to get my team onboard, and how to divide them into the right components. The end of that assessment phase was a decision-making workshop to agree on how we were going to start.

The next step after the assessment phase was an early implementation phase. Eric helped us onboard to Jira and start some daily rituals like standups and sprint planning. This was all new, so there was a lot of change management involved. It lasted for two two-week sprints, and we were able to onboard a full-time scrum master from that point. Eric was part of the decision-making on who should play that role and what we wanted from them. He also started to monitor how they were engaging with the team.

We’re currently in a high-level consulting phase around what messages the team needs to hear to improve our maturity and to determine key tactical things to focus on. Voyagent provides consulting advice and individual coaching with some team members. Looking forward, we will focus on what other maturity actions we can take, in terms of tooling and improving our rituals. Eric is working on a draft of our agile team maturity roadmap, as we’ll plan our continued engagement.

What is the team composition?

Eric is onsite for 5–10 hours a week, but it can vary. I meet with him in-person once every two weeks, and he attends some of our key rituals, including our retrospective sessions. We have team meetings, including continuous improvement workshops and candid feedback.

How did you come to work with Voyagent?

We talked to a number of agile coaching, training, and enabling groups, including two in San Diego and one in Texas. However, with Voyagent, we found someone with hands-on experience in this particular domain, and that was local. They’d done work at Qualcomm and had been responsible for an analytics and BI team, so they had experience.

How much have you invested with them?

Our total spend is coming up to $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Voyagent in September 2018.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Our team operates in the model we intended for our two DevOps teams. I can’t judge velocity, but we definitely have a good mindset now. The daily standups are increasing in efficiency, and the team is definitely engaged from a demand perspective. We’re doing a much better job of managing and tracking things.

One specific example is a project that was in real trouble. The project manager didn’t really understand the problem space, and resources weren’t allocated fully to it, which was causing a problem for planning. We pulled that project into one of the DevOps teams, and in the three months since then, it’s moving forward towards finishing the scope.

How did Voyagent perform from a project management standpoint?

Eric is a good guy; he has experience that is relevant and valuable to us. Everything was quite well-structured in the early phases of the engagement. Whenever we asked them to present on a topic, Eric brought a lot of experience, content, and value to the conversation.

Now that we’re in phase four—consulting, maturity assessment, and next steps—Eric is a bit less engaged, and this is showing. The crispness of our engagement is definitely eroding a bit. I’m still quite happy with it, but it seems that the energy is diluted, or his interests may be on something else. I need to figure out how we can get back to a high-energy engagement or decide that we’re good to go after the maturity analysis.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Voyagent for us is really Eric. I haven’t engaged with other elements or resources from the company. We’ve been impressed by the fact that Eric wasn’t just telling us about abstract agile rituals—he’d actually put those into practice. He’s pragmatic about things that add value. The most helpful thing is the mindset that the value delivered is really important, and the process is simply a tool for making that easier to deliver. The pragmatic and grounded perspective has been really helpful.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re a small enterprise at this point, so people aren’t going to get a fully dedicated resource, week in, week out. This was perfect for us, but it’s important to understand that they have other clients that are equally important to them.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

No, I can't think of anything.