JUDO treads the path of agile transformation with INVENSITY’s support

The desire to move faster and meet the rapidly changing world of work has led JUDO’s development and engineering department to embark on an agile transformation, taking a big step towards continuous improvement.

Together with INVENSITY, an agile transformation was initiated that is built on 3 essential cornerstones: “The JUDO Manifesto, the Kanban method and the corresponding software tooling. In implementing the pillars, the existing content of the department was taken as a basis and integrated into the transformation and supplemented with the necessary agility. This creates an agile foundation that has a positive impact on collaboration within the department. In this way, we can eliminate identified pain points and improve on aspects such as transparency, clear objectives, and speed, thereby delivering faster and more innovative products to customers.

We are convinced of the opportunities of agile transformation and see the agile approach as an essential building block to invest in successful competitiveness and to achieve the goals from development and design within JUDO.

Industry: Water treatment; Dosing pump system

Headquarters: Winnenden, Germany

Number of employees: 350

Locations: 3 in Germany; 5 Worldwide

Website: https://judo.eu/en-ca/homepage/

JUDO
Manifesto

Kanban implementation

Tool implementation

About Development & Design at JUDO

Objective and background information

With around 350 employees at several German and worldwide locations, JUDO Water Treatment has been developing and producing your “WUNSCHWASSER” since 1936. The technical know-how is just as much in demand as the innovative technology, which has been continuously developed over the years. JUDO develops systems in the premium segment and offers numerous advantages in terms of comfort, hygiene, and economy.

The development and design department, consisting of 50 employees, is responsible for the development of innovative features, the supervision of series development as well as for topics such as supplier management.

The central goal of JUDO and INVENSITY’s joint agile transformation project was to increase team efficiency and effectiveness, maintain and expand technology leadership through innovation, reduce loss performance, increase employee satisfaction, and enable proactive, faster problem resolution for customers.

“Change always has an emotional aspect: this was also the case with our transition to an agile approach. In this context, the INVENSITY team understood how to initiate a sustainable cultural change in our development department and get everyone on board.”

Horst Rothenhöfer
Department Manager Development & Construction
JUDO Water Treatment Ltd

EnAgile – Enabling Agility

The approach

The EnAgile method developed by INVENSITY, which consists of 8 essential steps based on J. Kotter’s change process, is used by INVENSITY to implement agility. This begins with the identification of the current state and leads to the anchoring of the target state so that the necessary and customer-specific agility level is achieved. INVENSITY’s experience with the classic implementation challenges enables it to take into account the cultural and structural aspects to ensure a successful implementation of Being as well as Doing Agile.

Challenges: The implementation of agility
  • is often implemented without regard to value creation. It simply follows the trend.
  • is often carried out without the team-specific prerequisites, resulting in unsuccessful implementation and transition.
  • often neglects the required people and their competencies due to the pure process approach.

Keyfacts

Through the customer-specific implementation of the method (Kanban) and the tool (Jira), the structural side of the transformation is strengthened. The cultural side, in turn, is consolidated through the establishment of the customer-specific manifesto for more effective collaboration through the 4 pairs of values and 17 principles contained therein, which serve as a guide for action. Both facets were able to be validated and consolidated within the two-month pilot to ultimately incorporate the approaches used into the transformation and move closer to the department’s goals.

EnAgile – Agile Transformation

A reasonable investment in the near and distant future

By implementing even small agile practices, increasing efficiency and effectiveness in the team is seen as a short-term and quick result of agile transformation.

In the medium term, structural aspects of the transformation set clear goals and cultural aspects establish an agile way of working with a strong culture of feedback and trust. This can ensure more satisfied employees with high motivation in the long term.

Challenges: The implementation of agility
  • Detection of vulnerabilities by means of various workshops
  • Increase meeting efficiency
  • Improvement of project organization and structure
  • Coaching of project managers for efficient goal achievement and project planning
  • Agility training (as a new approach)
  • Methodology and tool training (Kanban / JIRA / Confleunce)
  • Successive handover of responsibility to members of the established change team
  • Empowering and guiding the change team as drivers of change.
Short-term

e.g. Higher productivity, increase of meeting efficiency

Medium-term

e.g. Higher productivity, increase of meeting efficiency, improvement of project organization and structure

Long-term

e.g. Proactive problem solving, faster time to market

Humans

Stronger (trust-based) culture, employee engagement, employee responsibility

Collaboration

Higher productivity through improved internal collaboration and communication, more efficient working with each other

Digitization

Accelerate digitization by introducing real-time collaboration tools

Agilization

Improved competitiveness through an innovative, agile approach that increases flexibility and responsiveness

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André Weismüller
Head of Project Management