Our Ongoing Journey Towards a More Agile Organization

Written by Evelyne Daniel

wega delivers informatics services in the life science industry. Our assets are our people, knowledge, experience and aspiration to deliver value. Everything we do is based on our values of trust, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

Nicely said, but is this easy to organize and achieve?

"Change is the only constant", Greek philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus.

Since I joined wega in October 2016, I experienced that wega was able to adapt successfully over the past almost 30 years - especially to the industry needs and new technologies. How was it done? "wega has always been opportunistic", said Daniel Juchli. Opportunistic as in the sense of taking an opportunity, accepting a change, considering the risks and being able to adapt. I think wega was always acting with the mindset of challenging the status quo to be able to evolve and be successful. Additionally the company culture has always been very important for the three founders and as well for the whole company.

Why have we started to transform our organization?

"Challenge yourself; it’s the only path which leads to growth.", Morgan Freeman.

By 2019, the company was organized in four groups and a management buy-out process was ongoing. The three founders were looking for a smooth handover of their operational duties. The organization was growing in the amount of employees, amount of customers, amount of projects and therefore complexity was increasing. Hence we started with the creation of teams within the groups to keep it manageable. To avoid creation of silos and bottlenecks, and in order to capitalize on potential opportunities, improve knowledge sharing, foster cross-selling among teams, etc., we decided that we do not want to grow a hierarchical structure with several management levels, which would result in a chain of command connecting multiple management levels within the organisation.

Thanks to colleagues involved in agility topics and especially Mathias Fuchs, our senior Scrum Master & agile expert, we started looking into other organization models. In December 2019, “Reinventing Organization" from Eric Laloux, and the "Manifesto for Agile Software Development" became additional sources of inspiration. Together with the wega management we decided to initiate a fundamental change to reorganize the company towards self-organization following three pillars of agility which are “transparency”, “empowerment” and “empiricism”.

What did we do?

We looked first into established frameworks like "The Spotify model" or "Holacracy". After alignment we decided to develop our own model. We did not want to make a "big bang" change, but preferred to sense and react to the needs and priorities appearing along the journey. We also wanted to use our creativity and experience to develop a model that fits best for us.

Mathias said: "It's an open-heart surgery".

I must admit that, yes, we all had to use our hearts and heads, and this is still the case. To start such a journey, it is crucial to have a culture of trust, openness and being solution oriented. Always keep in mind that "Mistakes are learning opportunities", Robert Wilson.

With this mindset we setup a project team based on three sub teams working on “transparency”, “empowerment” and “organization” involving many employees from different area of competencies. These three teams put in a lot of energy to developing an organization framework, gathering requirements toward more transparency, and investigating appropriate tools, establishing the company values and supporting the implementation in the organization. Defining how to transfer the responsibilities of the former group heads to the different new roles helped us redefining the roles & responsibilities.

During around two years, we adapted the way of collaboration within the project team and within the organization. We used traditional project management tools, but also Jira, first according to Scrum, then using Kanban. We made a lot of experiments including "Scrumban" and will elaborate in a next article on the lessons learned.

What did we implement?

A networks based organization with four network types
New roles and responsibilities
No line manager, but instead a home network and a mentor for each employee

Key aspects of our today organization are:

Offering, project delivery, core knowledge is organized in domain networks : Sample Logistic, Life Science Digital Transformation, Analytical Instrument Control Systems, LIMS, CSV, Research Data and Knowledge Management, Clinical Development, ARGUS Products.
Knowledge and initiative networks are building knowledge frameworks (e.g. business analysis, organizational change management) and exploring new services (e.g. test automation, data science, medical device)
Operational services networks are taking care of internal processes, e.g. finance, HR, IT, marketing, QMS, executive board
Every employee has a home network, for consultants a domain network
Every employee has a mentor, who is the first go-to-person and helps the employee in navigating the organization and career development.
Flexibility when changing the home network and mentor

We will elaborate more in a future article.

Where do we stand today?

Thomas Bieligk
I am a computer scientist and have been working for wega for almost 25 years. My business card says "Senior Consultant". I work as a programmer, BA, data scientist - my focus is mainly on technical matters.

When I joined wega, it was a small company with clear structure: Three founders that where the “bosses” and some employees, working mainly onsite for customers – most employees had only one customer at that time.

Obviously, the world has changed over time, and so has our company. We have grown a lot (luckily with the focus to get better, not to get bigger). Obviously, the organization needed to change.

The classic way would have been to introduce some hierarchy levels. Group heads, Department manager, you name it. But does that fit to a company that is mainly composed of experts who are used to work responsibly for themselves, for projects and teams?

Instead, we are now organized in what we call “Networks” – every person needs to be in at least one network, but can join other networks, depending on interest and on the needs for the daily work. I admit when this concept was introduced to us, I was not able to fully understand what that would bring to us.

So, what has changed?

For me as person: I feel more responsible for my own daily work and how to organize it. I have colleagues at wega that can ask me if I have capacity and knowledge to do a certain task, take a certain role for a certain customer, but none of them is my boss. I have a person which I meet frequently (we call it “Mentor”) where I discuss issues. But this person is not responsible for me – the idea is that the Mentor’s role is to help and support.

I think rebuilding wega is a process. We haven’t reached the goal and now the rules are fixed. I think it is important that we are in motion, adapting to how this company can work, can work best. This was my most important insight: We are constantly thinking about how we can have a future as company.

Birsen Altinay
CSV consultant, network main contact of the medical device initiative

I joined wega in September 2020, when the company was still organized into four groups.

The gradual introduction of new roles, regular status updates and Q&A sessions made the transition to the new organization very comfortable. Although a lot has changed in the organization since I joined wega, the company culture and mindset have remained the same, which is very positive. In my opinion, the new organization supports the wega values and the further development of the company even better.

During the past 2 years, we described the new processes, implemented them, adapted tools, trained employees. Today, the integration in our QMS is almost complete. This year, we are focusing mainly on stabilization. Besides that, optimal staffing of our customer projects and services, career development for our employees, business development and contact with our customers, culture and communication are further important focus areas.

Is the reorganization complete?

I think we should not call it "reorganization" but rather "continuous evolution" as it is an ongoing and never-ending process. As mentioned above, “change is the only constant".

We will constantly continue to evolve requiring from every one of us in wega the willingness to adapt.

Thank you wega, and everyone being part of this fantastic culture!

"With trust we can thrive together".

Do you want to know more? Contact us info@wega-it.com.