The Quest for an Agile Company: Nine Years tangly llc

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2025 02 01 head

What a journey it has been!

Nine years ago, we founded our company tangly. We are a Java and agile digital product development boutique.

We are going strong and tremendously enjoying the journey.

We always wanted to nurture a company where collaborators are happy and proud to work.

Agile approaches and principles are the foundation of our company.

The Beyond Budgeting Round Table has been a source of inspiration for our company since its inception in 2016. They try to rethink how we manage organizations in a post-industrial world.

They advocate a progressive set of leadership principles and management processes proven to free organizations of command and control cultures and improve performance.

Beyond Budgeting Principles

The Beyond Budgeting Round Table proposed twelve principles in 2011.

I added italics comments how our company interprets and applies these ideas.

Governance and transparency
Values

Bind people to a common cause; not a central plan.

We are a technical agile boutique specialized in the Modern Java stack. We strongly believe you can create awesome digital products the agile way, with Java. The teams will enjoy the work every day and be proud of delivering products improving quality of life.

Great companies are not in business to make money, they make money to stay in business and accomplish an important purpose.

Governance

Govern through shared values and sound judgment; not detailed rules and regulations.

We are proud to have very few regulations. These documents are all a one-pager. We expect our collaborators to apply common sense and to act in the best interest of the company and the customer.

We align collaborators through transparency of their handling and implicit peer review.

Transparency

Make information open and transparent; do not restrict and control it.

All collaborators have access to all documents of the company. Customers sometimes require confidentiality for specific initiatives. In this case the project artifacts visibility is limited to the team working on them.

Accountable teams
Teams

Organize around a seamless network of accountable teams; not centralized functions.

We have a flat organization with a few roles. All product development initiatives are organized as value streams.
The only specialized role in the company is the accounting. If a collaborator is interested in finance, we will train him to take over this role.

Trust

Trust teams to regulate their performance; do not micromanage them.

We trust our collaborators to do the right thing. All collaborators understand the company’s purpose and values.

Accountability

Base accountability on holistic criteria and peer reviews; not on hierarchical relationships.

Our culture strongly emphasizes meritocracy. We are qualified specialists in technical agility and digital software product development.

We have a profit center accounting structure. Each collaborator has access to all financial data and can see how she is doing.

Goals and Rewards
Goals

Set ambitious medium-term goals, not short-term fixed targets.

We want to be recognized as one of the best technical agile boutiques in Switzerland.
We do not have any fixed targets for our collaborators.

Rewards

Base rewards on relative performance; not on meeting fixed targets.

This is fully implemented.

Planning and Controls
Planning

Make planning a continuous and inclusive process; not a top-down annual event.

Planning is rolling. We develop some tools to fully support rolling visualization of acquisition and financial reporting.

Coordination

Coordinate interactions dynamically; not through annual budgets.

We have no annual budgets or quaterly goals. We emphasize rolling decision-making.

Resources

Make resources available just-in-time; not just-in-case.

We are practising Kanban. We have a pull culture and a just-in-time realization approach.

Controls

Base controls on fast, frequent feedback; not budget variances.

All collaborators look at the realtime progress of the digital product development they are working on. Fast feedback loops allow us to adapt our plans and actions. This feedback hugely improves collaborator, customer, and stakeholder satisfaction.

We have no budget, therefore, we have no budget variances.

Adaptive Product Development

Agile approaches promote adaptive product development and the ability to respond to change. Methods such as Design Thinking, Lean Startup, eXtreme Programming, and Scrum are the foundation to develop digital products.

2025 02 01 iterations

Working as a lecturer and coach for technical universities is very rewarding. We can share our experience and knowledge with the next generation of software engineers.

Switzerland has too few software engineers, and the situation is getting worse.

Our country has no clear MINT strategy.

We hope our contribution helps a little to improve the situation.

We have the privilege to work with students and professors on the latest research and development projects.

My current courses and projects were:

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