XP 2025
Mon 2 - Thu 5 June 2025 Brugg - Windisch, Switzerland
Wed 4 Jun 2025 12:00 - 12:30 at 6.3A08 (Workshop / Session) - Transformation and Change Chair(s): Peggy Gregory

Abstract This report will share how Nextdoor’s journey to embrace and evolve Agile practices has fostered adaptability, improved software delivery, and shaped organizational culture. Drawing on personal experiences as the first technical program manager, this narrative will explore how Agile principles were uniquely adopted and blended into the fabric of a dynamic organization. By addressing human, organizational, and managerial aspects, this report emphasizes the social and operational elements that drive high-performing teams and sustainable practices.

Key themes include leveraging situational authority, navigating challenges with legacy Agile perceptions, managing strategic pivots, and achieving alignment with roadmaps and OKRs without losing sight of value delivery. The story is not just about implementing Agile but making it work within the context of real-world constraints and opportunities.

Proposal

The heart of my approach to Agile has always been a focus on meaningful action rather than abstract philosophy. Early on, I embraced the mantra “invade the system—no change takes place from outside,” a phrase I once saw scrawled on a bathroom wall in San Francisco’s Horseshoe Cafe. This mindset shaped my belief in working within existing structures to drive transformation. At Nextdoor, this meant weaving Agile practices into roadmaps and OKRs without explicitly naming them, avoiding theoretical discussions of “Agile” or “Kanban” that often alienate teams. Instead, I emphasized situational authority—facilitating meetings, hosting planning sessions, and ensuring every contributor had a voice—over traditional positional power. By blending these principles into day-to-day operations, we evolved Agile practices to align with our unique culture, enabling both team success and individual growth.

When I joined Nextdoor, the engineering organization was already operating as a full DevOps shop, but there was an opportunity to refine how we delivered value. The incoming engineering leader, an early Agile enthusiast, brought a deep respect for positional authority and a commitment to improving team efficiency. His first two moves were pivotal: appointing a single QA leader to implement “catch and release” practices (a visible ops approach) and hiring me as an organizational agility lead. In reality, I functioned as the company’s first and only Technical Program Manager (TPM) for three years. This role allowed me to address bottlenecks in product definition, quality assurance, and deployment by focusing on cross-team alignment, operational visibility, and pragmatic agility. By embedding these practices into the broader system, we evolved from functional silos to a more cohesive, value-driven organization.

Introducing Agile practices at Nextdoor wasn’t about starting from scratch but about evolving an existing system to better align with our goals and challenges. Six weeks into my role as organizational agility lead, amidst the complexities of onboarding, a global pandemic, and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder, I leaned into Cynefin’s sense-making framework to guide our approach. Nextdoor was already an Agile shop by DORA metrics and followed a Spotify-inspired model of pillars and pods, though with a unique twist—engineering managers oversaw all engineers on a team rather than specializing by discipline. This structure presented both opportunities and challenges, particularly around team dynamics and resource ratios. I focused on creating clarity and alignment through Service Delivery and Operations Reviews, fostering transparency in how we measured and improved throughput and reliability.

One of the biggest challenges at Nextdoor was driving change in an environment already burdened with operational overhead. Many team members had prior experiences with Agile implementations that shaped their expectations—sometimes negatively—leading to skepticism or resistance. Financial planning posed another hurdle, as leadership sought precision in metrics while working with relatively small numbers, creating a tension between accuracy and agility. To address this, I introduced RBIs (Roadmap Backlog Items), a tool to contextualize throughput, gather lead time data, and visualize capacity. By shifting the focus from abstract metrics to concrete value creation, RBIs helped align diverse stakeholders, streamline decision-making, and reduce resistance.

One of my key mistakes at Nextdoor was waiting too long to implement Enterprise Service Planning (ESP), which could have provided earlier clarity and alignment across teams. I’ve learned that being more explicit about why and how these frameworks add value is crucial, even if it means advocating for them during initial discussions or interviews for future roles. Reflecting on this, I realize the importance of proactively layering in foundational structures earlier.. Another lesson came from trusting that new executives would naturally align with organizational needs; for example, a promising head of product did not bring the transformative impact we had anticipated, and there must have been a way for our system to highlight product risk earlier. Additionally, I supported a small-team approach (via pods) but allowed our focus to spread too thin across numerous roadmaps and pivots, diluting impact. These experiences taught me the importance of setting tighter priorities, aligning leadership expectations, and acting swiftly to establish systems that enable sustainable growth.

Over the years, my approach to Agile development has evolved from advocating methodologies to embedding practices that drive meaningful outcomes. Inspired by the mantra “invade the system—no change takes place from outside,” I’ve learned that transformation starts from within, by working through existing structures. Being “in the room to be heard” means leveraging situational authority—facilitating, guiding, and influencing—rather than relying on positional power. I’ve also abandoned talking about Agile itself; instead of theory or terminology, I focus on practical actions and outcomes. For example, during the last planning cycle, I introduced the “Fit for Purpose” concept in bite-sized ways, ensuring it gained traction and helped us successfully launch operations reviews.

Key Takeaways for Attendees

  • Practical insights on evolving Agile practices to meet organizational needs without falling into dogma.
  • Strategies for fostering collaboration, adaptability, and situational authority in diverse teams.
  • Tools and metrics that drive alignment and value creation in complex environments.

About the Author

I’m a Philosophy and Business major who took an unexpected leap into the tech world after moving cross-country to San Francisco in the mid-nineties drawn by the weather and house music. My career began humbly in a Bank of America call center, where I stumbled into quality analysis and testing—a role that sparked a passion for improving how teams deliver value. Over the years, my journey has included stints as Director of Product Operations at Yahoo and as Senior Director of Development and Product Operations at Optimizely. Today, as Organizational Agility Lead at Nextdoor, I help align teams with purpose and delivery through a pragmatic blend of agile practices. My focus has always been on evolving systems incrementally, scaling success sustainably, and ensuring teams and individuals thrive in the process. Prior experience reports include Enterprise Service Planning at Optimizely (Agile 2019), From 20/20 Hindsight to ESP at Optimizely (Lean Kanban North America 2017), and The Continuing Adventures of Yahoo’s Agile Transformation (Agile India 2012).

Evolving Agile from the Inside at Nextdoor (Evolving Agile from the Inside at Nextdoor (3).pdf)2.15MiB

I’m a Philosophy and Business major who took an unexpected leap into the tech world after moving cross-country to San Francisco in the mid-nineties drawn by the weather and house music. My career began humbly in a Bank of America call center, where I stumbled into quality analysis and testing—a role that sparked a passion for improving how teams deliver value. Over the years, my journey has included stints as Director of Product Operations at Yahoo and as Senior Director of Development and Product Operations at Optimizely. Today, as Organizational Agility Lead at Nextdoor, I help align teams with purpose and delivery through a pragmatic blend of agile practices. My focus has always been on evolving systems incrementally, scaling success sustainably, and ensuring teams and individuals thrive in the process. Prior experience reports include Enterprise Service Planning at Optimizely (Agile 2019), From 20/20 Hindsight to ESP at Optimizely (Lean Kanban North America 2017), and The Continuing Adventures of Yahoo’s Agile Transformation (Agile India 2012).

Wed 4 Jun

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

11:00 - 12:30
Transformation and ChangeIndustry and Practice / Experience Reports at 6.3A08 (Workshop / Session)
Chair(s): Peggy Gregory University of Glasgow, UK
11:00
60m
Talk
Modern Business Demands Modern Ways of Working
Industry and Practice
Heidi Musser Independent
File Attached
12:00
30m
Talk
Evolving Agile from the Inside at Nextdoor
Experience Reports
File Attached
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