Executive Summary

The report will provide an overview of the current external and internal forces that are
affecting Wyzer and any changes required to tackle these. The organisational culture will be
considered when deciding on the approach to be used. Seminal theories and concepts will
be considered when designing and implementing the strategic change to counter the
identified forces.

Introduction (C.1)
Wyzer is a software company based and registered in Malta that focuses on providing
products and services that help other organisations to automate their business processes.
The vision is to change the way that people work by enabling organisations to seamlessly
digitalise their business processes and automate mundane tasks. Wyzer’s mission is to
create products and offer services that allow organisations to operate more efficiently and
offer better customer experiences through the use of technology. Wyzer aims to acquire,
maintain and use intellectual property to help achieve this vision.

After an intensive PESTEL analysis, it was identified that Wyzer is currently experiencing
several challenges both internal and external that are affecting the day-to-day operations.
For one, iGaming companies in Malta benefit from better tax brackets which in return allow
these companies to offer better renumeration packages than most local start-ups which
makes it hard to recruit people over them. This is a ripple effect on internal factors whereas
the organisation is at a stand-still and cannot onboard new clients with the current work-
force and projects already at hand resulting in certain economic difficulties. For the purpose
of this report, I will be focusing on the current methodology being used internally with the
aim of improving the productivity that will allow Wyzer to onboard further projects. Wyzer
currently opts for a SCRUM agile methodology work environment, which whilst it has its
advantages it may also reduce the possible productivity within small teams. In order to
tackle this, we will be developing a change strategy to shift the company towards a Scaling
Agile methodology or better known in the industry as the Spotify Model.

As part of the preparation for this planned change, a SWOT analysis was carried out to
identify the current strengths and weaknesses of the team at Wyzer. This will assist with
understanding further how each individual can help the organisation to reach its full

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potential. As part of the SWOT analysis, each individual was sent a questionnaire to
understand further the goals of the employees and also what they are expecting from the
organisation.

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Strategic Change Programme (A.1, A.2, A.3, A.4)

The approaches being adopted for this change were inspired by Lewin’s Change Model this is due to
the model’s flexibility that is complimented with the organizational culture. As Wyzer is already an
agile first company, most employees are accustomed to change and have been able to perform
during such events. This will ease the transition as a whole and everyone understands the
importance of their input towards a change to be successful. Lewin’s change model allows this
change to take place in an ideal amount of time while ensuring that the work process is stabilised
quickly after the transition. This promotes the continuity that Wyzer embraces.

As indicated in Lewin’s change model, the change will be split in three phases; Phase one will be
carried out over three weeks where the employees within the organisation will be informed about
the change strategy including new practices that shall be embarked to compliment or replace
current practices. This will be presented during multiple events taking place during the first week at
Wyzer’s offices. As part of the communication, various individuals will also be promoted to new
positions to support the Spotify Model. The positions are: Front-End Team Leader and Back-End
Team Leader. Within the Project Management team, all project assistants will now be doing the role
of a project leader whilst the Project Manager will now become the Senior Project Manager. These
individuals will be chosen carefully through their performance and through a deep review into who
people within the organisation chose as the persons that have helped them to improve in their role.
Some names might be common, this meaning that they possess very good leadership practice.

Phase two will take 3 weeks and will be focused on providing the necessary training to all employees
to ease the transition. Furthermore, during this phase, the various functions within the organisation
and how each will work will need to be understood by all employees and every individual must
understand their new role within the organisation. The new team leaders and management will
need to be the beacon of hope for the rest of the company to excite the employees about the
change and provide help where needed. Employees are important to be fully supportive of this
change for it to succeed, as such, the organisation needs to make sure that a private conversation
with each employee is to take place to reaffirm how vital they are for the change to succeed and to
highlight any misunderstanding or points of confusion.

Phase three will measure the success of the previous phases and will be measured on two, two
weeks work performance. This will be focused on having all new teams operational and working with

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the Spotify Model. The new roles within the company would be embraced. The roles and hierarchy
of the company will be as per the following:

Hierarchy with Spotify Model (Figure 1.1)

Current Hierarchy with SCRUM (Figure 1.2)

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During this change, several adaptive and transformational changes will occur to compliment the
internal processes changed. The hierarchy of the company will change and new teams will be
replacing the current ones. There will be the Front-End team, Back-End team, Data and DevOps
team, Quality Assurance team and the Project Management team. These teams will all have a team
leader and in the project management case there will be a senior project leader. The Quality
Assurance team is made of one person that works independently from other teams. The team
leaders of the front-end and back-end team will set certain technical guidelines that will be used as
the base for all company projects. These guidelines will include the programming language to be
used in various scenarios, the colour palettes of the organisation’s products, the integrations that
the company already support and other technical guidelines. This will ensure that the company has
continuity in its work and that whilst working on multiple projects, the team can build a database of
work done which can then be used for other projects by individuals within the team.

Every individual whilst forming part of the main team, will then be forming part of the project teams.
Every project that the company holds will be allocated multiple front-end and back-end developers,
one data and devOps manager and one project manager. This will change the way the company
currently works drastically. Currently the company has a sprint of two weeks where all tasks are split
into three clusters of tasks. The front-end, back-end, and data. Every team is allocated a set of tasks
on various projects and they work in silos from other teams where every team must wait until the
end of the sprint meeting to merge the work together. With the new change, the teams will now be
split and mixed with other personnel from other teams.

The project teams will be working with their own methodology depending on the project manager
assigned to the team and the teams preferred methodology. With this method, whilst following the
technical guidelines set for the main teams, the project teams can work faster and more efficiently
with representatives from all teams working as one. The merging can take place every day, whilst
should a team be blocked, this won’t block the rest of the projects as other individuals won’t
interfere with another’s project team issue.

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Organisational Culture & Change (B.1, B.2)

Wyzer’s organizational culture is one that encourages employees to improve themselves

rather than proofing themselves to each other. This has allowed the employees to create an
environment where it is safe for everyone to ask questions when they need clarifications or
believe that improvement can be made either on their work on the work of their peers.
Such culture is important when change is happening as it makes it easier for individuals to
seek guidance without fear. Change brings a lot of fear and this is where the leaders need to
emerge. Not just the leaders by position, but also those leaders that have always shared
their input and whilst the employees of the organisation are keen to change, resistance is
always something that comes naturally which is something that needs to be tackled by
leaders.

The role of the leaders needs to change to align the employees with the company’s
objectives and must ensure that a foundation of trust is built in order to be able to allow
every individual to be responsible for their productivity. Performance is higher when
everybody works towards achieving the same goal whilst learning and improving together,
as such, the leaders must be able to be the glue that sticks the team together whilst
promoting productivity.

Team-work and trust are needed to eliminate any impact of politics within the organisation.
Being a small organisation, there aren’t any obvious political struggles, however, this does
not come naturally. The organisation promotes power over politics, and if a leader has
either natural power, or status power, they should use it to improve the company and not
their self-interest. Wyzer set various initiatives for leaders to emerge and be of service to
their peers and the company. During such a change, leaders are needed to not only assist
the company, but to also allow themselves to grow in the new opportunities at hand.

Organisational Learning Perspective (B.3)

Wyzer will adopt a mix of organisational and group learning. The project teams as silos learn
as a group depending on the struggles that they face in their respective projects, where as a
group they question and contribute ideas and solutions together. This helps individuals to
really feel part of a team and the team success is dependent on not just one individual but

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on all that form the team. On the other hand, Wyzer then adapts an organizational
approach when it represents the whole organisation and this is done by the bi-weekly
communication that shall take place after every sprint. Every team will present their
progress on the project and share with the rest of the company the success they had in the
past two weeks and also the struggles that they faced. This will allow the organisation as a
whole to learn from each other and teams will be able to assist each other if they already
faced such struggles, whilst success stories will be able to help either current struggles
within a project or provide the rest of the teams with hope and positivity.

Change Transition (C.2, C.3, C.4)

Whilst the mission and the vision of the companies will not change, the values within the
company will need adjustments. With the introduction of the Spotify Model, each individual
will be responsible for their part in a project, and this creates the fear that some may not be
able to deliver or are too exposed. Whilst this is a reasonable fear, the management wants
to ensure everyone that this is an opportunity for growth rather than a spotlight being set
on someone. One of the new values added to the organisation will be that Wyzer creates
leaders, and this will be a tick box that many new developers on the market would be
interested in.

The change will be delivered in phases as discussed previously in this report, and throughout
the three phases, the employees will go through a series of training and workshops. The
training will prepare the team for the new model ahead, several training sessions on the
Spotify Model will be done and this will then be complimented by another set of training
sessions where the new team leaders will present to the teams the technical guidelines that
they shall be following. During the Spotify Model training, the team will be communicated
how new teams will be formed for each project that the company is working on, and that
those new project teams will be responsible as a whole over that particular project success
and failures such as reaching deadlines & meeting the client’s requirements. This is the most
important step within the phase where the employees must understand that their
commitment and engagement towards this change is what makes it a success of a failure. In
order for the Spotify Model to work, whilst the management must responsible for the
strategy and implementation, the employees are responsible for a smooth transition. The

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organisation can provide everything the team needs; however, it is the team that must
adapt, and this is why the new team leaders were chosen. The new team leaders were
already communicated the change and have accustomed the training around it. These
leaders will be the pillars upon which this change is built and they are they must be the
evangelists of this new model.

The organisation will offer any training program that any team will require to work on a
project or to further their knowledge to tackle any issue that may arise. This is a part of the
incentive program to incentivise employees to grow and share with the others. This will also
be a value that the company is hoping to add to its portfolio. Sharing of Information
between the teams are vital and this will be done on the company’s internal system
whereas teams will all have access to each other’s projects as a read-only. Every project
team is encouraged to report any issue that was solved via a training program or a specific
way that may be of interest to others. With this in mind, the company would like that in the
future as the company grows, guilds within the company will be created. This will be a
number of individuals that are all interested in a particular coding language, and together
they can discuss ways that they can help each other projects. This can be formed by team
members of any project and is not part of the work, but rather as an extra curriculum to
improve the relationship between employees.

This change requires the team members to keep constant communication between each
other and be as transparent as possible. This allows teams to learn from each other and for
the organisation to continue on improving. In every change that takes place, the most
important value are always the employees and it is important that the change is created
with the thought of employees first. To quote Sir Richard Branson, “if you take care of your
employees, they will take care of your clients”

Conclusion

In this report, we have gone through the change process that Wyzer will undertake. This will
be complimented by a presentation where the change management strategy will be
communicated and explained. A Gantt chart with the timelines of the change transition will
be provided to align everyone with the urgency for this change to take place and how it will
be done. Throughout this report it is clear that Wyzer will focus on increasing its

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productivity with its current workforce whilst trying to showcase to possible recruits that
rather than providing developers with every day work, Wyzer provides them with challenges
to grow into the role that they hold and be experienced to move further in their careers.

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