REVOLUTIONIZING WORK CULTURE AT PALO ALTO NETWORKS' WILDFIRE WITH AGILE

BACKGROUND:

Palo Alto Networks, a leading cybersecurity company, sought to revolutionize its Wildfire department, which was grappling with high churn rates and an ineffective work environment. The VP of Engineering, Ajay Garg, recognized the need for a robust Agile transformation to enhance productivity and employee satisfaction. I was on boarded to lead this transformation, focusing on a team of approximately 70 people.

THE CHALLENGE: Wildfire faced significant challenges, including:

High churn rates among employees.
Ineffective work transparency and quality of delivery.
Poor team predictability and unstable velocity.
Inaccurate estimations impacting release planning and customer commitments.

OUR SOLUTION:

Coaching and Training: Delivered comprehensive training to Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and team members on Agile practices and principles.
Jira Workflow Optimization: Reviewed and optimized Jira workflows to enhance work transparency and efficiency.
Scaled Scrum Implementation: Introduced a better way of conducting Scrum of Scrums to resolve dependencies and align on risks and blockers.
Health Check Dashboard: Created a comprehensive health check board to monitor and share progress with key stakeholders, used in weekly executive meetings.
Journey Mapping: Conducted training on creating products with a big-picture perspective, leading to better backlog alignment and prioritization.
Hands-On Coaching: Provided hands-on coaching to product owners, Scrum Masters, developers, and testers, fostering a collaborative and productive environment.
Executive Coaching: Worked closely with leaders and executives, maintaining calm and centeredness during intense periods, and helping them adapt to new ways of working.
Just-In-Time Training (JIT): Provided JIT training on various modules to all teams, including Agile Foundations, Roles and Responsibilities, Events and Ceremonies, Estimations with poker and as a team; Epics, Feature and User Stories; How to write effective Acceptance Criteria; and Scaling Agile between teams.

Business Outcomes Achieved:

Improved Team Predictability and Velocity: Teams achieved over 80% predictability, transitioning into stable velocity ranges.
Reduced Defect Rates: Defect rates were reduced by 50%, as reported by Jira dashboards.
Enhanced Estimation Accuracy: Improved release planning resulted in meeting 100% of customer commitments.
Decreased Churn Rate: Employee churn rate dropped by 75%, leading to a more stable and motivated workforce.
Increased Revenue: Wildfire’s revenue increased by 20% over the past year, demonstrating the business impact of the Agile transformation.

TESTIMONIALS

Anu Makker

Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager at Palo Alto Networks

Amitabbh, is an individual you will love working with. He has passion not only for being a great agile coach but also is genuine human soul who understands the issue at hand both from Business and people perspective before presenting a solution or giving direction to a team. His is a great visionary and can take teams to their greatest potential. It was my pleasure to work with Amitabh – he was a great Agile coach and me being his right hand during the process (while we worked on WildFire program) he made sure to provide me with all tools and new processes which would help me sustain the team and coach the team accordingly.

Jo Lin

Principal Site Reliability Engineer at Palo Alto Networks

I have worked with Amit for a couple of months now and I feel very comfortable in being able to understand his strengths and assets and give a recommendation. One might be inclined to say that Amit’s strongest assets are his deep expertise of Agile and his ability to help teams perform and demonstrate Agile in a way that *actually* works – and change the minds of nay-sayers along the way. I would say that on the surface, this is a very apt description of one of his strongest assets. However, after working with him for several months, I would say that another one of his high-value strengths is his ability to empathize, communicate, influence, and execute consistently. Amit has always come as a servant-leader to every meeting I have seen him in. When he does this, he builds his credibility so fast and so powerfully. People listen to Amit because he is always kind, always a servant-leader, always compassionate. Please let me be clear – there will be many people who are *experts* in Agile; Amit is among them. But what makes Amit stand out is his consistency in being a servant-leader, easily creating positive change. He is very nice and considerate and it is always worth taking the time to ask him for opinionated suggestions.