This Agile case study is drawn from the Agile Experience Report “Joy, Inc. in Japan! How I Built a Joy Dojo in the Land Where Kaizen was Born” by Tadahiro Yasuda.
Tadahiro Yasuda, Creationline’s CEO, had reached a breaking point. Creationline, a Japanese IT company, had grown, but its culture had not kept pace. Communication between teams was poor. Employees were unmotivated. Teams argued and disrespected one another. A major client project went into crisis, requiring late-night response meetings. Some engineers became ill and left.
The deeper problem was not simply workload or effort. Creationline lacked shared direction, trust, and clear communication. Yasuda later recognized that he had contributed to the problem by focusing too heavily on immediate sales and profits while assuming employees understood the company’s purpose without it being clearly stated.
Creationline began as a contract IT services company. Its work depended on accepting client software development requests, building solutions, and delivering them. Yasuda believed that if the company pursued revenue, satisfied customers, and stabilized the business, employees would eventually become happier.
That assumption failed. Employees did not understand the company’s vision, goals, or direction. Teams acted from their own assumptions. Because they did not understand one another’s work, conflict grew. Motivation dropped, delivery suffered, and the company’s reputation was damaged.
The company also faced a cultural constraint. In Japan’s high-context business environment, people may assume that intent can be understood without being stated directly. Yasuda came to see that this was not enough. Vision and philosophy had to be made explicit.
Creationline did not respond with a single framework rollout. Its change unfolded through a series of experiments. The company treated culture as something to inspect, improve, and adapt over time.
The approach drew on Kaizen (continuous improvement through small, ongoing changes) and several Agile-compatible practices:
Creationline’s first attempt to improve communication was a monthly in-house social gathering. The effort eventually failed. Yasuda had not clearly explained the purpose, had not shown enough commitment to changing the company, and had not improved the event over time.
The company then began reshaping its company-wide meetings. At first, these meetings focused on project progress. But because trust was low, employees did not share concerns or problems. Yasuda changed the format and began using the meetings to discuss what kind of company they wanted to become and how work could become more joyful.
Creationline also learned from outside examples. After visiting a company that used Kanban across departments, some teams began using retrospectives, Kanban visualization, and Value Stream Mapping. Seeing the practices in use helped create shared language.
The company later invested in a full-company team-building workshop with support from an Agile coach. Afterward, some employees voluntarily formed a Kaizen team to address internal problems.
As Yasuda adapted ideas from Joy, Inc., a book about Menlo Innovations’ people-centered way of working, the company introduced more collaborative practices. These included pair programming in some projects, greater information transparency, daily standups, project reviews, free seating, and family-friendly policies.
Two practices became especially important for connection. Furu-Furu Relay Talk, a structured public praise activity, gave employees a way to recognize colleagues in front of others. Zatsudan, a regular non-business conversation practice, helped people from different projects get to know one another. Over time, these practices helped strengthen cross-team relationships and psychological safety.
Creationline reported significant business and cultural results during the transformation period. Sales increased 16 times, and profits increased 28 times. During the shift to remote work, office attendance dropped to 1.5 percent, yet the company achieved 130 percent of the previous year’s revenue.
Employee engagement scores increased after remote work began. The company also reported a client Net Promoter Score, or NPS, of 63. Its work with DENSO, a major auto parts supplier, became one example of applying Joy, XP-inspired development practices, and close customer collaboration to real projects.
By applying Kaizen to corporate culture, Creationline became more able to respond flexibly to environmental change. The broader impact was cultural as well as financial: the company became more transparent, more connected across teams, and more deliberate about building shared understanding.
Read the original Agile Experience Report “Joy, Inc. in Japan! How I Built a Joy Dojo in the Land Where Kaizen was Born” by Tadahiro Yasuda.
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