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ALIGNMENT OF IT INITIATIVES TO STRATEGY

IN A SCALED AGILE ENVIRONMENT

Yvan Petit, PhD ESG UQAM

Carl Marnewick, PhDUniversity of Johannesburg

Oct 2nd, 2018

Yvan Petit, M.Eng. M.B.A., Ph.D., PMP, PfMP

– Professeur de gestion projet dans les programmes de maîtrise – ESG UQAM

– Vice doyen à l’international ESG UQAM– Membre de la Chaire de gestion de projet– Membre du comité aviseur du PMI sur les Standards

– Intérêts de recherche: gestion de portefeuille de projets, gestion de l’incertitude, approches Agile

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Background

• Research on Scaling Agile initiated in 2012 with Claude Besner

• Trigger: Observation that the academiclitterature on Agile is mainly about smallprojects

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Agile 12 Principles

1. Early and continuous delivery of valuable software.2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. 3. Deliver working software frequently4. Business people and developers must work together daily5. Build projects around motivated individuals.6. Favor the use of face‐to‐face conversation.7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.8. Should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.9. Continuous attention to technical excellence10. Simplicity is essential.11. Architecture emerges  from self‐organizing teams.12. The team reflects on how to become more effective

(Agile Manifesto, 2001)

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Key elements

• Customers are continuously involved • The product is developed in increments• Each team member is trusted to do their

job to the best of their ability without any prescriptive processes.

• The product is changed as the customer dictates instead of following a formal plan.

• The focus is on simplifying the development of the product as well as the process that is being followed.

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MonographyArticle in Project Management Journal

First phase of research in collaboration with Brian Hobbs published in 2017

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Identified Challenges

• Project Portfolio Management:- well-defined discipline - getting challenged when organisations

adopt Agile at scale.

• How should initiatives be managed in such a way that it contributes to the organisational vision and strategies while adopting to continuous change?

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Traditional Portfolio Management

(Source: Portfolio Management Standard 4th Ed., p. 4)

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Research Question

How are IT initiatives aligned to an organisation's strategy 

in a Scaled Agile environment?

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SAFe29%

Scrum of Scrum19%Internally 

created methods10%

DAD, 5%

LESS, 5%

Others10%

Not used22%

Scaling methods and Approaches(Source: Version 1, 2018, 12th Annual State of Agile Report)

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• One of the largest African banking group• Present in 20 countries in Africa• 6000 people in their IT department• Serves millions of personal customers with thousands of ATMs

Case Study

Be closer to the business. Deliver products in weeks rather than years. Build more usable/simple software.Adopt new technologies faster. 

They deployed SAFe to

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Data collection and analysis

• 19 intervews at all level in differentportfolios

• 14 hours of interviews • More than 500 pages of transcriptions• Analyzed and coded in Atlas.TI

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Results

Deployment of Organisational Strategy

PI Planning

Continuous Exploration and Integration

Team Autonomy

Breaking the silos

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• Few themes• Simple

• Well deployed (well known)• Reporting back at the theme level

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Results

Deployment of Organisational Strategy

PI Planning

Continuous Exploration and Integration

Team Autonomy

Breaking the silos

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Scrum

• Project initiated in 2012

• Trigger: Observation that the academiclitterature on Agile is mainly about smallprojects

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

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Bottom-up Et non top-down

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• Traceability back to strategy• Portfolio Balancing• Enabler epics• Visibity of the work• Resolving conflicts and

dependencies

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Results

Deployment of Organisational Strategy

PI Planning

Continuous Exploration and Integration

Team Autonomy

Breaking the silos

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• Creation of the lab• Joint specification

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Results

Deployment of Organisational Strategy

PI Planning

Continuous Exploration and Integration

Team Autonomy

Breaking the silos

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• Frequent deployment• Earn your wings

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Results

Deployment of Organisational Strategy

PI Planning

Continuous Exploration and Integration

Team Autonomy

Breaking the silos

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Limitations

• Comparison of the case with:• other financial institutions in Europe and

North America. • with other cases from other industries

such as IT service providers.• with other cases using any other

framework to scale Agile.

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Future work

• Comparison of the case with:• other financial institutions in Europe and

North America. • with other cases from other industries

such as IT service providers.• with other cases using any other

framework to scale Agile.

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Conclusion

• Convincing case• Three-year effort to deploy• Benefits to the organization

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Questions

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Well Managed Agile Portfolio• Executive commitment and the entire

organisation supports the Agile implementation of scaled Agile

• Transparency across the entire value system from the strategic themes, through epics down to the teams.

• Collaboration in the form of release planning and portfolio reviews

• Entire focus of the Agile portfolio is on the teams.

(Source: Stettina and Hörz (2015))