aspe - agile project management · leading teams through large scale agile transformations....

Agile Scaling

MARY THORNMTHORN@VACO.COM

Mary is the Agile Practice Lead at Vaco - Agile in Raleigh, NC.

During her more than 20 years of experience with financial, healthcare, and SaaS-based products, Mary has held VP, Director, and Manager level positions in various software development organizations.

A seasoned Leader and Coach in agile and testing methodologies, Mary has direct experience building and leading teams through large scale agile transformations. Mary’s expertise is a combination of agile scaling, agile testing, and DevOps that her clients find incredibly valuable.

She is also Chief storyteller of the book The Three Pillars of Agile Testing and Quality, and avid keynote and conference speaker on all things agile and agile testing.

MARY THORN

BOB GALENBGALEN@VACO.COM

Principle Agile Coach at Vaco Agile in Raleigh, NC

Agile Trainer & Coach atRGalen CG

• Somewhere “north” of 30 years experience• Wide variety of technical stacks and

business domains• Roots of a software developer• Senior/Executive software development

leadership for 20+ years• Agile “Coach of Coaches” and Leaders• Deep XP, Lean, Scrum, and Kanban

experience since late 1990’s• From Cary, North Carolina; husband,

father, grandfather, and dog lover3

BOB GALEN

Inspiration for this talk/workshop?

◼ This talk is inspired by this

blog post—

◼ A Different Take on Agile

Scaling

◼ And perhaps a “wee bit”

inspired by this one—

◼ Confessions of a De-Scaler

Trends

Beyond Scrum of Scrums

Esther Derby

◼ Three main challenges in scaling teams

❑ Coordinating work across teams

❑ Integrating work across teams

❑ Maintaining technical integrity of the system (Architecture, DevOps, UX)

◼ Notion of “Context”

❑ Feature group, Component team, Product area

❑ Form teams within contexts

http://www.slideshare.net/estherderby/agile-teams-at-scale-beyond-scrum-of-scrums

RGCG, LLC 8

Beyond Scrum of Scrums

Esther Derby

◼ Technical Councils

❑ Component Stewards

❑ Integrating Linkers

❑ Test Experts

Guide the integrity of the WHOLE system

◼ Establish communication & decision boundaries

◼ Team/Organizational structure alignment is important

RGCG, LLC 9

Scaling Patterns

Center on the Agile Manifesto

#1) Solid Foundations

Solid Foundations

Kanban

Solid Foundations

Extreme Programming

#2) Scrum of Scrums

Scrum Community

◼ Simple method for cross-

team collaboration

❑ Central aspect of many

of the other scaling

frameworks

◼ Scrum “up a level”

❑ Simplicity

◼ Personally seen it scale

❑ Around 2007, ~120

❑ ~20 teams

#2) Scrum of Scrums

Scrum Community

Struggle with?

◼ Lack of a consistent definition of what it is AND what it isn’t

❑ Implementation details

◼ Confusion: is it for the teams? For Project Managers/Manager? Or

something else?

◼ It’s not clear how Product or DevOps fits in?

◼ If/how release dynamics are handled

#3) SAFe

Leffingwell

◼ Release Trains

❑ Various release tempos and/or

Continuous release

◼ PI Planning

❑ Old-fashioned Agile Release Planning

◼ Architectural look-ahead

◼ Essential SAFe looks a bit leaner as a starting point

#3) SAFe

Leffingwell

Struggle with?

◼ Silver Bullet thinking (mostly on the part of leadership)

❑ Purchasing / Installing SAFe

◼ Too many new roles; role confusion

◼ RTE’s behavior

❑ It’s really a Scrum Master / coaching role

◼ Focusing too much on Leadership/Management and leaving the

teams behind

#4) Spotify

Kniberg

◼ Cross-cutting Concerns

❑ Guilds & Chapters

◼ Cyclical, Release-level

Retrospectives

◼ Release Reviews

◼ Team-orientation (Happiness)

#4) Spotify

Kniberg

Struggle with?

◼ Thinking that Spotify is a “Scaling Framework…it’s NOT!

❑ Silver Bullet thinking

❑ Cult-ish

◼ Tribes vs. Teams

◼ Getting to the “essence” of Spotify

❑ It’s an organic, bottom-up, iterative continuous improvement / learnings

◼ Self-selection

#5) LeSS & Nexus

Larman & Vodde/Schwaber

◼ LeSS – Feature Teams

◼ Emphasis on (singular) Product

❑ PO ”team”, up to ~9 teams

◼ Keep it simple and small

17x11 in

#5) LeSS

Larman & Vodde

Struggle with?

◼ De-scaling implications to organizational structure and management

/ leadership

❑ Seems to be attractive at large companies (JPMorgan Chase, Fidelity)

❑ Not very “respectful” to some roles

◼ Cult-ish

◼ Singular Product Owners

❑ Conceptually a nice idea…

❑ But in the real-world, I don’t see it working very well

#5) Nexus

Schwaber

Struggle with?

◼ Singular Product Owners

❑ Conceptually a nice idea…

❑ But in the real-world, I don’t see it

working very well

◼ Not very well known outside of

Scrum.org

❑ Low adoption

17x11 in

#6) Disciplined Agile Delivery

Ambler

◼ Regulatory

Guidance

◼ Technical scaling

❑ Architecture,

hardware,

enterprise-level,

data management,

◼ Broad-level, lean

thinking

#6) Disciplined Agile Delivery

Ambler

Struggle with?

◼ Too complex

❑ If it takes three books to cover the ideas…

◼ Too large, not that helpful in simpler

contexts

◼ Connection to Ambler’s traditional work

◼ Less a framework and more a collection

of ideas, patterns

❑ Much like Spotify

#7) Scrum@Scale

Sutherland

◼ Executive Action Team

◼ Executive Meta Scrum

❑ Formal executive team

engagement!

◼ Scrum of Scrums

❑ Product cycle

❑ SM / Execution cycle

◼ Keep it simple and

#7) Scrum@Scale

Sutherland

Struggle with?

◼ Low adoption; it’s potentially Bob’s ”favorite” framework

◼ Two loops aren’t that intuitive

◼ Needs coaching guidance for…

❑ Thoughtful implementation details & execution dynamics

❑ Tailoring

❑ Leadership engagement

❑ Metrics

#8) Other Useful Ideas

Tooling

◼ Minimal tooling

❑ Distributed collaboration

❑ Simple tools for a singular

purpose; aggregate

❑ Post-it Notes & Walls – low

fidelity

◼ Be as Visual as possible!

◼ Leaders – don’t micromanage

◼ Teams – don’t allow tools to

replace face-to-face

collaboration

Portfolio

◼ Big Wall Planning

◼ Kanban for Portfolio level

planning (flowing work

towards the teams)

◼ Portfolio-level planning

❑ Managing team, group, and

organizational capacity

❑ Limiting WIP

◼ ALL stakeholders involved

Distributed Teams

◼ Proximity matters

❑ Team cohesion

❑ Groupings

◼ Tooling matters

❑ Development AND Collaboration

◼ Charter teams together

❑ First few sprints

◼ Collaboration “protocol’s” matter

Product

◼ Notion of a Chief Product

❑ And a Product Management

organization

❑ Include Project Management,

UX, Business Analysis

◼ Moving from managing

“Projects” & “Resources” to

“Products” & “Teams”

◼ Product Owner – Community

of Practice

Centers of Excellence & Communities of Practice

◼ CoE is typically a bit more prescriptive

◼ CoP more organic

◼ Chapters & Guilds

◼ Multiple roles:

❑ Coaching

❑ Scrum Masters

❑ Product Owners

❑ Leaders

◼ Pairing

◼ Lean Coffee

◼ Mentoring

◼ Group-based learning

Power of Invitation

◼ Instead of making folks “go Agile”

❑ Invite them to change

❑ Engage their ideas

❑ Shared future state; what’s in it for…

◼ Open Space Agility

❑ Leveraging Open Space to co-Create

agile instances

◼ Leadership shifting

◼ Self-selection

❑ Organization & team structure

Don’t be shy/cheap about getting HELP!

◼ Get agnostic scaling

framework coaching help

◼ Leadership coaching

◼ Leverage patterns across

frameworks

❑ Don’t be afraid to “roll your

own”!

◼ Everyone is NOT an

experienced or effective agile

Parting advice…

1. Grow/scale from the

bottom…up

2. Only install what you need

right now

3. Experiment, iterate, learn;

inspect & adapt

4. Keep things simple

5. The teams are THE most

important aspect of

scaling

Review & contribute to -

http://www.agilescaling.org/

Contact Info Bob GalenPresident, RGCG

Experience-driven agile focused training, coaching & consulting

Cell: (919) 272-0719

bob@rgalen.com www.rgalen.com

@bobgalen

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobgalen

Podcast on all things ‘agile’ -

http://www.meta-cast.com/

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