We presented this in the recent Agile conference organized by Unicom in Bengaluru on 20 June 2014. Aritha was co-sponsor for the event and our speaker Jayaprakash Puttaswamy (known as JP in agile world) presented it. The abstract of this presentation is given below: Large-scale agile transformation (both at multi-teams level & at organization level) initiatives often fail in the execution. More so in tactical execution. Have you ever wondered why? We have. Time and again, we have seen leaders facing extreme challenges in striking a balance between embracing agility and managing risks. In this talk, JP exchanged his experience and ground realities with the participants and resonated his own experience of driving large-scale agile delivery from an agile coach and a strategist's point of view. He unwound some of the intricacies involved in enterprise agile transformation at a big-picture level, but mapping deeper insights related to specific delivery challenges from engineering practices perspective.

1. -Jayaprakash Puttaswamy
Scaled Agile Delivery
IS THERE A SINGLE BOTTLENECK?

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 CONTEXT (5 mins)
 Scaling Agile
• Brain dump (yours too!)
• Ground realities
 DETAILS (25 mins)
 What it takes to scale agile?
• Initial challenges – adoption & delivery
 Scaling challenges
• Scaled adoption challenges
• Scaled delivery challenges
 Glimpse of a case-study
 CONCLUSION (10 mins)
 Is there a single bottleneck?
What’s in it?

3. Copyright © 2014, Aritha Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.
CONTEXT (5 mins)
 DETAILS (25 mins)
 What it takes to scale agile?
• Initial challenges – adoption & delivery
 Scaling challenges
• Scaled adoption challenges
• Scaled delivery challenges
 Glimpse of a case-study
 CONCLUSION (10 mins)
 Is there a single bottleneck?
What’s in it?

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Let’s interpret
RELATION?
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Ground Realities
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 People challenges (for adopting)
 Technology challenges (for delivering)
What it takes to scale agile?
Initial challenges (at smaller scale)
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What it takes to scale agile?
 Influencing the mind-set of people across
management teams & engineering teams
 Achieving high degree of collaboration amongst all
people concerned
 Defining new roles or redefining existing roles
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People challenges

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What it takes to scale agile?
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 Tools & technology selection to suit agility needs
 Agile engineering practices
• Emergent design architecture
• Dealing with legacy code for TDD implementation
 Balancing “new delivery” & “technical debt removal”
 Estimation paralysis
Technology challenges

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 Scaling Approach
 Bottom-up
 Top-down
 Organizational alignment
 Agile education & training initiatives
 Enabling external coaching
 Introducing change agents
Scaling Challenges: Adoption Strategy
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Scaling Challenges: ADOPTING!
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 Scaling Approach
 Bottom-up
 Top-down
 Organizational alignment
 Agile education & training initiatives
 Enabling external coaching
 Introducing change agents
Structural issues
• Feature vs Component teams
• Role clarity and role-mapping
Role conflicts
• PMO realignment
Framework rigidity trap!
• Incompatible framework elements
When & who?
Expectation setting

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Multiple levels of planning
 Vision and roadmap
 Release planning
 Iteration planning
 Daily planning
Agile engineering practices
 Emergent design approach
 Continuous Integration
 Agile build strategy
 Test Automation strategy
 TDD/BDD Image Source: http://lucille-ossai.blogspot.in/2012/03/communications-strategy-paving-way-to.html
Scaling Challenges: Delivery Strategy

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Multiple levels of planning
 Vision and roadmap
 Release planning
 Iteration planning
 Daily planning
Agile engineering practices
 Emergent design approach
 Continuous Integration
 Agile build strategy
 Test Automation strategy
 TDD/BDD
Product Areas - misalignment
• Cross-team functional dependencies
• Cross-team technical dependencies
Organization impediments
• Lack of forum to track & remove
• Failure to change org-policies
Architecture war!
• BDUF vs Emergent Architecture
Dev-ops integration failure
Back-seated automation
• Delivery pressures
• Automating legacy applications
Scaling Challenges: DELIVERING!
Image Source: http://lucille-ossai.blogspot.in/2012/03/communications-strategy-paving-way-to.html

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Scaling Challenges: DELIVERING!
Image Source: http://lucille-ossai.blogspot.in/2012/03/communications-strategy-paving-way-to.html
Gets worse with DISTRIBUTED teams!!
Even more worse with MULTI-VENDOR DISTRIBUTED teams!!!
 Silo approach towards engineering
practices
 I own this… Ownership mania!
 Inter-team dependencies starts rotting
 Blame game…
 Engineering style conflicts and I own this… Ownership mania!
 Screwed-up technical decisions surface very late or may NOT
get visible at all
 Vendor locking for technical tools - “Contracts” dominate

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Case-study – A glimpse of challenges
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Conclusion
Bottlenecks for Scaling
The team it self!
Managers
Support functions
Organization structure
Organization culture
Organization leaders
Question: Is it actually a single bottleneck?

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Yes. It is!
Lack of
Execution
Leadership!
Especially at leadership and top-
management level
Conclusion

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http://in.linkedin.com/in/jputtaswamy
jayaprakash@arithaconsulting.com
@agilejp
@arithatweet
About me
Let’s connect
Jayaprakash Puttaswamy (JP) works as a Director - Technology &
Consulting at Aritha Consulting Services and consults enterprises
in Agile and Agile-BI space.
 Agile Strategist & Coach
 Practicing agile since 11 years (RUP, XP,
Scrum, Lean & Kanban)
 Trained & coached over 900 professionals
spread across 100 plus teams in 25 plus
companies including start-ups.
 Driven large-scale agile transformation
(both software & non-software) for global
enterprises with scale of 200 to 4000
people.