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A Recipe for Scale
Becki Hyde, Senior Product Manager
Jen Handler, Director, Customer Experience & Success
Succeeding with Agile Software
Development in the Enterprise

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We know the value of short feedback
loops and empowered, self-organizing
teams

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We know the value of short feedback
loops and empowered, self-organizing
teams … but how does it scale?

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from projects to products
build a set of features
solve a problem
& measure effectiveness
organize by functional area
organize around a domain
of expertise
funding projects with dates
and deliverables
funding products, value
streams, or investment areas
business defines
requirements and hands off
to IT for implementation
business and IT collaborate
to iterate through solutions
handoff to operations when
project is done
long-term ownership of
solutions

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Seed & Absorb

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The big fish eats the little fish.
Normative social influence

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The big fish eats the little fish.
Normative social influence

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Outnumber 1 to 1

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3 Months 3 Months 3 Months 3 Months

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3-6 Months 3-6 Months 3-6 Months 3-6 Months 3-6 Months

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Vision, Mission & Principles

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Vision, Mission & Principles
Transformation without belief is process waste.

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Transformation without belief is process waste.
Empowerment without clarity is chaos.
Vision, Mission & Principles

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Describes the future
you want to create
States your purpose
for being
Core beliefs that guide
decisions and actions
Vision Mission Principles
To create economic
opportunity for every member
of the global workforce.
To connect the world’s
professionals to make them
more productive and
successful.
Members Come First
Relationships Matter
Be Open, Honest, & Constructive
Demand Excellence
Act Like an Owner
Take Intelligent Risks
examples from LinkedIn
Vision, Mission & Principles

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Portfolio Leadership
Portfolio Balanced Team

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How do we organize portfolios
of related products?
Portfolio Leadership

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Portfolio Leadership
Product
Manager
Product
Designer
Software
Engineer
Portfolio Balanced Team
Product Team Product Team Product Team Product Team Product Team

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Portfolio Leadership
Portfolio Balanced Team
Prioritize outcomes
Manage stakeholder relationships
Determine portfolio strategy
Prioritize outcomes
Harmonize user & customer
experience
Identify reusable components
Prioritize outcomes
Illuminate data outcomes,
non-functional requirements and
technical opportunities
Identify cross-cutting concerns
Product
Manager
Product
Designer
Software
Engineer
Portfolio Balanced Team

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Align on Outcomes

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Align on Outcomes
Product Roadmap Current Near Term Future
Desired Outcome
Metrics
Barriers
Scope
Features

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Align on Outcomes
Product Roadmap:
Roadmap builder
Current Near Term Future
Desired Outcome
50% reduction in avg time
product managers take to
present roadmaps to
stakeholders
20% reduction in time for new
workstream creation by active
users
25% reduction in time to process
payments
Metrics
Avg time to present (survey run
pre-post new functionality
release)
Avg time between “create new
workstream” and “save”
Avg time between entering
checkout and completion
checkout
Barriers
None! None! Need to identify new payment
processing solution
Scope
● Speed up presentation
mode and add new
options for Export
Refactoring existing
functionality, TBD new features
TBD
Features
● Generate stakeholder
view
● present
● Export as PDF, PPT
Largely refactoring for speed TBD

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Align on Outcomes
Portfolio Roadmap
Product or
Application
Backlogs
Product or
Application
Roadmaps
VISION STRATEGY

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Data-Informed Decisions

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Data-Informed Decisions
You can’t measure outcomes
without data

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Data-Informed Decisions
How is the product
being used?
How are we delivering
the product?
How is the product
impacting our
business?
Product Delivery Operational
Usage analytics
User feedback/CSAT
Adoption & engagement
Call center metrics
Revenue
Conversion & retention
Process cycle time
Grievances & appeals
Velocity volatility
Feature to defect ratio
DORA metrics
% uptime

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Lean Governance:
Growth Boards & Metered
Funding

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Lean Governance
credit: Eric Ries, The Startup Way

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Lean Governance
Executive
Sponsor
Product Team
Security &
Compliance
Customer Support
Central Planning
Progress along roadmap
Sales
Results with metrics
Lessons from experiments
Funding information

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Communities of Practice

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Communities of Practice
Delivery trumps practices,
unless we invest in our practice

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Communities of Practice
Practice
Lead
Product Team Product Team
Product Team Product Team
Product Team Product Team
Internal Meetups
Knowledge Base
Management
Coaching & Mentoring

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Engineering Concerns at Scale

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Integrations
● Contract testing best practices
● Coordinating releases that
involve multiple products
Shared Data Outcomes
● Common data structures
● Strategy around ingress and
egress
Default Tech Stacks
● Common languages and
frameworks
● Ability to rotate engineers
between product teams
● Shared knowledge for
problem-solving
Engineering at Scale

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Resources
How to Scale Agile Software Development with Product Teams in the Enterprise (white paper)
Supporting Employees through Digital Transformation (article)
Tanzu Developer Center: https://tanzu.vmware.com/developer/practices/

38. Thank You
©2021 VMware, Inc.