As more organizations begin to adopt agile on multiple, interdependent teams, how do we ensure that the success within a team can translate to success at the enterprise level? Presented by: Sanjiv Augustine, President of LitheSpeed

1. Scaling Agile
Presented by Sanjiv Augustine
Sanjiv.Augustine@LitheSpeed.com
April 07, 2010
Multiple Team Dynamics

2. • Basic Adoption
Threshold
• Multiple Team Dynamics
o Preparing for Multiple Team
Rollout
o Adoption Management
o Team Management
o Program Management
• Q&A
2
Agenda
Small is Beautiful
“…for a large organization to
work it must behave like a
related group of small
organizations.”
- E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
Image source:
http://practicalactionconsulting.org/?id=is_small_beauti
ful;

3. BasicAdoption
Threshold

4. Traditional Silos Customer BA Designer DeveloperPM
Core
Team
(EXAMPLE)
BA /
Tester
BA
Tester
Product
Owner
Developer
Designer
Developer /
BA
SM
Release
Manager
Capacity
Planner
Prod.
Architect
Tech
Ops
Business
Sponsor
Risk
Assessor
Security
Dedicated, Integrated Scrum Team
4
BAAnalysts
DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper
Designers Tester
The Core Project
Team ideally
consists of 5-9
dedicated members
(7 +/- 2).
The Extended Team
can contain many
additional
members, each
playing an
important role, but
they are typically
not dedicated to
the effort.
TesterTestersDevs

5. Sprint
“Ready” and “Done” Discipline
What must be in place at the beginning of the Sprint
for your project team to have a productive Sprint?
What must be in place at the end of a Sprint to have a
deployable product increment?
Ready In Process Done
5

6. Agile Engineering Practices allow
teams to move fast, be flexible
and deliver high quality software:
• Automated Builds & Continuous
Integration reduce time and effort
associated with manual builds, and
risk from big-bang integrations
• Simple Design & Refactoring keep
incremental development from
leading to poor architectures
• Multi-Level/Automated Testing &
Test-Driven Development reduce
testing time and effort and allow
developers to make changes with
confidence
• Pair Programming increases
software quality without impacting
time to deliver.
Agile Engineering Practices
Agile Engineering, Pg. 124
6

7. MultipleTeamDynamics

8. PreparingforMultiple
TeamRollout

9. • Executive, senior and middle management must all be change agents
• Business and IT must be willing to dedicate the appropriate resources
o Agile teams require more dedication from assigned resources
o Need an Agile Champion to lead the Agile program
o Need to fund for experienced Agile process coaches
o Need to fund for additional training and capability development
o Need to fund for Agile team rooms
• Process learning will consume some amount of project teams’ time and
effort
• Changes to existing processes will be necessary: in particular, resource
management and portfolio management
• The project manager and product manager roles will change
significantly
Large Scale Adoption Implications
9
Some typical implications of large scale adoption:

10. AdoptionManagement

11. Incremental Rollout Strategy
Initial Pilots - Pilot
Projects With Day-
to-Day Oversight by
Master Coach
Expanded Pilots - Projects Using
combination of Experienced
Associates and Trained Associates
with Master Coach oversight across
Multiple Projects
Enterprise Rollout - Autonomous
agile capability using experienced
and trained associates.
Occasional master coach
involvement on an as-needed
consultative basis
11

12. Your first projects need:
• Product Owner involved,
accountable & empowered
to control scope & schedule
• ScrumMaster empowered
to control process
• Dedicated, integrated team
• Executive support for
learning and exploration
• Short term initial release timeline (< 3 months)
• Potential for measurable business results and impact
12
Pilot Project Selection Criteria
Thanks to Mike Cohn for the image:
http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/four-attributes-of-the-ideal-pilot-project

13. Collaborative Workspace Design
13
Capital One Workspace Design, Source: http://www.degw.com/project.aspx?id=14&p=Capital+One

14. 14
Create a defined and reliable process:
• Standardize high-level process steps, deliverables,
tools and artifacts
• Agree on process audit procedures
• Develop standard process metrics
Process Standardization
The Six Sigma Paradox
To attain six sigma performance, we must
minimize process variability, slack and
redundancy by building variability, slack and
redundancy into our organizations.

15. TeamManagement

16. 16
Conquer and divide by building a
federation of agile teams:
• Build the “whole” into the
“parts”
• Set a size limit ( e.g. 7 +/- 2
people)
• To grow, create new integrated
Agile teams when team size
limit is reached
• Coordinate among teams via an
Agile PMO
Scaling Agile Teams

17. Agile Engineering Practices allow
teams to move fast, be flexible
and deliver high quality software:
• Automated Builds & Continuous
Integration reduce time and effort
associated with manual builds, and
risk from big-bang integrations
• Simple Design & Refactoring keep
incremental development from
leading to poor architectures
• Multi-Level/Automated Testing &
Test-Driven Development reduce
testing time and effort and allow
developers to make changes with
confidence
• Pair Programming increases
software quality without impacting
time to deliver.
Agile Engineering Practices
Agile Engineering, Pg. 124
17

18. Software Craftsmanship:
• Replaces the notion of software development as
an engineering activity in favor of an older
concept of a software studio with a skills
progression from apprentice to journeyman to
master craftsman
• Developers are expected to take on multiple
roles and be responsible for a complete job
from start to finish
• Proficiency is built across the spectrum of the
core skills of programming: programming,
testing, debugging, and maintenance
• Master craftsmen are journeymen who develop
their mastery through learning and experience
on many projects, and the nurturing of other
developers
Software Craftsmanship
18
http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/

19. “Productivity” is not a mechanical
measure of speed.
• Knowledge drives productivity; Knowledge
workers need to own the responsibility for
their own productivity
• Knowledge worker productivity is
dependent on quality at least as much as
quantity
• Optimal quality is the path to high
productivity
19
From AllPosters.com
Team Productivity Management
Tips:
 Measure outcome, not output
 Measure only a few things
 Ensure commonly understood operational definition
and measurement plan
 Target specific questions and audiences
- Courtesy Robin Dymond and Deborah Hartmann

20. ProgramManagement

21. • Encourage face-to-face dialogue across levels
• Create overlapping management with “linking pins”
• Run the Lean-Agile PMO as an Agile project team
Source: The Lean-Agile PMO, Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar (Cutter Consortium 2006)
21
Organizational Structure
Oscillating Between
Information Discovery and
Integration
A centralized structure works
well for discovery, because the
individual’s role is to find
information and report it back.
In contrast, a richly connected
network works best for
integration and decision
making, because it allows the
individual to hear everyone
else’s opinion about the
expected return from each of
the alternatives.
- Alex Pentland, How Social Networks
Network Best, Harvard Business
Review, February 2009

22. Portfolio Alignment Wall
22

23. • Terminate sick projects
• Split large projects in smaller ones
• Prioritize projects by business value,
at least within business unit
• Limit development timeframe to months
• Re-prioritize projects regularly
1
Development
3 24
Little’s Law
WIP
Completion
Rate
Portfolio Realignment
23
Business Goals
& Strategy Production Sunset
Cycle Time =
Backlog

24. • Multiple, stable teams each focused
on a single project at a time
• Dedicated to platforms or lines of
business
• Platform owner prioritizes next
project
• Result:
o Support multiple lines of business
simultaneously
o Focused effort results in quick
delivery for individual projects
o Clear accountability
o Stability and predictability
Source: The Lean-Agile PMO, Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar (Cutter Consortium 2006)
24
Stable Platform Teams

25. 25
Contact Us for Further Information
Sanjiv Augustine
President
Sanjiv.Augustine@lithespeed.com
Arlen Bankston
Executive Vice President
Roland Cuellar
VP, Enterprise Agile Consulting
David Bulkin
VP, Agile Coaching
On the Web:
http://www.lithespeed.com
http://www.sanjivaugustine.com
"I only wish I had read this book when I started my career in
software product management, or even better yet, when I was
given my first project to manage. In addition to providing an
excellent handbook for managing with agile software development
methodologies, Managing Agile Projects offers a guide to more
effective project management in many business settings."
John P. Barnes, former Vice President of Product Management at
Emergis, Inc.