The increasing popularity of agile principles in software development processes has lead to their use in ever larger organisations and bigger projects. The increased number of people involved causes an exponential increase in communication channels and dependencies. To master this growing complexity various experts have devised different approaches, such as SAFe, LeSS, Nexus and others. Christof Braun explains the main approaches with their central concepts and contrast them with AOE scaling strategies. www.aoe.com

1. AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!
AGILE
SCALING
CONCEPTS
Christof Braun

2. TEAMS FIRST
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!
Productivity (per
person) goes up in a
team
Multiple
perspectiv
es
Help
each
other
Multiple
specialti
es
Self
organisat
ion
Adapt to
changes
Continuou
s
improvem
ent
Fast
feedback

3. BIGGER PROJECTS NEED MORE
PEOPLE
Very big projects will take too long with nine
people.
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!
Communication
overhead
increases with
each new person
But productivity
decreases:
Ringelmann
effect
Dependencies across teams cause delays

4. THE FIRST RULE OF
SCALING AGILITY
1.Do not scale agility
AND THE SECOND RULE IS…
2.Do not scale agility
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!

5. NON-SCALING OPTIONS
 Take longer to deliver
• It’s cheaper!
• 9 people 12 months vs. 18 people 7-8 months
• Create intermediate results to deliver usable versions – progress for customer
 Split product or solution into separate, independent entities with one team for
each entity
• Common look and feel through shared style guides and UI technologies
• Avoid shared date
• Do not try for synergies and shared code components
• Minimal and stable shared interfaces
• Common architectural guidelines but no common architecture
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!

6. BUT…
 Sometimes it just doesn’t work (or so it seems)…
• Coordinated deliveries
• Unavoidable dependencies
 With increasing popularity of agile methods, scaling needs occur more and
more
 Do-it-yourself scaling does not suffice anymore
 Pundits started to offer solutions with the claim to general applicability
 And so the agile scaling wars began…
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!

7. CURRENTLY IN THE LEAD:
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!

8. AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!
 Scales to arbitrary
size
 Covers all (most) of
an organization
 Scrum and Kanban
 New roles, artefacts
and meetings
 Value streams are
developed in
 Release trains
 Program increment
(PI) covers 4-6
sprints
 PI planning
 Innovation & planning
sprint

9. SAFe CHARACTERISTICS
 Author: Dean Leffingwell (Method Guru, long tenure at Rational)
 Prescriptive
 Hierarchical
 Upper levels with impact on large part of organisation
 “Everything in it” framework
 Best suited for very large enterprises
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!

10. LARGE SCALE SCRUM (LeSS)
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!
 One PO, one backlog
 Only Scrum
 Sprint Planning 1
together
 Team retros and
overall retro (with
team rep only)

11. LeSS CHARACTERISTICS
 Authors: Craig Larman, Bas Vodde (Lean software development)
 Up to eight teams
• LeSS Huge allows to scale beyond that
 More responsibility for teams – e.g. write user stories, customer/user contact,
coordinate as teams see fit
 Minimalist (lean…)
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!

12. NEXUS (KEN SCHWABER)
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!
 “Exoskeleton for
scaled scrum”
 Scrum only
 Up to 9 teams
 New role: Nexus
integration team
 The one PO
 A scrum master
 Team members
 Teams send
representatives to
overall planning and
retro

13. SCRUM @ SCALE (JEFF
SUTHERLAND)
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!
 Meta framework
 A basis for discussion
 Which issues need to
be addressed?
 Which roles and which
organizational level is
involved
 Scrum only
 PO cycle
 Strategy
 Requirements
 Release planning
 Scrum master cycle
 Coordination
 Continuous
improvement

14. ROLL YOUR OWN
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!
Large agile projects are all different.
One solution will not fit all needs.
Pick and chose the parts that fit YOUR project.
Add your own ideas.
Create a collection of scaling patterns and combine as required.
Mind the agile principles.

15. Thank you!
AOECONF 2017 Agile Scaling Concepts Christof Braun – Manage Agile!