Glorious days of your little cute startup seems almost fading! A sweet little family of 100 some geeks with great ideas, strengths and expertise is quickly becoming unproductive and short of focus! Current SDLC processes, team structure & engineering practices have been proven bottleneck and unable to scale to the increased demand and volatility of the business. What is going on here???

2. Scaling RobotLungs ®
Main Themes
 Problem Statement
 Assumptions
 Technology Standardization & Governance for Tools & Practices
 Improvising Engineering Practices using LEAN, XP & Agile
 Reengineering the Platform & Processes for Larger Enterprise Scale
 Ensuring Enterprise Controls for sustaining Reputation
 Improving Team Structures & Dynamics for enhanced Productivity
 Control Resource Mobility for Top Talent Retention

3. Problem Statement
 RobotLungs is experiencing significant reduction in Time to Market for
its Flagship Product ROS ® (RobotOS).
 Current SDLC processes, team structure & engineering practices
have been proven bottleneck and unable to scale to the increased
demand and volatility of the business.
 Devastated Intercommunication between the Application Teams
causing nightmare in coordinating the larger release spans across
applications.
 Releasing code changes through bleeding edge environments and
kingdom of siloed allies is almost a Myth now!
 It has been lately difficult in retaining Top Talent.

4. Assumptions
 RobotLungs is practicing traditional waterfall model
 Every Application Team is working in own silo with a very little focus and
understanding of a bigger picture
 There is a lack of common build & deploy infrastructure
 There is a lack of Enterprise level SDLC controls
 There is a lack of understanding on best practices around various Software
Development aspects
 Each Team owns a Module or Application that is the part of larger enterprise
platform

5. Technology Standardization &
Governance
Problem
 Siloed Application Teams
 Utilization of bleeding
edge Technologies
 High Ramp up for new
and existing developers
Identification of RC
 Lack of Unified guidance to the application teams
pertaining to Tools & Practices
 Lack of Software Engineering & Architecture Library
to govern Technology Lifecycle & Whitelist of OSS &
Commercial Software Products/Components &
Frameworks
 Lack of common Plan/Build/Operate Infrastructure
Remediation
 Establish Technology Governance and Software Engineering & Architecture Library of OSS and
Commercial software to promote the standardization of Technology usage within the firm
 This will centralize the control of version upgrades/patching/maintenance/licensing, security
scanning/remediation to enforce a Technology Uniformity/Standardization and save cost
 This will also reduce usage of Bleeding Edge Technologies by increasing usage of common,
sustainable and approved Tech Stack across the Teams, which in terns would improve resource
flungibily
 Build common infrastructure for CI, Deployment, Issue Tracking/Release Planning, Code
Coverage, Code Review Tools to drive mass behavior and discipline

6. Improvising Engineering Practices (LEAN, XP, Agile)
Benefits
 Early Feedback, Fail
fast, Enhanced quality,
Continuous
Improvement
 Reduced Waste, Faster
T2M, Lower Risk
 Improved
communication
 Great Business Value
XP
 Simple Design, Sustainable Pace, Small Releases,
Release/Iteration Planning
 CI, TDD, Pair Programming, Refactoring, Whole Team,
Collective Code Ownership, Retrospective
 Common Dashboard to monitor the practices are
religiously followed

7. Reengineering the Platform & Processes - 1
Primary Focus
 the usage of bleeding edge Technologies & promote
standardized approved Technology Stack
 Account for Code Quality in all development efforts by
enforcing Pair Programing, Peer Reviews, Unit Test
Coverage, Automated Functional Testing and Full
Regression Testing
 “Shift Left” - Setup End to End Integration Testing
Environment for Dev Teams & enforce full integration
testing as part of the Development Cycle
 Setup a Centralized Release Repository to store
artifacts/components from every application for promotion
to environments beyond Development
 the interdependencies between applications/modules
by introducing Centralized Repository of common
components, cross cutting functionalities & shared
frameworks and have a dedicated team (resources
forked from existing teams) to support it
Power of Shift Left
 The Fact - Cost of fixing
defects is significantly higher
when they are found on right
vs. left
 The Focus – Find and fix the
defects on left (DEV) as
much as possible
 Lack of Unit Testing –
Uncovers code defects that
causes breakage in single
Unit
 Lack of Integration Testing
– Uncovers design &
architectural defects that
causes breakage across
multiple units/entire system
 The Bottom-line – Shift Left
the Integration Testing to
save cost, improve Time to
Market, Quality & Confidence

8. Reengineering the Platform & Processes - 2

9. Reengineering the Platform & Processes – 3

10. Improving Team Structure & Dynamics
Problem in Traditional Team Structure
 Siloed Application Teams
 Lack of transparency and
communication
 Difficulty in coordinating complex
releases
Remediation
 Improve communication &
integration across the Teams by
utilizing Agile & XP practices
 Define SLAs & Cross Impact Metrics
to smooth out the Complex deliveries
cutting across applications
 Centralize common support teams
for Database, Infrastructure,
Architecture, Risk/Security,
Production Support & Cross cutting
components/services to improve the
focus for application teams on actual
deliverables, quality & timelines
 Merge/Decommission the redundant
applications and reposition team
members based on their expertise &
interest
 No Heroics, Whole Team &
Collective Ownership

11. Ensuring Enterprise Controls
Importance of
Enterprise Controls
 Control modification,
quality and distribution of
the code
 Ensure integrity,
availability, performance,
user experience, reliability,
compliance and support of
the system
 Protect customer data and
critical business assets all
the time
 Ensure the outcome of the
complex and highly
integrated hydrogenous
system is as per the
business specifications
Essential Controls to be in placed,
 Source code protected, historical changes are maintained and
audit trail is always logged for all critical business operations
 Business Requirements/Stories signed off by Technology
 Test Plans signed off by Business
 Implementation Plan signed off by Architecture/Design
 Availability, Resiliency, Security & Performance of Prod/DR
 Business Data is always secured and backed up
 Code Changes adhere to best practices & defensive
programing
 CI, Full Regression & Automated Deployment
 QA/UAT & Pre-Prod Sign off prior to Prod Promotion
 Post Prod Promotion validation & sign off

12. Control Resource Mobility
Problem
 People exiting frequently is concerning
and is a symptom of a critical
underlying issue pertaining to,
 Compensation, Recognition
 Culture Fit, Job Fit, Role Fit
 Not being challenged
 Inefficient Hiring Process
Identification of RC
 Identify the trend to understand the
root cause by,
 Employee Satisfaction Surveys
 Collect and Analyze the data
around people leaving the firm for
useful pointers
 HR Exit Interviews to know what
could have helped them stay!!!
Remediation
 Frequent Kudos, Social gatherings, Compensate per Industry norms
 Time to Proficiency (T2P), Align people based on their interest & expertise, On JobTrainings
 Periodic Performance Review/Satisfaction Surveys/Feedback Collection and Followthrough
 Objective Hiring Process (Behavioral, Personality & Culture Fit)

13. Appendix

14. Common Development Tools
Practice Tool Infrastructure
Source Code Management SVN / Git / Changeman Common/Shared
Workspace/ IDE, Servers Setup Apache Puppet, Boxgen, Vagrant,
Chef, Salt
Application
Managed
Continuous Integration Jenkins / BuildBot / Thoughtworks Go Common/Shared
Automated
Deployment/Release
Management
Buildforge / Jenkins / BuildBot /
Thoughtworks Go
Common/Shared
Peer Code Review Fisheye / Crucible Common/Shared
Issue Tracking/Spring Planning JIRA / Thoughtworks Mingle Common/Shared
Automated Functional Testing Selenium / Cucumber / Concordian,
Thoughtworks Twist
Application
Managed
Application Building Maven / MSBuild Application
Managed
Code Coverage SONAR Common/Shared