This document discusses agile product development at scale. It begins with an introduction and agenda, then discusses aligning multiple teams, cadences, products, and key roles. It describes creating a "release train" approach with pre-planning, big room planning, and execution ceremonies to pull everything together. The challenges of organizational alignment and complexity with multiple interdependent teams are addressed. Aligning teams, cadences, products and adding key roles and ceremonies like planning and syncs are suggested to successfully implement agile at scale across multiple teams.

1. Agile Product Development At Scale
Product Camp Boston – 2017
Brandon Stauber- bstauber@saxasolutions.com

2. Agenda
• Introduction
• Level set our Agile/Scrum experience
• Some definitions
• Let’s dive into scale…

3. Introduction
• Saxa Solutions provides HLS Solutions For Salesforce
• Salesforce HLS Consulting Services: Our success is measured in business outcomes
and we have a long history of successful deployments, optimizations and custom HLS
solutions
• SapienceMD: Physicians Engaged - Medical Provider Intelligence. An integrated data
solution for Salesforce to provide detailed physician and provider intelligence for
prospecting, referral management, recruiting and more
We use scrum for delivery, product development as well as executive and
strategic management

4. Our Agile/Scrum Experience
• Agile/Scrum Experience?
• Number of teams working towards a goal?
• Type of product development?
• Organizational integration?
• Anyone with certifications?

5. Organizational Alignment
This is the REAL challenge!

6. Level of Complexity
• Simple – no overlap in product development value streams
• Getting Complex – portions of the process have dependencies
• Complex – interdependent teams working towards common value
stream goals
What are some of the challenges we’re facing?

7. Pretty easy with one team

8. Two Teams, not too bad…

9. Multiple Teams… CHAOS!

10. So how do we do this?
• Alignment: Teams, Cadence, Backlog & Product
• Key People & Roles: Architecture, Release Management, Coaches…
• Key Ceremonies: Planning, Syncs & Demos
• Create a ‘Release Train’
• Pulling It All Together: Pre Planning, Big Room Planning, Execution

11. Align Teams

12. Align Cadence

13. Align Product

14. Add Some Key People

15. Add New ‘Ceremonies’

16. Pre Planning – Prioritizing the work

17. Planning The Iteration – Big Room Style
• Gather the teams
• Estimate capacity
• Reinforce product and value stream vision and goals
• Present prioritized features
• Breakouts

18. Planning The Iteration – continued…
• Select Features
• Planning
• Risks / Dependencies
• Present
• Evaluate
• Rework Plan
• Present
• Commit

19. Your ‘Release Train’

20. A Team View: Selected Feature Planning

21. Visualizing The Plan

22. Consolidating the Plan

23. Executing The Plan
• Teams run their sprints/iterations
• Syncs scheduled
• Key players engaged
• Run the train as if it was a scrum team
• A few other keys to success:
• Lean, Dev Ops, CI/CD Principles
• Architectural roadmap, laying tracks
• Executive buy in & sponsorship
• Internal advocates
• Planning & patience

24. Questions, Comments… Candor
• It’s your turn to sound off…