When any organization plans to move to Agile methodology, it needs to plan multiple initiatives for successful transition. One of the important initiative would be building an Agile Center of Excellence, a team which would support for consistency of Agile implementation across the organization. The Agile CoE we built worked on multiple aspects such as: Defining organization-wide Agile methodology, tailoring it as per organization environment if required. Build knowledge of Agile across the organization. Supporting the team members with any ongoing queries. Support in building required Tools and Templates required implementing Agile. Assessing Agile implementation of different projects, identifying any gaps or improvement areas. This session covered practical experience of how we built a successful Center of Excellence, which become a big enabler for successful Agile transformation.

1. BUILDING AGILE CENTER OF
EXCELLENCE FOR AGILE MATURITY
Rahul Sudame
DiscussAgile Day, Pune

2. AGENDA
 What is Agile COE?
 COE or COP?
 How did we start?
 What worked?
 Different Agile COP initiatives
 Guidelines

3. WHAT IS AGILE COE?
 A platform to share Agile knowledge, experience
 A mechanism to ensure standard application of
Agile practices across projects
 A forum where team members can raise their
queries, views, concerns
 A group in the organization that facilitates Agile
Transformation
 A community which is passionate about Agile

4. SHOULD WE HAVE COE OR COP?
Center of Excellence Communities of Practice
Designated leaders define Agile standards
for the org
Group of people with similar interests
Platform for ensuring adherence /
compliance to these standards
Platform for sharing experience, views, best
practices, lessons learned
Have the authority Influencing without authority
Thought: Excellence comes from applying
the same behaviors and practices across
teams
Thought: People talk to one another and
learn from each other
COE
Lead
Project 1 Project 2 Project 3
COE
Team
• SME
• SME
Tools COP
• SME
• Volunteer
Testing COP
• Scrum
Masters
• Volunteers
SM COP

5. WHAT DOES THIS GROUP DO?
Build Agile
awareness
Forum for
experience
sharing
Support for
challenges
Develop
Tools,
Templates,
Integr.
Improve
maturity
iteratively
Facilitate
events,
trainings

6. HOW DID WE START?
 Sr. management team initiated COP
 Initiated with core team members
 Broadcasted / Advertised COP launch
 Invited volunteers to engage in activities
 Built rewards / recognition mechanism
 Ensuring that the COP remains Active!

7. WHAT WORKED - COP PORTAL

8. STANDARDS

9. GUIDELINES

10. TEMPLATES

11. NFR TEMPLATES
 Typically known as the “ilities” – reliability, usability, scalability,
maintainability, etc.
 They are constraints which must be considered during development
 Program-level NFRs apply to the system as a whole
 Team-level NFRs apply to a feature or component in a team’s domain
 Consider Documentation, Environment setup as well

12. SUPPORTED TOOLS STACK
Test case
Management
Defect
Management
Automation
Performance
Testing
DevOps
OpenSource
Commercial

13. BOOK CLUB

14. AGILE READINESS ASSESSMENT MODEL
 Identification of Agile readiness
using objective assessment
 Team’s interest / enthusiasm to
be factored in
 Best suited teams to initiate pilot
 Gap analysis can highlight
organization’s preparedness
 Measuring ROI of Agile Transformation
Agile Readiness Questionnaire
Question Guidelines Points
Team size • 5 – Team size of 7 to 9
3 – Team size less than 7
2 – Team with 10 to 15
members
• 1 – More than 15
members
2
Team
Composition
• 5 - Completely cross
functional
3 - Cross functional with
some dependency on
external teams
0 - Not Cross functional
2
Business
Value Stream
Coverage
• 5 - Team covers the entire
business value stream
1- Less than 50% of the
value stream
0 - Less than 10% of the
business value stream
1

15. AGILE MATURITY MODEL
 Maturity level of a team
can be assessed based
on different parameters
 Organizational
benchmarks can be
provided as guidelines
 Agile Maturity Model
itself should be lean &
aligned with Agile
philosophy
 Measuring ROI of Agile Transformation
Level
1
Level
2
Level
3
Level
4
Level
5
Agile Maturity Model

16. BEST AGILE TEAM AWARD
 Healthy competition amongst the
teams can be encouraged
 Effectiveness of teams on
various parameters related with
Agile implementations can be
considered
 Team’s approach, Scrum Master
/ PO’s effectiveness can also be
factored in
 Measuring ROI of Agile Transformation
Team Retro
Effectiveness
Scrum Master
Effectiveness
Points
Team 1 12 24 73
Team 2 18 27 65
Team 3 14 11 62
Team 4 8 14 62
Team 5 10 13 61
Team 6 9 11 46
Assessment for Best Team Award

17. COP EVENTS / NEWSLETTER

18. SPECIAL COP EVENTS
Personal Kanban Day
Agile week
COE Conference
Collaboration Jam
Innovation Competitions
Johari Window
External speakers

19. SHARING NEW IDEAS
Acceptance Tests:
 Are specific, unambiguous
 Can be automated or manual
test cases (teams need to
automate)
 Can be written in a
programming language
(PERL, Groovy, Java) or in
natural language (using
RobotFramework or
Cucumber) or in table format
(FIT)

20. VIDEOS / QUIZ / CROSSWORD

21. AGILE INNOVATION GAMES

22. SUMMARY
 Support COP to strengthen Agile environment
 Encourage Incremental Value Realization
 Support organizational Change management
 Build a platform to share Case studies / wins / best practices /
lessons learnt / guidelines
 Provide updates to Sr. management of value delivered
through COP activities
 Building SMEs & Thought leaders (Blogs / White papers)
 Encourage COP participation

23. QUESTIONS?
Rahul Sudame
rahulsudame@yahoo.com