AgileLIVE: Scaling Agile Faster, Easier, Smarter with SAFe and VersionOne - Part 1

Accelerate
Delivery
Make Better
Decisions
Increase
Agility
Ensure
Alignment
Scale Agile Faster, Easier, Smarter
with SAFe® and VersionOne
Part 1
April 29, 2015
#AgileLIVE

© 2015 VersionOne, Inc. 2
Moderator
Lee Cunningham
Director of Enterprise Agile
SAFe Program Consultant, CSM, PMP, PMI-ACP
VersionOne

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A few logistics…

Featured Presenter
Dean Leffingwell
Creator of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
Director and Chief Methodologist
Scaled Agile, Inc.

5© 2015 Scaled Agile, Inc. All Rights Reserved
www.scaledAgile.com
Leading the Lean-Agile Enterprise
An Overview of the Scaled Agile Framework®
(SAFe®
)

Agenda
 Facing the Problem
 Understanding SAFe Values and Principles
 Applying SAFe Practices
 Leadership’s Role: Implementing SAFe 1-2-3

Facing the Problem

We thought we’d be designing systems like this:

But sometimes it feels more like this:

And our retrospectives feel like this
Problems
discovered
late in
production
or
installation
No path to
improve
systematically
Hard to
manage
distributed
teams
Late
delivery
Cost
overrun
Too little
visibility Too early
commitment
to a design
that didn’t
actually work
Poor
morale
Massive
growth in
software
complexity
Phase gate
isn't helping
reduce risk

How Do We Keep Pace?
‣ Increasing system complexity; worldwide
competition, distributed teams
‣ Software is eating our world. Agile shows great
promise, but was developed for small teams
‣ Lean hardware and product development shows
promise too, but it’s mostly ethereal principles,
not practices
‣ We need a new approach-one that
harnesses the power of Lean and Agile
and applies to the needs of those building
complex applications and systems
Our development methods are not keeping pace

The Management Challenge
If you can’t change the system, who can?
It is not enough that management
commit themselves to quality and
productivity, they must know what it
is they must do.
Such a responsibility cannot be
delegated.
—W. Edwards Deming

Understanding SAFe®
Values and Principles

Why the Focus on Principles?
 A Lean-Agile transformation will deliver
substantial benefits
 But it is a significant change and every
implementation is different
 Leaders should understand why the practices
deliver the results they do; its part of “knowing
what it is they must do”
 If a practice needs to change, leaning on the
principles will assure the change moves the
enterprise forward, not backward
SAFe is based on nine immutable Lean-Agile Principles
Principles
over
Practices
100 books
100 implementations

SAFe House of Lean Value System
LEADERSHIP
Respectfor
peopleandculture
Flow
Innovation
Relentless
improvement
VALUE

SAFe Lean-Agile Principles
Take an economic view
Apply systems thinking
Assume variability; preserve options
Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning
Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
Decentralize decision-making

Clarity on how to think, without clarity on
how to act, leaves people unmoved.
—Dan Pink
Principles are great, but…
Unless principles are embodied in practices,
people won’t necessarily know what to do

Applying SAFe®
Practices

SAFe is an online, freely revealed knowledge base
of proven and integrated success patterns
for implementing Lean-Agile development
at enterprise scale.

1. Quality
2. Program execution
3. Alignment
4. Transparency
Scaled Agile Framework®
(SAFe®
)
ScaledAgileFramework.com
Emphasis

Roots, Past, Present and Future of SAFe®
Agile
21
Systems
Engineering
Lean Product
Development
Lean Thinking
2012 2013 2014
2.0
3.0
1.0
Field Experience at Enterprise Scale
LSE
4.0
2015

Build Cross-Functional Teams
 Cross-functional, self-organizing entities that can
Define, Build, and Test a feature or component
 Optimized for communication and delivery of value
 Works iteratively in small increments that are
synchronized with other teams
Value doesn’t follow organizational silos
Team
1
Team
n

Apply Agile Methods
Scrum, XP and Kanban empower the teams
to do their best work
Scrum Master
Product Owner
Cross-Functional
Team
 Runs team meetings, facilitates agile behavior
 Removes impediments; protects the team from outside influence
 Attends integration (ART Sync) meetings
 Creates and refines user stories and acceptance criteria
 Defines/Builds/Tests/Delivers stories
 Develops and commits to Team PI Objectives
 Defines and accepts stories
 Acts as the customer
 Works product management to align solutions

Nothing Beats an Agile Team
▸ Empowered, self-organizing, self-managing, cross-functional team
▸ Delivers valuable, tested, working software every two weeks
▸ Scrum project management and XP-inspired technical practices;
Kanban too
▸ Value delivery via User Stories

Build Cross-functional Agile Release Trains
Business Systems
Engineering
Production Hardware Software Testing
A G I L E R E L E A S E T R A I N
Cross-functional Teams
Mech.PMO

Agile Release Trains Deliver Value
▸ Common sprint lengths and estimating
▸ Face-to-face release planning for collaboration, alignment, and adaptation
▸ Value delivery via Features and Benefits
Agile Release Train
▸ Self-organizing, self-managing team-of-Agile-teams
▸ Delivers working, tested full system increments every two weeks
▸ Operates with Vision, architecture and UX guidance

Build an Agile Portfolio
▸ Organize around Value Streams
▸ Centralized strategy, decentralized execution
▸ Lean-Agile budgeting empowers decision makers
▸ Kanban systems provide portfolio visibility and WIP limits
▸ Enterprise architecture guides the larger technology decisions
▸ Objective metrics support governance and improvement
Sneak preview of SAFe 4.0!

Organize Around Value: Software Systems
Value doesn’t recognize organizational
or geographic boundaries
Organize your ARTs around the Value Streams you have
Software Systems
Value Streams deliver solutions

Organize Around Value: Cyber-physical Systems
If your value streams are cyber-physical systems,
apply Lean Systems Engineering
Cyber-physical Systems
LSE

Leaders’ Role:
Implementing SAFe®
1-2-3

Leadership
People are already doing
their best; the problems are
with the system.
Only management can
change the system.
‣ Lead the change
‣ Know the way;
emphasize life-long learning
‣ Develop people
‣ Inspire and align with mission;
minimize constraints
‣ Decentralize decision-making
‣ Unlock the intrinsic motivation of
knowledge workers
LEADERSHIP
Respectfor
peopleandculture
Flow
Innovation
Relentless
improvement
VALUE
—W. Edwards Deming

Respect for People and Culture
‣ People do all the work
‣ Your customer is whomever
consumes your work
‣Don’t overload them
‣Don’t make them wait
‣Don’t force them to do wasteful work
‣Don’t impose wishful thinking
‣ Build long-term partnerships
based on trust
‣ Cultural change comes last,
not first
‣ To change the culture, you have to
change the organization
Culture eats strategy
for breakfast.
LEADERSHIP
Respectfor
peopleandculture
Flow
Innovation
Relentless
improvement
VALUE
—Peter Drucker

Change is Hard
1. Allowing too much complacency
2. Failure to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
3. Underestimating the power of vision
4. Under-communicating the power of vision by 10-100 X
5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failure to create short term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate
culture
No one else can do it for you.
Beware the Eight Big Mistakes.

1
Train
Lean-Agile
Change Agents
Build a sufficiently
powerful coalition
for change

Train Lean-Agile Change Agents
Lean-Agile Change Agents drive the
transformation by:
 Organizing around Value
 Training Lean-Thinking Leaders in
Leading SAFe
 Training or Baselining Teams in SAFe
ScrumXP
 Launching Agile Release Trains
 Assuring Relentless Improvement

2
Train
Executives,
Managers,
and Leaders
Build a sufficiently
powerful coalition
for change

Leading SAFe
Who You Train
 Executives, managers, consultants,
Lean-Agile Leaders, and Agile
change agents
Why You Train
 To gain the knowledge necessary to lead
an enterprise Agile transformation by
leveraging the Scaled Agile Framework®
and its underlying principles of lean
thinking and product development flow to
scale Agile, Program, Program Portfolio
Management, and Leadership.
Leading SAFe®
Leading the Lean-Agile
Software Enterprise with the
Scaled Agile Framework®

3
Train Teams
and Launch
Agile Release
Trains
Create short term wins

SAFe ScrumXP
Who You Train
 Software Development Teams, Release
Train Engineers, managers, and others who
work directly with SAFe teams
Why You Train
 To teach non-Agile teams or baseline
existing Agile teams in the Lean thinking
tools, roles, processes, and software
engineering practices necessary to achieve
the code quality you need to scale Scrum to
your enterprise business context.
SAFe ScrumXP
Scrum, XP, and Lean
Practices for Teams in the
SAFe Enterprise

Accelerate Change: A One Week Launch
When you find a Value Stream, go All In and All at Once for each
Train. The one week launch is a proven adoption model.
SAFe
Scrum
Master
SAFe
Product
Owner
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri
 Train everyone at
the same time
 Same instructor,
same method
 Most cost effective
 Align all teams to
common objectives
 Commitment
 Continue training
during planning
 Orientation for
specialty roles
 Open spaces
 Tool training
for teams
Tooltraining
GO.
AGILE.
NOW.
Training:
SAFe ScrumXP
Prepare
SAFe Release
Planning

SAI Partners: Over 35 Countries and 350 Cities
15 Gold Partners
8 Silver Partners
24 Bronze Partners
January 2015

Case Studies

Decreased
time to
market by
27 weeks
20–50%
Productivity
increase
76%
Decrease in
response
time to
customer
requests
20–25%
Increase
in client
satisfaction
SAFe
adoption
leads to
Barron’s
award
50%
Warranty
expense
down
95%
Decrease in
product
defects
Dramatic
improvement
in quality
Better
alignment to
common
vision
Cost down
50%
Better
business-IT
collaboration
Dependencies
and risks
revealed far
in advance
with SAFe

Questions?

Join us next week!
Scale Agile Faster, Easier, Smarter
with SAFe and VersionOne
Part 2
May 6, 11 AM-12 PM EDT / 17:00-18:00 PM CET
Lee Cunningham
Director of Enterprise Agile
SAFe Program Consultant, CSM, PMP, PMI-ACP
VersionOne
Matt Badgley
Lean/Agile Coach and Product Consultant
SAFe Program Consultant, CSM, CSPO
VersionOne

Thank you
for joining us today!
#AgileLIVE

AgileLIVE: Scaling Agile Faster, Easier, Smarter with SAFe and VersionOne - Part 1

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