This document discusses strategies for transitioning an organization to agile and scrum methodologies. It provides tips for educating product owners, preparing scrum masters and teams, managing fears of change, establishing a transition team, and preparing management. The importance of not compromising scrum rules and of continually evaluating progress through retrospectives is emphasized.

1. www.devbliss.com © devbliss
We deliver software and services that delight our
customers, sprint by sprint.
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2. NATO | INTERSHOP | WEB.DE | CDC |VZ | DEVBLISS
TRAINING | CONSULTING | MANAGEMENT | COACHING
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3. Friday, April 26, 13

4. once upon a time...
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5. ... there was a social network
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6. VZ - The Company
Management
Software
Engineering
Product
Development
Customer
Care
Marketing
Legal
Human
Ressources Accounting
Public
Releastions
Sales
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7. VZ - The Company
Software
Engineering
Product
Development
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8. ➡ 32 Software Engineers
➡ 3 Operations
➡ 4 Scrum Masters
➡ 2 Management
➡ lead by Dr. Johann Kempe (CIO GvH) and Stephen Devlin (CTO Macmillan)
➡ very strong agile mindset
➡ 6 month preparation to carve out
➡ Since May 1st 2012 we operate independent from VZ
devbliss today
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9. ➡ registered Users: 17 Million / 80% monthly actives
➡ dynamic requests per month: 60 billion
➡ delivered static Objects per month : 50 billion
➡ peak time bandwidth: around 6 Gbit/s
➡ Photos: approx. 1 Billion (3 Billion Files)
➡ 120 TB structured and unstructured data
➡ approx. 740 Servers (5700 Cores, 6 TB RAM)
➡ around 30 services and tools
➡ used programming languages:
Java, Erlang, Python, PHP, Perl, C, C++, Objective C, Scala
➡ approx. 25.000 (mySQL) Tables
Our experience through VZ
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10. Friday, April 26, 13

11. Achievements of the last 3.5 years
➡ Releases possible at any time
➡ Shorthand changes are less painful
➡ Less meetings - focused communication
➡ Team members feel responsible and hold
themselves accountable for their work
➡ Crowd architecture
➡ Knowledge transfers within and between the teams
➡ Prioritization - important things first (business value)
➡ Very good code quality and development speed
➡ decisions are made by the people who do the work
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12. Friday, April 26, 13

13. Why do companies want scrum or agile?
➡ shortens time2market
➡ enhances productivity
➡ optimizes processes
➡ creates (painful) transparency
➡ motivates employees
➡ makes the company attractive
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14. Transition will succeed only,
if the organization breaks its "regular" habit.
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15. “…organizations which design systems … are constrained to produce designs which
are copies of the communication structures of these organizations”.
Henry E. Conway April 1968
A
B
C
A
B
C
ORGANIZATION
=
SYSTEM
Conway's Law
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16. Plan
DoCheck
Act
The Deming-Cycle - Key to the agile mindset
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17. Educate ProductOwner(s)
➡ PO = OWNER! of the product?
➡ What's my Vision!?
➡ UserStories?!??
➡ Prioritization
➡ Backlog / Company Backlog
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18. ➡ Facilitator
➡ Mediator
➡ Organizer
➡ Mentor
➡ Therapist
Have ScrumMaster(s)
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19. Prepare the Team
➡ has to have the strong willingness
to change something
➡ has to take over responsibility &
➡ has to be aware of being held accountable
➡ might also reject changes
Keep in mind: Initially Scrum was meant for hyper-performant teams!!
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20. Fear of change
fear of beeing transparent
➧ avoid giving any meeting the look like
they are in place for reporting
unwilling to take over
responsibility
➧
let the team make decisions
themselves and hold them
accountable for them.
„Nonsense“
Disregarding the benefits
➧
Scrummaster must facilitate.
Teams are recognizing the benefit
fairly quickly.
That does not fit the way we
work
➧
search for Interfaces/interactions that
allow to fit in, but don't compromise
on the Rules (see 2nd comment)
Talk, Talk, Talk…
… do retrospectives on regular base and try to reduce the fears.
Talk, Talk, Talk…
… do retrospectives on regular base and try to reduce the fears.
Talk, Talk, Talk…
… do retrospectives on regular base and try to reduce the fears.
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21. afraid of making
mistakes ➧ Mistakes are expected! Repeated mistakes are unwanted.
to say "No"
➧ accept a „No", take away pressure,
create transparency of what's the real velocity
not getting it done
➧
solving technical debt will result in a lower velocity. Let people
get a feeling of their own velocity and accept commitments
but also demand those commitments.
to change processes
that remained
untouched a long time ➧ Convince people of the benefits and empower them
Change with no fear
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22. Have A Transition Team:
➡ Drives change throughout the whole
organization
➡ „Powerful“ Support for the ScrumMaster
➡ Defines Interfaces between departments
➡ Creates transparency throughout the company
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23. Prepare Management
➡ let the Boss/Client FEEL the improvements
➡ learn how to handle the reporting tools to
avoid a bad gut feeling
➡ handle Uncertainty = reporting-artefacts in
scrum are sufficient enough!
➡ enforce lean management
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24. Don't lie to yourself!
➡ We certainly moved and changed (after the first sprint)
➡ We "adjusted" the scrum process to fit our organization.
➡ enough change, we need to work now.
➡ the Teams are delivering new features constantly but we had to
employ a new bug-manager.
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25. ➡ Create a sense of urgency
➡ Create the guiding coalition
➡ Develop a vision and a strategy
➡ Communicate this vision
➡ Empower employees for broad-based action
➡ Generate short-term wins
➡ Consolidate the gains and produce more change
➡ Anchor the new approaches in the culture
John P. Kotter Leading Change
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26. Friday, April 26, 13

27. www.devbliss.com © devbliss
We deliver software and services that delight our
customers, sprint by sprint.
Friday, April 26, 13