The document discusses an organization's agile journey. It outlines the challenges faced in transitioning from waterfall to agile, including a matrix organization structure, command and control culture, and rigid processes. An initial attempt involved quarterly releases but still had issues. The organization transitioned to a model with three concurrent releases and a Kanban approach. Current efforts focus on automation, resolving testing constraints, and continued technical enhancements to fully realize the benefits of agile.
3. Project Context
Multiple Brands
24 x 7
Multiple ChannelsCustomers
Multiple
Geographies
Retail
Corporate
Private / Wealth
Java Front End MF Legacy Backend Other Systems
Tightly coupled system. Slow Development
Multiple Stakeholders
Distributed Team
4. Type of work
High
Work Stack
Constituents
Strategic
Enhancement
Support
Initiated
Prod Issues
Regulatory
Campaigns
& Offers
New Product
Launches or
Customizations
All this was being delivered in the form of multiple waterfall
projects with serious issues about quality and timelines.
6. Agile Challenges – Matrix Organization
Business Technology Misalignment
Support Functions Misalignment
Lack of synergy between departments Pic from: http://www.illustrationsource.com/
7. Agile Challenges – Hierarchical Organization
Hierarchical Org Growth = Climbing the ladder
Pic from: http://johngerber.world.edu/2012/08/10/hierarchy/
Pic from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alanhall/2013/04/11/get-noticed-four-easy-steps-to-climbing-the-corporate-ladder/
In hierarchical organizations bringing change is difficult. Also, team members see
growth as getting bigger job title rather than adding more value.
8. Agile Challenges - Command & Control Culture
Improvement = More controls
Pic from: http://www.slideshare.net/apanitsch/the-management-rowing-race
Failures indicates complexity and complexity is best tacked by adaptive approach but often
reverse is done and more controls are added to prevent failures.
9. Agile Challenges - Heavy Processes
High Governance
Multiple Approval Board
Rigid Processes
Focus on compliance
Pic from: http://globe-views.com/dreams/lawyer.html
10. Agile Challenges- Rigid Processes
More than amount of processes, the issue is with one Size fits all approach
Pic from: http://hudsonvalleynewsnetwork.com/2014/12/17/one-size-not-fit/
11. Agile Challenges – Lack of Technical Agility
Is business agility feasible without technical agility?
Legacy Systems
Slow development
Tight coupling
Complex dependencies
Pic from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeroeneijkhof/4533163799
13. First attempt towards agile
There is serious problem of
scope creep and you are
suggesting we do development
without covering all
requirements.
We think there is need of more
controls to handle this chaos
and what made you think that
we should remove processes
14. Solving the right problem …
Finding out the most important problems and their causes is the key.
Pic from: http://dilbert.com/strip/2013-02-15
15. Solving the right problem
• Too Many
Stakeholders
• Demand Supply
mismatch
Causes
• Interdependencies
Leading to Deadlock
• Wastage in building
consensus
• Flow Jams
• Quality Issues
Effects
• Poor Time to
Market
• Production
Disruptions
Outcome
16. Solving the business problem
Stakeholders
Development Team
Dedicated product Owner Team.
Product Owner
Business Analysts
Lead / Release Manager
Building Consensus
Breaking down requirements
Prioritization (focus on MVP)
Managing dependencies
Guide development
User acceptance testing Facilitate
Guide team and PO
Remove blockers
17. Solving the business problem
Combining work requests and doing quarterly releases
This proposal was accepted as it gives management more control
& more visibility along with improved time to market and less
production disruption.
Month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Release 1
Release 2
Release 3
Smaller work requests, focus on ‘must haves’ and match demand
to supply
18. Challenges post new model
Month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Release 1
Release 2
Release 3
Scope creep, Adhoc work requests still causing issues
Changes costly and discouraged
Six months is still long period to see outcome
Slow development, Quality issues, release overheads
This was just iterative waterfall but sometimes a working waterfall is better
place to start agile journey. Also, one major win was to have a single product
owner.
23. Team Collaboration
Daily Stand-up with task board
Brainstorming
Collaboration Tools
Pair Programming
Stand-up Photo by Acarlos1000 - Creative Commons Attribution License https://www.flickr.com/photos/73694110@N00 Created with Haiku Deck
Pic from: https://www.airpair.com/
Pic From: www.friendshipcircle.org
24. Team Distribution
Distributed across locations based on speciality
Throw over the wall attitude
Collaboration
Tools
To reduce cross location dependencies, rebalanced team to have independent team with
specialities at each location.
25. Feedback Loops
Customer Showcases
Retrospectives
Photo by justin - Creative Commons Attribution License https://www.flickr.com/photos/35034345586@N01 Created with Haiku Deck
Pic From: https://hakanforss.wordpress.com
28. Customizations of processes
User
Stories
Features
Work
Requests
WR 1
Feature 11
User Story
11-01
User Story
11-02
Feature 12
User Story
12-01
Isn’t this same as what you call as traceability Matrix?
Customization of processes for agile - To fulfill the same purpose
but in a different way.
30. Current Model
Weeks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
Release1
Release2
Release3
Scoping, Release plannning, Story Writing, Estimation, high level architecture discussion
Development and Testing
Deployment to test environment and skim test
Hardening - UAT, NFT, End to End testing
Implementation Preparations, Audit, Approvals
Production Deployment
Three releases running in parallel but only one development/execution phase at a time.
Execution phase means design, coding, testing by self organized team in any sequence
but based on priorities set by product owner. Frequent delivery of working software and
frequent customer showcases.
Backlog grooming also happens during development cycle.
Due to test environment constraints, governance requirements and other constraints,
need to have a hardening phase.
31. Current Model - Kanban
Iterative Frameworks
No work in progress limit
within iteration
WIPLimit=2
Work in progress limit but
no iteration boundary
KANBAN
During execution phase, Kanban is followed instead of Scrum. The reasons are:
Due to legacy code issues, some stories take more than 2 weeks to develop. Don’t
want to break these as these would loose relevance and become tasks.
Due to hardening defects, prod fixes, high priority work requests, backlog is more
fluid than ideal for iterative development.
32. Current Model
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8
Retrospectives (4w)
Planning Cadence (2w)
Showcase cadence (2w)
Backlog grooming discussions multiple times a week (on demand)
33. High level planning & estimation
Size Estimate
Small 1
Medium 2
Large 3
Extra Large 5
Velocity = 10
High Level Planning & funding approval happens when there are no user stories.
How to confirm doability at that level?
A custom model is to divide the work requests into size categories.
The normal velocity driven planning model has been extended for high level
planning. Velocity is known based on historic data and refined constantly.
Also factor in risks and external dependencies.
34. Backlog Management & Estimation
Divide the work requests into features and
prioritize.
Use Fibonacci series for estimation.
Focus on ‘Must Have’ features
Maintain 20-40% ‘Good to have’ features as
planning buffer.
Reference: http://www.expertprogrammanagement.com/
35. Next Steps
Further automation to reduce hardening period.
Resolving test environment constraints to have better ‘DONE
DONE’ definition.
Continue with technical enhancements to speed up development.
36. Summary
Focus on business problems first
Don’t sell agile, just show the value
Avoid jargons, use the language which people understand
Engage performing organization
Collaborate and build relationships with PMOs & support
functions
Focus on technical agility
Focus on being agile rather than doing agile
Remember AGILE is a journey rather than destination