James Shore: FAST: An Innovative Way to Scale — Hands-on Agile #45
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How can multiple teams work together on a single product? The common wisdom is to carefully align teams and responsibilities to create autonomous teams. But, invariably, this approach eventually runs into cross-team bottlenecks, challenges aligning responsibilities to teams, and difficulties creating cross-functional teams. Fluid Scaling Technology, or FAST, is an innovative new approach that solves these problems. It uses frequent team self-selection to prevent bottlenecks, share knowledge amongst teams, and ensure the right people are working on the right things. It’s simple and lightweight. During the 45th Hands-on Agile meetup, James Shore shared his experiences with scaling Agile: first with traditional approaches and, more recently, with FAST. Learn in about an hour what works, what doesn’t, and how you can try FAST in your organization.
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James Shore: FAST: An Innovative Way to Scale — Hands-on Agile #45
- 1. PRESENTED BY James Shore TWITTER: @jamesshore EMAIL: jshore@jamesshore.com FAST: An Innovative Way to Scale Hands-On Agile Meetup 27 September 2022 (via Zoom)
- 2. @jamesshore jamesshore.com What is Scaling? Increasing the number of people working on a set of related products or codebases, resulting in multiple interdependent teams.
- 3. @jamesshore jamesshore.com How to Deliver Faster 1. Reduce scope 2. Eliminate waste 3. Improve technical capability ︙ ︙ n. Add people
- 4. PRESENTED BY James Shore TWITTER: @jamesshore EMAIL: jshore@jamesshore.com Scaling: The Last Thing You Want to Do Hands-On Agile Meetup 27 September 2022 (via Zoom)
- 5. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 1 Why FAST?
- 6. @jamesshore jamesshore.com Component Teams Each team focuses on one or more technical components in a larger system. • Finishing work requires the coordination of many teams. • Cross-team bottlenecks and errors are common.
- 9. @jamesshore jamesshore.com Stream-Aligned Teams Each team focuses on a continuous fl ow of work aligned to a business domain or organizational capability. —Team Topologies (Skelton & Pais) • Hard to incorporate specialties (UX, security, ops) • Brittle to changing business strategy • Leads to silos • Cross-team dependencies still a challenge
- 11. @jamesshore jamesshore.com Fluid Scaling Technology (FAST) A group of people who self-organize into teams on a frequent cadence. • But does it work?
- 16. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 🤠 😎 🤠 🤓 🤓 Team A 🤠 😎 🤠 😎 🤓 🤓 Team B 🤓 🤠 😎 🤠 😎 Team C 🤠 😎 🤓 🤠 Team D
- 17. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 🤠 😎 🤠 🤓 🤓 Team A 🤠 😎 🤠 😎 🤓 🤓 Team B 🤓 🤠 😥 🤠 😎 Team C 🤠 😎 🤓 🤠 Team D
- 18. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 🤠 😎 🤠 🤓 🤓 Team A 🤠 😎 🤠 😎 🤓 🤓 Team B 🤓 😥 😥 🥺 😨 Team C 🤠 😎 🤓 🤠 Team D
- 19. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 🤠 😎 🤠 😤 😠 Team A 🧐 😡 ☹ 😔 🤯 🤬 Team B 😥 😱 🥶 😰 😨 Team C 🤠 😎 🧐 😠 Team D
- 20. @jamesshore jamesshore.com Fluid Scaling Technology A group of people who self-organize into teams on a frequent cadence.
- 21. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 2 The FAST Meeting
- 22. @jamesshore jamesshore.com FAST: Fluid Scaling Technology “a lightweight, simple to understand, and simple to master method for organizing people around work—that scales.” —FAST Guide 2.12 fastagile.io/fast-guide
- 23. @jamesshore jamesshore.com High-Level Overview 1. Bring everyone to work together as one Collective. 2. Visually represent business goals on a wall. 3. Let the Collective self-organize into teams to break down and do the work. 4. On a short cadence, synch and repeat the above step. —FAST Guide 2.12
- 24. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 🤠 😎 🤠 🤓 🤓 🤠 ☺ 🤠 😎 🤓 🤓 🤓 🤠 ☺ 🤠 😎 🤠 😎 🤓 🤠 Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum In Progress Ready to Start Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum 1⃣ 2⃣ Lorem Ipsum
- 25. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 🤠 😎 🤠 🤓 🤓 🤠 ☺ 🤠 😎 🤓 🤓 🤓 🤠 ☺ 🤠 🤠 😎 🤓 🤠 Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum In Progress Ready to Start Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum 1⃣ 2⃣ Lorem Ipsum 😎 Reticulate the splines Hunt for grues Reverse entropy Transect encabulator
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- 43. @jamesshore jamesshore.com FAST Self-Selection Outcomes • 👍 Worked well, despite being “worst-case scenario” for FAST. (Siloed developers, many unrelated products, no team-level coaching) • 👍 Easy to adopt (but four months of prior change mgmt) • 👍 Low overhead (~20 min, 2/week) • 👍 Worked as intended: people fl uidly allocated to work as needed • 👎 People felt pressured to deliver every two days • 👎 Di ffi culty ramping up on unfamiliar work • 👎 Di ffi culty working as collaborative teams
- 44. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 3 Idea Flow (not FAST-speci fi c)
- 56. @jamesshore jamesshore.com Idea Flow Summary 1. Chartering: Everyone works to clarify purpose and context. 2. Visual Planning: PMs and Execs identify Valuable Increments. 3. Prioritization: Execs decide which increment to build next. 4. Getting Ready: Execs identify a PM who prepares the increment for development. 5. Ready to Start: The increment waits for a team to choose it. 6. In Progress: Self-selected team(s) build out the increment. 7. Complete: The increment is released.
- 57. @jamesshore jamesshore.com Idea Flow Outcomes • 👍 Execs had total transparency and control over priorities • 👍 Worked around poor strategic prioritization • 👍 “O ff the books” work greatly reduced • 👍 Easy to adjust priorities • 👍 Possibility for improving PM collaboration (not sure if it happened) • 👎 Unintentionally reduced engineer ownership • 👎 Some PMs struggled with following the rules, worked o ff -book • 👎 Didn’t address root issue: too many products/responsibilities
- 59. @jamesshore jamesshore.com Six Months Later 👍 • 👍 “FAST has created a high degree of transparency. The whole department understands the body of work to be done.” • 👍 Just-in-time matching of people to work to be done. • 👍 Execs have high ability to dynamically adjust priorities. • 👍 “They’re pretty good at collaborating now.” • 👍 Stewards have improved engineering leadership. • 👍 Integrating new o ff -shore engineers was very easy. (!)
- 60. @jamesshore jamesshore.com Six Months Later 👎 • 👎 “We have a lot of domains… it’s hard to bring engineers into problem scoping.” • 👎 Decoupled product management and engineering. Engineers no longer own a speci fi c domain. • 👎 Engineers aren’t always able to work in their preferred domains. • 👎 Di ffi culty sharing ownership of existing responsibilities & problems with knowledge transfer. • 👎 So many domains, engineers can’t choose an area and stick with it.
- 61. @jamesshore jamesshore.com FAST Conclusions • Easy to incorporate specialties such as UX • Incredibly responsive to changing business needs • Resilient to people joining and leaving • Collective ownership may be a challenge • Team dynamics may be an issue A group of people who self-organize into teams on a frequent cadence.
- 62. @jamesshore jamesshore.com Recommendation: Trial It 1. Start with two closely-related, willing teams 2. Teach collective ownership and collaboration skills, if needed 3. Introduce FAST and combine the teams 4. Wait for team and organizational ripples to stabilize 5. Assimilate more teams, 3-5 people at a time, like the Borg 6. Stop when FAST Collective is feeling strain from size 7. Repeat to form multiple stream-aligned FAST Collectives
- 63. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 🤠 😎 🤠 🤓 🤓 🤠 ☺ 🤠 😎 🤓 🤓 🤓 🤠 ☺ 🤠 😎 🤠 😎 🤓 🤠 Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum In Progress Ready to Start Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum 1⃣ 2⃣ Lorem Ipsum
- 64. @jamesshore jamesshore.com 🤠 😎 🤠 🤓 🤓 🤠 ☺ 🤠 😎 🤓 🤓 🤓 🤠 ☺ 🤠 🤠 😎 🤓 🤠 Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum In Progress Ready to Start Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum 1⃣ 2⃣ Lorem Ipsum 😎 Reticulate the splines Hunt for grues Reverse entropy Transect encabulator
- 65. 🤓 ☺ 🤠 😎 Reticulate the splines Hunt for grues Reverse entropy Transect encabulator 🤠 😎 🤠 🤓 🤓 🤠 ☺ 🤠 😎 🤓 🤓 🤠 🤠 😎🤓 🤠 Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum In Progress Ready to Start Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum 1⃣ 2⃣ Lorem Ipsum
- 66. PRESENTED BY James Shore TWITTER: @jamesshore EMAIL: jshore@jamesshore.com FAST: An Innovative Way to Scale Hands-On Agile Meetup 27 September 2022 (via Zoom)