Agile Program Management: Networks, Not Hierarchies

MC
AM Half day Tutorial
11/11/2013 8:30 AM

"Agile Program Management:
Networks, Not Hierarchies"
Presented by:
Johanna Rothman
Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.

Brought to you by:

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Johanna Rothman
Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.
Known as the “Pragmatic Manager,”Johanna Rothman helps
organizational leaders identify problems and risks in their product
development and recognize potential “gotchas,” seize opportunities, and
remove impediments. Johanna is the technical editor
foragileconnection.com and is author of Manage Your Job Search, Hiring
Geeks That Fit, Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and
Finish More Projects, the 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It!
Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed
Doors: Secrets of Great Management. She is currently writing a book about
agile program management. In addition, Johanna writes columns
for Stickyminds.com and projectmanagment.com, and blogs
on jrothman.com, andcreateadaptablelife.com.

Agile Program Management:
Networks, Not Hierarchies
Johanna Rothman
www.jrothman.com
@johannarothman
jr@jrothman.com
781-641-4046

What Are Your Objectives Today?
Let’s hear them

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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

Let’s Do a Program
I’ll hand out the instructions
We’ll debrief together

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What’s the Most Effective Way to
Move Information In Any
Organization?

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Rumor Mill

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Imagine Managing the Flow of
Features Through a Program ...

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Teams Create Features and
Integrate

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Medium Programs

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Big Programs

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Nuts and Bolts of Agile Programs
Think small to go big--short is beautiful
Short iterations: <= 2 weeks
Small stories: <= 1-2 team days
Just in time, evolving architecture
Networks of cross-functional teams
Short planning horizons
Plan to replan
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How Do You Organize the Teams?
Any form of agile or lean works
for the project teams
What’s key is small batch size
and continuous integration
You don’t need branded agile
Be agnostic about how each
team works, as long as they
deliver
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Feature-Done at Regular Intervals
Demo
Assess risk
Update the architecture
Update the roadmap
Update/Change the project
portfolio
...
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Cyneﬁn Helps Us Understand How
to Organize
Four-nine
teams

Two-three
teams

More than ten
teams

One team

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The Core Team

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Kanban for the Core Team
See the Work in
Progress
Keep the deliverables
small

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Technical Program Team

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Each Feature Team
Cross-functional
Covers the roles
Decides how they want to
manage their own process
Yes, they do!
They commit completed
features to the rest of the
program

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Team Size Matters
Communication Paths=(N*N-N)/2
4 people, (16-4)/2=6
5 people, (25-5)/2=10
6 people, (36-6)/2=15
7 people, (49-7)/2=21
8 people, (56-8)/2=24
9 people, (81-9)/2=36
10 people (100-10)/2=45
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How to Connect the Feature Teams?
Many people say Scrum of Scrums
Scrum of Scrums is a hierarchy
Does not take advantage of the
rumor mill
Manager-directed
Problematic in a geographically
distributed program
We need another way that is selforganizing that scales
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Small World Networks
Small world
networks are
more-and-less
connected agile
teams

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Six Degrees of Separation
How connected are you to
everyone else?
Some of you are highly
connected
Some less so
We can take advantage of
this and the rumor mill
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Use Small World Networks
Feature teams take
responsibility
Use small world networks
Use communities of
practice
Requires roadmaps
Requires transparency
Requires facilitation
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Roadmap

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Transparency
Each project must track its own
velocity and learn what done means
Keep stories small
Limit WIP
Velocity is personal to a team
Teams build trust across the program
People and teams start with
themselves and deliver, deliver, deliver

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Program Measurements
Demos of working software
Features complete
Product Backlog burnup
Time to your releaseable
deliverable

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Recognize Inertia
Inertia helps you see when things
are stuck
What can you deliver today?
How can you help your team
deliver today?
Short iterations and small batches
help focus the team on short
delivery cycles
Kanban might be better
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Build Momentum
Momentum helps each
team deliver something
to each other and build
on micro-commitments
Goes back to extending
trust

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Facilitation
As the program becomes
larger, each feature team
requires a full-time agile
project manager/Scrum
Master: someone who is a
servant leader

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Agile Programs Are About
Collaboration
Teams collaborate in the small to
create products in the large
Leverage each iteration’s learning
to plan the next set of deliverables
Roadmaps help
Communities of practice help
Demos are a must
If you don’t know how to do agile
as a small team, learn that ﬁrst
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Autonomy, Collaboration, Exploration
Each feature team must be
autonomous to complete
their work
They collaborate to work
together
They explore to retain the
agility
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Add Me to Your Small World
Network...
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Managment
Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More
Projects
Agile and Lean Program Management: Collaborating Across the Organization
Much more on jrothman.com
Stay in touch?
Pragmatic Manager: www.jrothman.com/pragmaticmanager
Please link with me on LinkedIn
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