Presented at Scrum Gathering in Atlanta 2012 Scaling Agile projects is hard. Scrum provides no guidance. Dynamic Governance may be the answer. It was invented 40 years ago and is optimized around creating organizations that are empirical and biased toward action.

1. Meet Scrum’s Big Brother,
Dynamic Governance
Effectively Delivering Large Programs
Dan LeFebvre John Buck
Agile/Scrum Coach, CSC Certified Sociocracy Consultant
© DCL Agility, 2012-2015 © Sociocratisch Centrum, Rotterdam,
Netherlands, 2012-2015

2. 2
*Certified ScrumMaster (CSM),
Certified Scrum Professional (CSP)
Certified Scrum Coach (CSC)
*Extensive experience in software product
development as a developer, manager, director,
and coach
*Using agile practices since 2003
*Agile Coach since 2006

3. 3
John Buck
Director, GovernanceAlive LLC
A division of The Sociocracy Consulting Group
*Certified Sociocracy (Dynamic Governance)
Consultant since 2001
*Extensiveexperience managing software
development and large information systems
implementation.
*Prototype experience using dynamic
governance to bring Agile concepts to a
whole organization (AdScale, Ltd.)
3

4. 4
*Three Dynamic Governance (DG) principles
help Agile scale up:
Circles
Total design
o toolkit
o Double linking
o Consent Structure:
- Circles
- Double linking
Decision Making:
Consent to policies
*Use the principles to design whole
organizations that are Scrum and Agile friendly.

5. 5
*What's happening now?
* What challenges are you facing with large scale agile?
* What techniques are you using to scale?
*Exercise
* Person with the lowest birthday number is facilitator. (If you were
born May 4, 1967 your number is 4; tie breaker: born earliest in day.)
* Facilitator - lead your table in answering the above questions. Go
around to each person (including you). Each speaks once and answers
both questions. Complete the task in no more than 4 minutes.

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*Goal is to share status
across teams
*Answer 4 questions:
* What did my team do since
last time?
* What will my team do by next
time?
* What are impediments we
need help with?
* What will my team do that
may affect you?

7. 7
Integration
Scrum
Team
1.1
Integration Integration
Scrum Scrum
Team Team
1.1.1 1.1.2
Scrum Scrum Scrum
Team Team Team
1.1.1.1 1.1.1.2 1.1.1.3

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* Encourages communication * Typically a pure status meeting
* Fosters collaboration * Scrum Master may not be the right
* Surfaces issues person
* Very little shared context
* No shared planning or retrospective
* No shared goal

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*“Operating System 2.0”
• A comprehensive and elegant feedback system
• Guides production and planning
*Agile design increases capacity (“velocity”)
throughout.
*Behavior: “political” to “scrummy” = joy 

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Circles (“Scrums”) - a hierarchy Lead-Do-Measure circular systems
that overlays and guides the operational structure
Double-Linking – Circles/Scums connect both up and down
Consent
Department
Branch Branch
Unit Unit Unit Unit

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“...organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce
designs which are copies of the communication structures of these
organizations.”
Conway’s Law
*Hierarchy isn’t inherently bad
• Deal with abstractions
*Apply Scrum Principles at all levels

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• Define aims for each
rung on the “ladder of
work abstraction” (level
of hierarchy)
• Define domains of
doing & add guiding
loops
• Elect people to
accountable roles

14. 14
Program
Manager
Marketing &
Software Hardware Training
Sales
Component A Component B
Scrum 1 Scrum 2 Scrum 1 Scrum 2

15. 15

16. 16
*Pair up
*Draw a current structure
*Overlay circles
*Share with the table

17. 17
Explain job
Fill out & hand in nomination forms:
“(name) nominates (name)”
Share reasons
Change round
Consent round

18. 18
*Three Dynamic Governance (DG) principles
help Agile scale up:
Circles
Total design
o toolkit
o Double linking
o Consent Structure:
- Circles
- Double linking
Decision Making:
Consent to policies
*Use the principles to design whole
organizations that are Scrum and Agile friendly.

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*Pair up with someone different
*What did you learn and how might you apply it?
*More during Open Space tomorrow

20. Meet Scrum’s Big Brother,
Dynamic Governance
Effectively Delivering Large Programs
Dan LeFebvre John Buck
www.DCLAgility.com www.GovernanceAlive.com

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Instructors’ Agenda
• 3:35 Fast Summary (Slide 4) Do exercise to elicit current problems with scaling
agile programs (5 min) (elicit) (Slide 5) (Dan)
• 3:40 Provide an analysis of the current scaling techniques and their flaws (5
min) (Slides 6-8) (Dan)
• 3:45 Present Dynamic Governance (DG) 3 principles: Lead-Do-Measure cycle,
double-linking, and consent decision making (10 min) (Slides 9-10) (John)
• 3:55 Compare and contrast DG with Scrum and current scaling “best practices”
(5 Min) (Slide 11) (Dan)
• 4:00 Present a technique for designing organizations (Slides 12-15) (5 min)
(John)
• 4:05 Lead exercises to design a large program using the 3 principles of DG (25
min) (Slide 16) (draw one or two per table – rep describes) (John)
• 4:30 Demonstrate a consent election & process (Slide 17) (15 min) (John)
• 4:45 Reflection and discussion of next steps (Slide 19) (15 min) (Dan)

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Output
Input Transformation Product
Product Backlog Sprint Increment
Lead Definition of Sprint Planning to Definition of
Ready create Sprint Backlog Done
Do Product Backlog Execute Tasks from Sprint Review
Grooming Sprint Backlog, Daily
Scrum
Measure 2 Sprints worth of Update Task Board and Update Release
backlog items are Burndown Burn Chart
ready
Retrospective to inspect and adapt policies about each step