XP practices as scaffolding for breakthrough companies (presentation) {at} [XP Day Vietnam 2015] Speaker: Tung Lam Homepage: http://xpday.vn

1. XP PRACTICES AS
SCAFFOLDING FOR
BREAKTHROUGH
COMPANIES
Vu Tung Lam
XP Day VN 2015

2. Vu Tung Lam
Agile Coach, Engineering Director
 Certified Scrum Master
 Certified Scrum Professional
 Certified SAFe Agilist
 Expert in Agile Training &
Coaching, Agile Transformation
& Scaling, Leadership, IT
Organization & Management.
 Scrum Alliance Profile
 Have successfully guided
companies of varied size (from a
single team to multiple teams
geographically distributed)
through their transformation to
higher Agile fluency level.
 Experiences scaling Agile
transformation to multiple
teams, multiple departments
beyond IT.
 Practical approach for Agile
implementation with a
combination Scrum, XP, Kanban,
Lean, DevOps, LeSS and SAFe.
 Decade of experience managing,
building engineering team and
implementing best technical
practices such as pair-
programming, unit testing, test
driven, automation, CI/CD.

3. OUTLINE
Breakthrough Companies, their challenges & required “scaffolding”
Answering big questions
 Keep delivering business value while addressing legacy engineering
challenges
 Sustain the changes

4. BREAKTHROUGH COMPANIES
☑Have built successful innovative
products, typically with large
user base
☑Have beach-headed and
captured their market niches
☑Well positioned financially
(profitable or well funded)
☐Prepare to expand horizontally
and/or vertically

5. SCAFFOLDING
“Scaffolding, also called staging,
is the basis of most construction
projects it is a temporary
structure used to support a work
crew and materials to aid in the
construction, maintenance and
repair of buildings, bridges and
all other man made structures.” –
Wikipedia
In software engineering context,
it is a metaphor for practices &
processes required to be in place
for companies to sustain their
high innovation pace.

6. CHALLENGES BREAKING-THROUGH
Product
o Adapt the successful formula to
similar areas
o Keep out-pace competitors in
terms of innovation and new
feature development
o Figure the right things to build
IT
o Rapid expansion of engineering
team
o Career transition, “new blood”
infusion
o Legacy code base – enough said
o Curse of scalability –
exponential cost
o Pace of technological changes
o Pressure to deliver from
business

7. Legacy code looking like this

8. With engineering best practices

9. BIG QUESTIONS
Q1. How to keep delivering business value
while addressing legacy engineering
challenges?
Q2. How to sustain the changes
and avoid falling back to old habits?

10. HOW TO KEEP DELIVERING
BUSINESS VALUE WHILE
ADDRESSING LEGACY
CHALLENGES?

11. IMPLEMENT AN AGILE FLAVOR
Scrum, XP, DevOps, Lean, whatever…
My opinions
o Start small, think about a MVP for process
o Don’t be purists – make Agile works for organizations
o Pick and choose appropriate tools from your Agile
toolbox based on business value, regardless of flavors
o Maturity of technical practices is more important than
processes

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13. ACKNOWLEDGE PUBLICLY THAT
YOU HAVE LEGACY PROBLEMS
o It requires a lot of courage to
acknowledge this publicly
o Helps business to understand, gain
support (time, resources, roadmap)
o Encourage team members to speak
up, they know best what wrong and
how to fix
o Focus energy to drive changes,
improve the situation and avoid
“blaming the ex-”
o Opportunities for big achievements

14. GAME-STORMING TO
EMPOWER TEAM MEMBERS TO
CHANGE

15. GAME-STORMING TO
EMPOWER TEAM MEMBERS TO
CHANGE

16. MAINTAIN A TECHNICAL DEBT
BACKLOG

17. MAINTAIN A TECHNICAL DEBT
BACKLOG

18. ITERATIVELY ADDRESS DEBT
STRICTLY DRIVEN BY BUSINESS
VALUE & REFINE BACKLOG

19. ARCHITECTURE FORUM
A community of volunteers who care about the technical quality
aspect of software development
o Ultimate owner of technical debt
o Drive problem discovery, solutions, proof-of-concept
o Consensus-based decision making (coding standard, technology
choices, etc.)
o Favor team autonomy over standardization
o Promote de-coupling and reducing of inter-team dependencies

20. BUILD “SCAFFOLDING”
o Light weight automation tools that quickly give feedback (e.g. link
checker)
o Unit testing core functionalities (20/80)
o High coverage with unit testing
o GUI automation

22. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENTS
Development environments (server, db)

23. AUTOMATION – WEB SITES
Q2

24. AUTOMATION – MOBILE LITE SITES

25. AUTOMATION – MOBILE APPS
Q2

26. BUGS CAUGHT WITH AUTOMATION
(WEB)

27. RECAP
1. Implement an Agile flavor…
2. Manage technical debt
o Acknowledge publicly that you have legacy problems
o Empower team members to suggest changes and to
drive solution
o Maintain a technical debt backlog
o Prioritizing debt repayment based on $ value & effort
o Repay technical debt as part of development
o Architecture forum as the driver of this process
3. Build scaffolding to safe-guard technical
changes
o Automation, automation, automation
o CI/CD => super fast feedback loop

28. HOW TO SUSTAIN
THE GOOD CHANGES?

29. UNDERSTAND HUMAN
PSYCHOLOGY
WITH RESPECT TO CHANGES
1. Understand why people resist changes
2. Understand what drive & motivate people
3. Bottom-up approach in driving changes
4. Talk value, measure value, track progress,
show wins
5. Reinforce positive feedback

30. STRENGTHEN YOUR SCAFFOLDING
WITH EXTERNAL HELP
Benefits
o Know-how experiences
from multiple
implementation
o Expert
opinions/assessments
o Objective, unbiased views
o Benefits as an outsider
who is less affected by an
organization’s “political
minefield”

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PATTERN 1: BOOTSTRAPPING
Kick start Agile: Train
all team members and
stakeholders, advise on
setting up appropriate
organizational
structure, and facilitate
Sprint 0 for pioneering
team.
Duration: 1 iteration,
typically 2-4 weeks.
Preparation
Training/Setting Up
• Training: Agile Fundamentals
• Training: Scrum Essentials
• Assessment of Agile readiness for
the organization
• Advice of optimal organizational
setup for succeeding Agile adoption
• Logistical preparation: tooling,
artifacts
Executing the First Sprint
• Play the role of an Agile Coach or Scrum Master
to execute the first Sprint
• Facilitate standard Scrum ceremonies: huddle,
planning, review, retrospective
• Remove impediments and coach the team
situational problem solving
• Deliver role-specific coaching with team
members: product owner, scrum master and the
team
Week 1
Deliverables
• Knowledge transfer to team
members
• Advices of optimal implementation
strategy for Agile adoption
Deliverables
• Successful first sprint and readiness to continue
Scrum process
• Report of recommended practices
Week 2-4
Sprint 0

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PATTERN 2: ACCELERATING
Accelerating Agile
adoption: Ideal for
teams are trying
Agile but
inexperienced.
Designed to speed
up adoption and
achieve concrete,
tangible
improvements.
Duration: 3-4
iterations, typically
6-8 weeks
Overall Assessment
• Retrospective workshop
• Technical debt workshop
• One-to-one interview
with team members
• Agile/Scrum assessment
• Observation of existing
Agile practices
• Agree on success criteria
Bridging the gaps
• Identify skill/knowledge
gap and prepare
workshops
• Deliver role-specific
training/coaching with
team members
Team Coaching
• Coincide with the current sprint/iteration cadence
• Product management skills for Product Owners
• Facilitation techniques for Scrum Masters/Project
Managers
• Pair with technical team members to help on
engineering best practices
Week 1-2
Deliverables
• Assessment report &
recommended course of
actions
• Gap analysis &
Engagement plan
Deliverables
• Training/workshop help
team members bridging
identified gaps
• Report of recommended
practices
Deliverables
• Skills transferred
• Measurable improvements
Weeks 3-4 Weeks 5-8

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PATTERN 3: CONTINUOUS
IMPROVEMENT
Break that Barrier: Ideal
for teams who are
comfortable with Agile
but face several
challenges of a fluent
Agile team: e.g. speed &
predictability of delivery
Duration: Depends on
topic & context,
typically 4-6 weeks
Problem Defined
• Agile/Scrum assessment
• Investigate deep under the
surface to identify symptoms
and problem.
• Define problem and
measurable success criteria
• Consultancy approach with
team members to come up
with solution
Problem Solved
• Iteratively tackle the problem while maintaining
metrics to guide progress.
• Collaboratively work with team members and other
relevant stakeholders for a comprehensive solution.
• Depending on the nature of the challenge at hand,
coaching team members to address the underlying
issues and prevent them from occur again in the
future.
Week 1
Deliverables
• Assessment report of the
problem and recommended
course of actions
• Gap analysis & action plan
Deliverables
• Agree success criteria met
• Report of recommended practices & skills/knowledge
transfer.
Weeks 2-6

34. BUILD SUSTAINABLE
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
Agile
Practitioners
Agile Product
Management
Agile Technical
Practices
Agile Testing
DevOps
Architecture
Forum
Lean
Management
Build Communities Around Interests
o Start with a community of Agile
practitioners/supporters
o Core groups: Product, Technical,
Testing
o Other more specialized groups:
Security, Architecture, DevOps.
Changes are sustainable when people
believe in and continuously seek for
ways to advance status quo, without
much management interventions.

35. RECAP
1. Understand human psychology with respect to
changes
2. Strengthen your scaffolding with external
help
o Pattern 1: Bootstrapping
o Pattern 2: Accelerating
o Pattern 3: Continuous Improvement
3. Build communities of practices to carry
the torch

36. Q&A
Vu Tung Lam
Agile Coach, Engineering
Director

37. THANK YOU!