Challenges & Successes of Agile Implementation Webinar with BlackLine - XBOSoft

@xbosoft XBOSoft, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 1
Challenges and Successes in
Agile Implementation
Top Agile Challenges, How To Overcome Them,
and the Fruits You’ll Gain From Your Labor
with Greg Burns and Ron Ben Yosef, BlackLine
#XBOSoftWebinar

@xbosoft
XBOSoft
Dedicated to software quality improvement
Founded in 2006
We speed products to market with our expert:
• Software QA consulting
• Software testing
Global team with offices in San Francisco,Beijing
and Amsterdam
“Thorough, accurate and fast”
XBOSoft, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2

@xbosoft
House Rules
 Participants other than the speakers are muted
 Questions via the GoToWebinar control on the
right side of your screen or through Twitter
@XBOSoft
 Questions may be asked throughout the webinar -
we’ll try to answer them at the end
 You will receive info on recording after the webinar
Event hashtag: #XBOSoftwebinar

@xbosoft
Meet Our Speakers
Philip Lew
CEO and Founder, XBOSoft
• Relevant specialties and
passions
o Software quality process,
evaluation, measurement
and improvement
o Software quality in use /
UX design
o Mobile User Experience
and usability
o Cycling and travel
Karla Smith
Marketing Manager, XBOSoft
• Emails you about our
industry hot topic
webinars
• Invites you to download
our latest trends in
software testing white
papers
XBOSoft Team

@xbosoft
Guest Presenter
Greg Burns
• Greg is Director of Software Development,
BlackLine
• Joined the company as its third employee in
2001
• Starting as a Developer, discovered his passion
for leadership and the cultivation of a culture of
empowerment and innovation
• Has managed development of BlackLine’s SaaS application and overseen organization’s
massive growth, including scaling the technology, organization and processes across multiple
international teams
• Travels the world playing music and photographing the journey

@xbosoft XBOSoft, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6
Guest Presenter
Ron Ben Yosef
• Ron is a Certified Agile Coach and Senior Scrum
Master for Blackline
• Has worked in the information technology industry
for over a decade in various roles including Quality
Assurance Engineer, Project Manager and
Program Manager.
• For the last five years, has helped agile teams to
find and excel with the best agile methodology for
their needs. Coaches, mentors and teaches
Lean/Agile thinking, methods and tools to
organizations, teams and individuals.
• Is certified as PMP (Project Management Professional), Certified Agile Team
Facilitator and Certified Agile Coach (IC Agile).

@xbosoft
Why We’re Here
• Agile implementation is not always so smooth
and many organizations struggle especially
when scaling
• XBOSoft, working with BlackLine for over 8
years as their QA partner, has been part of an
incredibly successful agile implementation
• Invited BlackLine to share its success and
bumps along the way

@xbosoft
Agenda
• Typical Agile Implementation Problems
• How things were at BlackLine prior to agile
• Main drivers for BlackLine implementing agile
• Agile FAQS
– Fireside chat dialogue covering commonly asked
questions

@xbosoft
Typical Agile Implementation
Problems
• Cultural and a mindset shift
• Getting everyone involved, understanding
what agile is
• Definition of Done and Success criteria
• Not just doing waterfall faster in shorter
iterations
• Where to fit in various testing types amongst
continuous integration
• Misguided expectations

@xbosoft
Prior to Agile
Describe your process and the state of your
team before you adopted agile
• No formal process
• Small team, relatively flat structure
• Very close to the clients
• Moved fast, documented a little and talked
constantly

@xbosoft
Why Implement Agile
What were your main drivers for adopting
agile?
• Respond to client needs and maintain close
relationships at scale
• Visibility and transparency into SDLC across multiple
teams
• Accountability and ownership from the Development
teams
• Building a company roadmap across multiple teams
• Build in a process that resonates with our philosophy
of constant improvement

@xbosoft
BLACKLINE USES SCRUM. DID YOU CONSIDER ANY OTHER
AGILE METHODOLOGIES?
Agile FAQ1

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Scrum Lifecycle

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WHAT WERE THE MAIN CHALLENGES YOU ENCOUNTERED
FROM THE FOLLOWING PERSPECTIVES:
ORGANIZATIONAL, PEOPLE, PROCESS AND TECHNOLOGY?
HOW DID YOU RESOLVE THOSE, TACTICALLY?
Agile FAQ2

@xbosoft
Restructure
Functional teams
Cross
functional
team
FE
BE
QADB
UX

@xbosoft
Main Implementation Challenges
Organizational
• Getting buy-in and understanding
• Changing roles and responsibilities
• Scaling up for larger teams
• Common understanding and language
• Creating realistic expectations
• Defining scope (MVP) and acceptance criteria

@xbosoft
Agile Transformation
Organizational
Transformation
Agile practices
adoption
People and
cultural
transformation
• Restructure the
organization and
create agile teams
• Establish policies
and SDLC
• Teach people to
work to collaborate
with their new roles
and responsibilities
• Train teams to
work with agile

@xbosoft
Process
• Problems in iteration planning
• Completing work within the sprint
• Unplanned work in the sprint
• Understanding and handling-planning for
technical debt
• Measuring the process
• Estimating
• Inconsistency across teams

@xbosoft
Organizational
Transformation
Practices
adoption
People and
cultural
transformation
• Identify a team for a
POC
• Identify SM and
Product owner
• Break projects into
Epics, User Stories
and form backlogs
• Set Sprints, Daily
Stand-up, reviews
and retrospectives
• Establish a planning
and a release
cadence
• Meet commitments
regularly

@xbosoft
People
• Adoption and buy in
• Training
• Cultural changes and adaption
• Team growth and recruitment
• Understanding the role and importance of the
PO
• Working with offshore and hybrid teams

@xbosoft
Organizational
Transformation
Adopt
Practices
People and
cultural
transformation
• Re-establish the
meaning of a team
• Help the team
members to handle
some unknown,
estimate and to
inspect and adapt
• Create collaboration
among and across
teams
• Empower individuals
• Help engineering
managers understand
their role in agile

@xbosoft
Technologies
• Getting team to work on sprint scope and
nothing but the sprint – tickets prioritized by
PO
• Tooling to support agile
• Tooling to support frequent deployments
• Tooling for communication

@xbosoft
IN RETROSPECT, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE
DIFFERENTLY?
Agile FAQ3

@xbosoft
What Would You Have Done
Differently?
• Agile training
• Designate one process / Agile expert to own
the process and coach others
• Create an agile transition plan to capture all
development activities
• Validate we have the stakeholders buy-in for
using agile
• Make sure other departments transition to
agile at the same time

@xbosoft
WHERE ARE YOU AT IN THE PROCESS TODAY?
Agile FAQ4

@xbosoft
Current Agile Progress
• Adopted agile across all of our development
teams but continue to improve the process all
the time
• Company buy-in for essential dedicated roles
• Re-defining business verticals after major
recruitment effort
• Integrated testing into each agile team, and
continuous testing

@xbosoft
Scaling Challenges Ahead
• Defining consistency across teams
• Another round of training given number of new hires and
teams
• Ensuring that staff understands expectations around
roles, and artifacts related to the "common vocabulary",
i.e. MVP and associated documentation, tickets
• Training, training, training (internal, external, cross-team,
etc.)
• Embedding service groups (DevOps, DB, UX, etc. ) into
the agile teams (cross-functional teams)
• Working to get to more frequent releases to production

@xbosoft
SEEMS THAT YOU HAVE SOME SORT OF AGILE HYBRID
WHICH MOST ORGANIZATIONS DO. THAT’S THE SPIRIT OF
AGILE. IN CLOSING, WHAT TIDBITS OF ADVICE DO YOU HAVE
FOR ORGANIZATIONS GOING DOWN THE AGILE PATH.
Agile FAQ5

@xbosoft
Post your webinar questions on Twitter @XBOSoft
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services@xbosoft.com
Thank you!
Q+A
www.xbosoft.com

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