Failing @ Scaling: Don’t panic, and carry a towel!

Em Campbell-PrettyPartner, Context Matters

@PrettyAgile [email protected]

Mark Richards Partner, Context Matters

@[email protected]

Failing @ Scaling:DON’T PANIC!& carry a towel

MEET SCALED AGILE HITCHHIKERS EM & MARK

Anti-Pattern 1:Huge Teams Rather Than

Teams of Teams

INTRODUCING THE TOTAL PERSPECTIVE VORTEX

https://flic.kr/p/gLTAN6

“To Trin Tragula’s horror, … he realised that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot have is a sense of proportion”

Need tag line and image

SURELY LIFE WOULD BE SIMPLER WITH ONE BIG TEAM...

https://flic.kr/p/fuB8SQ

Project Manager

Product Owner Business Analyst Change Lead Technical Lead

Logical Data Modeller

Physical Data Modeller

Physical Data Modeller

Vender Project Manger

On Site ETL On Site ETL

On Site ETL Off shore ETL

Off shore ETL Off shore ETL

DBA

Business Intelligence Test Lead

Test Analyst

Enterprise Architect Data SME

Scrum Master

A 22 PERSON AGILE TEAM???

Team Size

Throughput

Scrum Master

Technical Lead Test Lead Developer Developer Developer Developer Developer

SMALL CROSS FUNCTION TEAMS

9 WOMEN CAN’T MAKE A BABY IN ONE MONTH

WHY LARGE TEAMS DON’T WORK

START WHERE YOU ARE AND EVOLVE TO FEATURE TEAMS

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HUGE TEAMS: FROOD INSIGHTS

“After 8, people don’t collaborate”

Adding people to a team wont necessarily make it deliver faster.

Be pragmatic. A small component team may be better than a large feature team.

Anti-Pattern 2:Out of the Box

or Out of the Box

INTRODUCING THE BABELFISH

The Babelfish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars

than anything else in the history of creation!

ALL-TOO-COMMON APPROACH TO SCALING AGILE

Requirements(Waterfall)

Design(Waterfall)

System of Record Build(Waterfall)

Agile Build

Integration Test(Waterfall)

Deploy(ITIL)

Pick a Scaling FrameworkApply language/labelsAnnounce Success

PICK A BOX

SAFe LESS Spotify

DAD NEXUS ESP

Scrum @ Scale

Integral Agile

Roll Your Own

DON’T CHANGE WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND

DOES A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING MAKE A TASTY CAKE?

The fanatical proponents of baseball tell us that it is a very exciting game, fun to play and fun to watch. They are clearly either stupid or evil or both, because we tried baseball and it didn’t work …

WE TRIED BASEBALL

We tried baseball and it didn’t work

http://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball

OUT OF THE BOX: FROOD INSIGHTS

Learn by doing

Pick the Scaling Approach that’s right for your context

Inspect and Adapt

Implement it “out of the box”

Anti-Pattern 3:Too many coaches in the kitchen

(with too many recipes)

MEET EDDIE, THE SHIPBOARD COMPUTER

Eddie:

I am pleased to inform you that two nuclear missiles are now headed this way. If you don’t mind, I am going to take action.

Zaphod:COMPUTER DO SOMETHING!

Eddie:Ok, switching to manual mode. Good luck!

HOW MANY COACHES DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?

IGNORE IT AND IT WILL GO AWAY

PICK A HORSE

WHO’S ON FIRST?

MAINTAINING ALIGNMENT WITH CHAPTERS & GUILDS

TOO MANY COACHES: FROOD INSIGHTS

Create communities of practice to maintain alignment across coaches.

Pick a scaling approach and a strategic advisor. Inform your coaches of your decision.

Hold your coaches accountably for alignment to your strategy

Anti-Pattern 4:Agile is only a Process

INTRODUCING LUNKWILL AND FOOK

Programmers of Deep Thought

Individuals and InteractionsOVER

Processes and Tools

HOW DID AGILE BECOME A PROCESS THING?

NO DEVELOPER BUY-IN, NO SUCCESS

ITERATIVE AND INCREMENTAL …

ENVIRONMENT PROBLEMS CAN BE VERY EXPENSIVE

AGILE IS ONLY A PROCESS: FROOD INSIGHTS

Don’t ignore your developers in your training plan

Invest early and aggressively in achieving full-stack Continuous Integration

Embed agile technical practices through coding kata, mob programming and …

Anti-Pattern 5:Agile is only for developers.

Not the PMO.

MEET THE GALACTIC HYPERSPACE PLANNING COUNCIL

“People of Earth, your attention please.

This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will not doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyerspatial express route through your start system, and regretteably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition.

The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.”

WATERFALL GOVERNANCE APPLIED TO AGILE DELIVERY?!

Executive Governance Business Steering

Program Committee

OCM BPR

Assurance Committee

IT Control

Program Board

Project Control Board



Program Board




Compliance Service Operations

Agile Team

THERE IS GOING TO BE A COLLISION

Embrace Agile & Lean

ENCOURAGE THE PMO TO EMBRACE AGILE & LEAN

AN AGILE PMO

https://voice.adobe.com/a/mNvq5/

LEAN PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

AGILE IS ONLY FOR DEVELOPERS: FROOD INSIGHTS

The best way to learn about agile and lean is by doing it! How can you manage or govern what you don’t understand?

Agile is for the PMO (and lots of other non-software people) tooLean portfolio management enables agile at scale

Anti-Pattern 6:Forget you’re standing

in a Waterfall

INTRODUCING LINTILLA

One particular cloning machine was asked to produce 6 copies of a wonderfully talented and attractive girl called Lintilla …

The machine got badly out of synch, however, and it malfunctioned in such a way that it got halfway through creating each new Lintillabefore the previous one was completed, which meant that it was impossible to ever turn it off without committing murder.

AT SCALE, BI-MODAL WILL LAST 5-8 YEARS

FORGETTING THOSE YOU RELY ON MAY NOT BE AGILE

PRETENDING THERE’S NO DEADLINE

PLANNING IN IGNORANCE OF PRODUCTION RULES

Code Freeze

Integration Test Perf Test Pen Test Pre-prod

Deploy Go/No Go Prod Deploy

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The Harsh Reality (planned or otherwise)

The “Agile” Plan

STANDING IN A WATERFALL: FROOD INSIGHTS

Your agile plan should cover the whole lifecycle, even the waterfall bits

Invite your waterfall friends to your agile planning events

Understand the lead times of those around you

Anti-Pattern 7:The fish rots from the head.

MEET ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX, PRESIDENT

Trillian:You idiot, you signed the order to destroy Earth!

Zaphod:I did?

Arthur:He did?

Trillian:Love and kisses, Zaphod? You didn’t even read it, did you?

Zaphod:Well, I’m president, I don’t have a lot of time for reading.

A CHEQUE BOOK COMMITMENT

https://flic.kr/p/b2JSuk

THE INVISIBLE WALL

IT IS A TWO WAY STREET

https://flic.kr/p/nNgsnx

THE FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD: FROOD INSIGHTS

Teams need to be inclusive of leadership.

A cheque book commitment is not a commitment.

Executives need to model the behaviours they expect from their management teams.

Leaders need to be actively involved.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The true secret to scaling is learning to learn together.

Prepare to be wrong –Learn to set tripwires

So long and thanks for all the fish!

Em Campbell-PrettyPartner, Context Matters

@PrettyAgile [email protected]

Mark Richards Partner, Context Matters

@[email protected]