Serving Federal Government Customers with Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

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NAME: Michael King

TITLE: Chief Technology Officer

ORGANIZATION: Halfaker and Associates

SERVING FEDERAL CUSTOMERS WITH SAFE CONCEPTS


• Company founded in 2006 with the vision of Continuing to Serve…

• Founded by West Point graduate and Army Military Police Officer Dawn Halfaker (Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned, Woman-Owned, 8(a) Small Business)

• 200+ employee company focused on providing Data Analytics, Software Engineering, IT Infrastructure, and Cyber Security solutions to Federal Government customers

• Halfaker serves VA, DoD, HHS, DHS, USDA, and Transportation

ABOUT HALFAKER

Culture built on Military Principles

Lead from the Front Never Give Up Plan, Plan, Plan Take Care of Your People Know the Job above you and below

you Demand Excellence


AGENDA

• About Halfaker

• Business Challenge

• Approach: Build Scaled Agile System

• Many Different Scaled Frameworks

• Introduction to SAFe

• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

• Portfolio (Enterprise) Level

• Effective Strategy

• Strategy Decomposition

• Consistent Enterprise Architecture

• Synchronized Value Streams

• Program Level

• Vision-based Enterprise Metrics

• Invest in Program Leaders

• Define Program Rhythm

• Invest Time in Planning

• Build Sufficient Runway

• Team Level

• Define Team Lifecycles

• Align Responsibilities with Lifecycle

• Build Quality in from the Beginning

• Questions?


• Halfaker began to accelerate in growth in 2013, approaching 100 employees spread across 20 projects

• As the Company grew, we struggled to maintain consistency, ensure quality, and manage riskacross increasing number of projects spread across the country

• To provide excellent service, we relied on a few heroes who were constantly reacting to emergencies, swarming issues like 5 year olds playing soccer

BUSINESS CHALLENGE


• Halfaker needed to invest in processes and tools that support them, in order to scale from a small business to a sustainable mid-tier organization:

Codify how we ensured every customer would receive excellent, innovative results

Align people, systems, and processes to strategic goals

APPROACH: BUILD SCALED AGILE SYSTEM

Strategic Goals

Business Processes

Templates and Forms

Business Systems

(Applications)

Guidelines and Policies

Organization

Structure

“…Losers have goals. Winners have systems.” – Scott Adams, creator Dilbert


MANY DIFFERENT SCALED FRAMEWORKS


INTRODUCTION TO SAFE

• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)® defines itself as:

The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) is a freely revealed knowledge base of proven, integrated patterns for enterprise-scale Lean-Agile development. It is scalable and modular, allowing each organization to apply it in a way that provides better business outcomes and happier, more engaged employees.

SAFe synchronizes alignment, collaboration, and delivery for large numbers of Agile teams. It supports both software and systems development, from the modest scale of well under 100 practitioners to the largest software solutions and complex cyber-physical systems, systems that require thousands of people to create and maintain. SAFe was developed in the field, based on helping customers solve their most challenging scaling problems. It leverages three primary bodies of knowledge: Agile development, Lean product development, and systems thinking.

• Halfaker uses SAFe as a library of best practices across the enterprise, not a one-size-fits-all solution – we use some SAFe concepts, but not others


SCALED AGILE FRAMEWORK® (SAFE)

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Portfolio (Enterprise) Level


EFFECTIVE STRATEGY

Create traceable goals and associatedsub-goals, which are flowed down to aclear primary owner within theorganization

Meet quarterly to review progress andpriorities related to these goals

Publish an annual strategy plan one-pager so people can see the ‘bigpicture’

Manage a online Kanban boardshowing the high-level epics so peoplecan visualize who owns which goals,which upcoming quarter they’re due,and their status

Lessons Learned / Examples

Create Strategic Goals that can be clearly flowed down to relevant departments/teams

Monitor the progress against strategic goals, meeting periodically (e.g. quarterly) to review progress and priorities

Provide a visual way to show strategic goals and their progress (e.g. dashboard or epic board)

Key Concepts


User Stories

Epics

Features

Strategic Themes

Collaboration among Executives

STRATEGY DECOMPOSITION

Make it easy to trace how strategic themes are broken down into children items (e.g. epics, user stories)

Focus senior leaders on the “big picture” of themes or features, so they are not lost in the weeds of long backlogs of user stories

As your teams and your overall organization matures, you’ll be able to:

1. Estimate the complexity of a strategic theme, feature, or epic

2. Prioritize each item

3. Estimate completion dates for each item, with increasing accuracy


CONSISTENT ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

Provide great tools for planning (e.g.JIRA, Microsoft Project), collaboration(e.g. Confluence), and communication(e.g. Skype for Business, HipChat)

Allow teams to tailor tools or useother tools, when appropriate (butencourage/enforce consistency)


Identify someone or a team to define overall technology architecture/tools for the organization

Invest in great tools for your team, so they don’t need to resort to Shadow IT to get their jobs done

Invest in associated processes to your organization does things efficiently and consistently, when possible

Key Concepts


SYNCHRONIZED VALUE STREAMS

Use a battle rhythm to plan andmonitor strategic progress throughcompany-wide weekly, monthly, andquarterly activities

Publish the company battle rhythm toall company leaders, so they canclearly see the rhythm they areoperating within

Organize Operations Department(service delivery) around capabilitiesinstead of customers or geography, soproject teams can collaborate andsupport each other with shared talent


Organize your company around value streams to keep value as a clear central concept – keep the “why” (purpose) of your organization the clear center of these value streams

Synchronize the rhythm of your organization, both within each value stream and across them; so the organization can prioritize and adapt in a single ‘battle rhythm’

Key Concepts


Program Level


VISION-BASED ENTERPRISE METRICS

We identified critical numbers related to Customer Satisfaction (e.g. Surveys, CPARS scores), Process Efficiency, Growth (Pipeline and Bookings) Development (Training Plan Completion), and Financial(Revenue and Profit)

We review metrics in weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings that focus on various aspects of Company management to identify what to prioritize


Identify a short list of clearly defined metrics to align with your organization’s vision and strategic goals

Avoid ‘Vanity Metrics’ that don’t actually drive improvement (e.g. web traffic, number of subscribers)

Use ‘Balanced Scorecard’ approach to avoid focusing on a single type of metrics (e.g. Financial)

Monitor performance of key goals in frequent meetings – “What gets measured gets done”

Key Concepts


INVEST IN DIVISION/PROGRAM LEADERS

Allocate budget for sufficient leaders on large programs and teams

Invest time in identifying high-potential leaders and helping them advance (e.g. Leadership Development Program where junior leaders are given increasing responsibilities related to task, personnel, and financial management)

Invest in training leaders to use hierarchy (traceability) to keep the big picture visible – use epics and don’t get lost in long lists of user stories


Invest in Leaders for Divisions and Programs to provide sufficient capacity in execution, coordination, personnel development, and technical architecture

Release Train Engineer is a Scrum Master across a Program (multiple Teams)

System Architect provides cohesive technical leadership across a Program

Product Manager is Product Owner across a Program

Key Concepts


DEFINE PROGRAM RHYTHM

Quarterly Strategy Review meeting withcompany senior leaders presenting progressacross each department (release train)and discussing priorities

IT Department (composed of CustomerSolutions, Architecture, Internal Technology,and Quality teams) meets quarterly toreview progress and plan upcomingpriorities (see next slide) – each teampresents approaches to the other teams forfeedback and coordination


Synchronize teams across a Program (or Department) to a consistent rhythm

SAFe defines enterprise rhythm:

Continual Portfolio-level prioritization

3 month Program Increments (Program level), using groups of 5-12 Scrum Teams called Agile Release Trains (ARTs)

2 week Iterations (Sprints) at Team level

Insist on keeping a consistent rhythm – don’t delay/extend sprints or releases, instead tell people they can catch the next train

Key Concepts


INVEST TIME IN PLANNING

SAFe defines a Program Increment (PI) planning approach, which occurs every 10 – 12 weeks, where programs meet to review progress and plan upcoming priorities (see http://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/)

Key Concepts

http://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/


BUILD SUFFICIENT RUNWAY

Research Backlog provides sufficient userinterview and research findings to enableteams to create backlog items

User Story Runway provides sufficientrefined and prioritized backlog items forteams to work on, so teams can keepprogressing

Architectural Runway provides systemand software architectures for teams tobuild on

A useful metric is to track how much‘backlog’ you have, measured in weeks orsprints


The Architectural Runway is composed of the technology infrastructure and architectural decisions that enable work for development to advance – think of which work builds more asphalt and which work drives on it (consumes it)

The metaphor of building a runway to stay out of a crisis mode where decisions are not well thought out can be applied to many domains

Key Concepts


Team Level


DEFINE TEAM LIFECYCLES

Define Scrum, Kanban, and ScaledAgile lifecycles for teams to selectfrom, based on project type

Provide relevant processes asguidance for each lifecycle

Connect project leaders monthly for aProcess Improvement Team (PIT)meeting to identify how to improveprocesses, including lifecycle guidance

Conduct project retrospectives at theend of each project, so lessons learnedcan be captured and shared


Provide teams guidance on how to manage planning, execution, and review of work by defining Project/Team Lifecycles

Centralize best practices for how your teams manage work, so teams can learn from each other, not just themselves

Key Concepts


ALIGN RESPONSIBILITIES WITH LIFECYCLE

Incremental Agile transformation,changing lifecycles by team instead ofa “big bang” approach

Clearly identify Product Owner andScrum Master for Scrum-based teams

Connect teams through recurringstrategic planning and processimprovement meetings, so they canlearn from each other quickly


Identify and train leaders with roles that align with the lifecycles teams use to execute work

Define roles and responsibilities for team roles to align with lifecycle expectations (e.g. Don’t put Project Managers in the Scrum Master role without analysis, process design, and training)

Key Concepts


BUILD QUALITY IN FROM THE BEGINNING

Created enterprise quality expectationsrelated to peer reviews

Enables projects to plan quality, using areview matrix within a project’s QualityControl Plan (QCP)

Teams must select Quality ManagementRepresentative to lead team qualityactivities

Conduct semi-annual customer surveysand executive customer visits toproactively identify customer issues (ISO9001 practice)

Created enterprise Quality Managementdepartment to audit teams and programsto ensure consistent quality and compliance


Create culture where teams ensure quality throughout the work lifecycle, not just at the end

Create culture where teams create high-quality work themselves, and don’t rely on external auditors/quality assurance/testers to ensure quality

Defects are dramatically cheaper earlier in the process – a software defect may be 100x more expensive to fix in production vs. during requirements development

Key Concepts


QUESTIONS?

• Follow-up Questions? Want to Connect?

• Michael King, PMI-ACP, SAFe SA, PMP

• [email protected]

• @mikehking (Twitter)

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikehking

mailto:[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikehking

Government & Nonprofit

Serving Federal Government Customers with Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)