Agile Transformations that Stick: Lessons from salesforce.com’s Enterprise Journey

Agile Summit Turkey, 2013Nicola Dourambeis

Safe Harbor Statement

Safe harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This presentation may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If any such uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions proves incorrect, the results of salesforce.com, inc. could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make. All statements other than statements of historical fact could be deemed forward-looking, including any projections of subscriber growth, earnings, revenues, or other financial items and any statements regarding strategies or plans of management for future operations, statements of belief, any statements concerning new, planned, or upgraded services or technology developments and customer contracts or use of our services.

The risks and uncertainties referred to above include – but are not limited to – risks associated with developing and delivering new functionality for our service, our new business model, our past operating losses, possible fluctuations in our operating results and rate of growth, interruptions or delays in our Web hosting, breach of our security measures, the immature market in which we operate, our relatively limited operating history, our ability to expand, retain, and motivate our employees and manage our growth, new releases of our service and successful customer deployment, and utilization and selling to larger enterprise customers. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of salesforce.com, inc. is included in our annual report on Form 10-K for our fiscal year ended January 31, 2008, our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for our fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2008, and in other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents are available on the SEC Filings section of the Investor Information section of our Web site.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase our services should make the purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com, inc. assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

Nicola DourambeisVP Agile Infrastructure DeliverySalesforce.com

Who We Are: Cloud Computing Driver, Catalyst and Evangelist

Mainframe

Today1960s

Client/Server

1980s

No Hardware/Software

Subscription Model

Automatic Upgrades

Constant Innovation

Enterprise

Cloud Computing

#1 in Cloud Computing and CRM

#1World’s #1

CRMCloud

Computing

Innovation 2011, 2012,

2013

The back story

3Number of people in R&D

fast innovativesmart

7 years later

rapid success

47,700+Customers

1,100,000Subscribers

10 Billion

transactions per quarter

and it was becoming more difficult to deliver

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Features Delivered per Team

Days between Major Releases

Lack of responsiveness, lack of team alignment on priorities

Unpredictable completion of anything

Lack of Visibility

Resource Bottlenecks

Infrequent Customer Feedback

What did we do about it?

What is ADM?

ADM (Adaptive Delivery Methodology)

salesforce.com’s flavor of agile

Scrum project management framework

XP practices

Based on Lean principles

The Rollout

Gain Executive Alignment

Self-organized Scrum Teams

Projects

PrioritizedBacklogs

Figure out your team structure

Invest in training Everyone

Everyone jumps in together

Create a dedicated, cross-functional rollout

team

Position as a return to our core values

Get Coaching Help

Create ScrumMaster

and Product Owner

communities

Experiment, be patient and expect

to make mistakes

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Features Delivered per Team

Days between Major Releases

Transformation Results

The Beginning (2006)2006

25+ agile teamsin R&D

This will work when your organization is

small

But when you grow large, you need

more

We scale both deep and wide

Embrace Difference and be prepared to stretch Agility

Scale with values

One Codeline

Just enough

structure but no more

ADM Release Cycle

Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan

Release Release ReleaseRelease

Coordinate release planning with generic

framework

Planning cycle for next release

Planning cycle for next release

Planning cycle for next release

Tools Help

But really, it’s the people that make things happen

And we make a big investment in collaboration

Maintain Technical HealthDebt is the Enemy

Create a Single Definition of Done

Stop the codeline when test failures are too high

Status Metric Now(7/30) Release Criteria

Potentially Releasable Metrics Feature Freeze Threshold

Basic Ftest 100% 100.0%

Utest 100% 100.0%

Full Ftest 100% >99.8%

Extended Ftest 96.86% >99.75%

Basic Selenium 99.76% 100.0%

Selenium 99.6% >99.5%

Unresolved Integrations 0 0

Strong Attention to metrics

Maintain team focus

Hire for Values and Culture Fit

2013

200+ agile teams

R&D, IT, & Technical Operations

Lessons Learned

Be Bold and don’t go Halfway

Get everyone aligned and committed

Always look for things to improve

It’s ok to fail along the way

Stick to your principles

Focus on values over mechanics

Agile does work at scale

Let small successes give you confidence to push further

Questions?