Agile Program Management: Networks, Not Hierarchies

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"Agile Program Management: Networks, Not Hierarchies"

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Presented by:

Johanna Rothman Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.

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Johanna Rothman Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.

Known as the “Pragmatic Manager,”Johanna Rothman helps organizational leaders identify problems and risks in their product development and recognize potential “gotchas,” seize opportunities, and remove impediments. Johanna is the technical editor foragileconnection.com and is author of Manage Your Job Search, Hiring Geeks That Fit, Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, the 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. She is currently writing a book about agile program management. In addition, Johanna writes columns for Stickyminds.com and projectmanagment.com, and blogs on jrothman.com, andcreateadaptablelife.com.

Agile Program Management:Networks, Not Hierarchies

Johanna Rothmanwww.jrothman.com@[email protected]

781-641-4046

© 2013 Johanna Rothman

What Are Your Objectives Today?

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Let’s hear them


Let’s Do a Program

I’ll hand out the instructions

We’ll debrief together

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What’s the Most Effective Way to Move Information In Any

Organization?

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Rumor Mill

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Imagine Managing the Flow of Features Through a Program ...

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Teams Create Features and Integrate

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Medium Programs

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Big Programs

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© 2013 Johanna Rothman10


Nuts and Bolts of Agile Programs

Think small to go big--short is beautiful

Short iterations: <= 2 weeks

Small stories: <= 1-2 team days

Just in time, evolving architecture

Networks of cross-functional teams

Short planning horizons

Plan to replan

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How Do You Organize the Teams?

Any form of agile or lean works

for the project teams

What’s key is small batch size

and continuous integration

You don’t need branded agile

Be agnostic about how each

team works, as long as they

deliver

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Feature-Done at Regular Intervals

Demo

Assess risk

Update the architecture

Update the roadmap

Update/Change the project

portfolio

...

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Cynefin Helps Us Understand How to Organize

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One team

Two-three teams

Four-nine teams

More than ten teams


The Core Team

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Kanban for the Core Team

See the Work in

Progress

Keep the deliverables

small

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Technical Program Team

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Each Feature Team

Cross-functional

Covers the roles

Decides how they want to

manage their own process

Yes, they do!

They commit completed

features to the rest of the

program

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Team Size Matters

Communication Paths=(N*N-N)/2

4 people, (16-4)/2=6

5 people, (25-5)/2=10

6 people, (36-6)/2=15

7 people, (49-7)/2=21

8 people, (56-8)/2=24

9 people, (81-9)/2=36

10 people (100-10)/2=45

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How to Connect the Feature Teams?

Many people say Scrum of Scrums

Scrum of Scrums is a hierarchy

Does not take advantage of the

rumor mill

Manager-directed

Problematic in a geographically

distributed program

We need another way that is self-

organizing that scales

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Small World Networks

Small world

networks are

more-and-less

connected agile

teams

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Six Degrees of Separation

How connected are you to

everyone else?

Some of you are highly

connected

Some less so

We can take advantage of

this and the rumor mill

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Use Small World Networks

Feature teams take

responsibility

Use small world networks

Use communities of

practice

Requires roadmaps

Requires transparency

Requires facilitation23


Roadmap

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Transparency

Each project must track its own

velocity and learn what done means

Keep stories small

Limit WIP

Velocity is personal to a team

Teams build trust across the program

People and teams start with

themselves and deliver, deliver, deliver

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Program Measurements

Demos of working software

Features complete

Product Backlog burnup

Time to your releaseable

deliverable

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Recognize Inertia

Inertia helps you see when things

are stuck

What can you deliver today?

How can you help your team

deliver today?

Short iterations and small batches

help focus the team on short

delivery cycles

Kanban might be better

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Build Momentum

Momentum helps each

team deliver something

to each other and build

on micro-commitments

Goes back to extending

trust

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Facilitation

As the program becomes

larger, each feature team

requires a full-time agile

project manager/Scrum

Master: someone who is a

servant leader

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Agile Programs Are About Collaboration

Teams collaborate in the small to

create products in the large

Leverage each iteration’s learning

to plan the next set of deliverables

Roadmaps help

Communities of practice help

Demos are a must

If you don’t know how to do agile

as a small team, learn that first

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Autonomy, Collaboration, Exploration

Each feature team must be

autonomous to complete

their work

They collaborate to work

together

They explore to retain the

agility

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Add Me to Your Small World Network...

Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Managment

Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More

Projects

Agile and Lean Program Management: Collaborating Across the Organization

Much more on jrothman.com

Stay in touch?

Pragmatic Manager: www.jrothman.com/pragmaticmanager

Please link with me on LinkedIn

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Agile Program Management: Networks, Not Hierarchies

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