Scaling agility or descaling the organization?

Luca Sturaro - 10/03/2017

Branch Lombardia

About me

15+ in IT Software as consultant or employee

• Areas: embedded systems, desktop, web

• Domains: Energy/Automation, Telecom, currently Medical Product

R&D Program/Project Manager@ Omnilab (Abbott Group)

Mail: hcsturix74@gmail.com

Linkedin: https://it.linkedin.com/in/lucasturaro

Distributed Teams: Members of a team are co-located but teams can be in different locations. Multi-Team, Multi-site, Off-shore: Multiple teams on a single product, in different locations and time zones (not recommended but it happens for large products) Dispersed Teams: Team members can be in different locations (not recommended, we are not talking about this case)

Before starting…

Agility?

Choose your flavor

Agility Flavors

• Scrum (framework) • Extreme Programming • Lean / Kanban

• DSDM • Feature Driven

Development (FDD) • …

Scrum 58%

Scrum/XP Hybrid 10%

Custom Hybrid 8%

Scrumban 7%

Kanban 5%

Iterative Dev. 3%

Lean Dev. 2%

FDD 1%

DSDM 1%

Agile Modeling 1%

Others 4%

Scrum Scrum/XP Hybrid Custom Hybrid Scrumban Kanban Iterative Dev.

Lean Dev. FDD DSDM Agile Modeling Others

Agility Flavors

From VersionOne survey (2016)

Scrum / XP: 68%

Scrum

Scrum

A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while

productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.

The Scrum framework consists of Scrum Teams and their associated roles, events, artifacts, and rules.

Scrum Team: • 1 Product Owner • 1 Scrum Master • Development Team

(Cross-functional)

Scrum is…

Simple to understand

Lightweight Difficult to master

Scrum is…

Simple to understand

Lightweight Difficult to master

WE ARE HERE!

1 Team Scrum

What does «difficult to master» mean in 1-team Scrum? What are the challenges?

Perspectives:

• Team(s)

• Organization - Sr. Managers

Multi-Team Scrum

What does «difficult to master» mean in multi-team Scrum? Anything else?

Perspectives:

• Team(s)

• Organization - Sr. Managers

@Team Level • Communication (new language to learn: Business

/ Tech) • Training & Coaching for teams • High technical debt • Motivation & Engagement • Servant & Host Leadership vs. Command &

Control attitude Some induced by Organizational Structure

@Organizational Level • Communication (ex. Sr. Management

expectations, reports, KPI) • Coaching (Sr. Managers) • Resistance Organizational Structure (by design) – ex. SILOS

Some examples

At scale issues don’t grow linearly

we often assume they do

Conway’s Law

Organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structure

of these organizations

http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html

Structure

• What’s our current organizational structure?

• Are we a «flat org», matrix or what?

• What’s our company optimized for?

Background

• What’s our (hi)story?

• Scrum company since the beginning?

• Big Organization moving to Agility from a previous process?

Nexus

A Nexus is a unit: • 3-9 Scrum Teams • 1 Nexus Integration Team

Nexus Integration Team: • 1 PO • 1 SM • Product Developers

Nexus Roles: New role: Nexus Integration Team to coordinate, coach, and supervise the application of Nexus and the operation of Scrum so the best outcomes are derived. Artifacts: New: Nexus Sprint Backlog to assist with transparency during the Sprint Events: Some additions to usual Scrum events (Planning, Retrospective, Daily) Sprint Review is replaced by Nexus Sprint Review

Scaled Agile Framework 4.0 (Dean Leffingwell): 3 Levels: • Team • Program • Portfolio Core Values: • Alignment • Built-in Quality • Transparency • Program Execution http://www.scaledagileframework.com/

SAFe

SAFe Team Level: • Iteration-based delivery of product increments (2wks) • Execution through Scrum/XP practices • Empowered, self-organizing, self-managing cross functional teams • Teams operate under program vision, architecture and user experience guidance

Value Delivery : User Stories

SAFe Agile Release Train: • Long lived, self-organizing team of

5-12 teams focused on an area or solution

• Time-boxed Program Increment (10 weeks)

• Aligned on a common goal (single backlog)

• Deliver value (features/benefits) frequently

Program Level: • Team of agile teams • System increments on iteration basis

(2 weeks) • Aligned on a common goal (single

backlog) • Common sprint lengths • Release planning cadence Value Delivery: Features & Benefits

SAFe Portfolio Level: • Centralize strategy, decentralizes execution • Enterprise Architecture is a first class citizen • Kanban system and WIP • Objective metrics to support Kaizen

Value Description : Business & Architectural Epics

LeSS

https://less.works/

LeSS • LeSS is about descaling the organization instead of scaling Scrum • It removes “local optimizations” focusing globally on:

o Customer o Product (360°) with Organizational Agility (turn on a dime for a dime)

• It is based on cross-functional, self-organizing and self-managing feature teams

(no specialized component-teams, T-Shaped workers)

• It addresses organizational design & structure scientifically (ex. Causal Loop Diagrams, Queue Theory,…)

Larman’s Laws 1. Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo middle- and first-level manager and “specialist” positions & power structures. 2. As a corollary to (1), any change initiative will be reduced to redefining or overloading the new terminology to mean basically the same as status quo. 3. As a corollary to (1), any change initiative will be derided as “purist”, “theoretical”, “revolutionary”, "religion", and “needing pragmatic customization for local concerns” — which deflects from addressing weaknesses and manager/specialist status quo. 4. Culture follows structure.

LeSS

LeSS consists in two framework: • LeSS • LeSS Huge (> 8 Teams)

LeSS is the sweet-spot between principles (ex. LO) and rules (ex. RUP) , like Scrum.

Principles

LeSS LeSS framework: 1-8 teams 1 Product: • 1 PO • 1 Backlog Multiple Teams with: • SMs • Product developers

LeSS Huge LeSS Huge: >8 teams 1 Product: • 1 PO + APOs • 1 Backlog Multiple Teams with: • SMs • Product developers

APO: Area Product Owner (can serve multiple teams)

Founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek in Stockholm, launched service in Oct 2008. They started as a Scrum company. Now: 1600+ employee in 30 countries They have: • Organizational focus on: autonomy and alignment • “Fail fast, learn fast” approach, no blame • Cross-Pollination over Standardization • Community over structure Supported by: Internal surveys, Unconferences, co-learning initiatives

Spotify

Squad: • Similar to a Scrum Team • Autonomous and self-organized • SM -> Agile Coach Tribes: • Co-located (< 100 people) • Work on a common Area of the product • Minimum interdependency Chapter: • Skills community (UI, back-end,…) • Chapter lead is line manager Guilds: • Cross-tribe Community of interests • Guild unconferences

Spotify

H. Kniberg & A. Ivarsson - Oct 2012

Questions?

• https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/ • https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-culture-part-2/ • http://www.scaledagileframework.com • https://www.scrum.org/ • https://less.works

Sources