Scaling agility or descaling the organization?

Luca Sturaro - 10/03/2017

Branch Lombardia

About me15+ 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.comLinkedin: 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) • …

Scrum58%

Scrum/XP Hybrid10%

Custom Hybrid8%

Scrumban7%

Kanban5%

Iterative Dev.3%

Lean Dev.2%

FDD1%

DSDM1%

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 understandLightweight Difficult to master

Scrum is…

Simple to understandLightweight 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 ScrumWhat 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 LawOrganizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structureof 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

NexusRoles: 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

SAFeTeam 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

SAFeAgile 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

SAFePortfolio 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 Laws1. 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.

LeSSLeSS 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

LeSSLeSS framework: 1-8 teams1 Product:• 1 PO• 1 BacklogMultiple Teams with:• SMs • Product developers

LeSS Huge LeSS Huge: >8 teams1 Product:• 1 PO + APOs• 1 BacklogMultiple 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 countriesThey have:• Organizational focus on: autonomy and alignment• “Fail fast, learn fast” approach, no blame• Cross-Pollination over Standardization• Community over structureSupported 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