Staying agile

Multi-team product development, the modern way

/meWeb guy since 1999Agile #aHa in 2005e-* organizations

1 to 50 teams scale “expert”

“If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants” - I. Newton

Craig Larman - the purist Henrik Kniberg - the pragmatist Sriram Narayan - the herudit

This is NOT about “i’m in a big org, with

hundreds of engineers, how can we make it more

agile?”

This is IS about: “i’m in a small,cool, nimble org and we are growing, how can we stay agile?”

Why do companies hire more “IT” people?● 1 minute - All: think individually. Find 2 or 3 reasons “why”● 2 minutes - All: share your answers with the person next to

you● 3 minutes - a few of you: share your answers back with us

“Hire only when it hurts”

AND

“Hire slowly”

I know small “tech teams” that sustain globally successful businesses ...

… and I happened to lead one, too :-)

(btw, what a coincidence... 3 xp shops!)

1950s, first large scale software intensive product development, S.A.G.E. - shipped over budget and partly outdated.A S.a.G.E. director was asked: “if you had to do this again, what would you do differently?”

“FIND THE TEN BEST PEOPLE AND WRITE ThE ENTIRE THING THEMSELVES”

(horowitz 1975, quoted in larman, 2010)

Still companies add people, instead of LEVERAGING on ...

- Product-wise:- Early validation of ideas and solutions (Lean UX)- Impact mapping (vs backlog as a laundry list)

- Tech-wise:- Slow down to go faster- Pay back any debt soon- Use state of the art engineering practices

- People-wise:- Hire great people- Give them the best environment

Small teams, kind of given

How to organize work across teams: big improvement opportunity! :-)

Case study I - the check box odyssey

Case study II - the luxury channel Epic

#walkofshame

You can learn from our mistakes...

- Component teams (FE vs BE, internal vs internal systems,...)

- Separate QA team in-house and off-shore- The Bug fixing team

- The Ops team- ...

Autonomousco-locatedCross-functional multi-learning self-organizing

product team

Autonomousco-locatedCross-functional multi-learning self-organizing

product teams

Autonomousco-locatedCross-functional multi-learning self-organizing

feature teams

#scaling"Scaling Agile is good business for scaling vendors. It’s not necessarily good advice for you”

Ron Jeffries

“Agile teams coordinate using tests”

Kniberg

AGAIN: help a 20 teams company re-design its operating model is a

fascinating topic and not our focus (not tonight :)

Autonomous product teams, fully cross-functional (cross-departement)

Narayan

“LESS IS SCRUM APPLIED TO MANY TEAMS WORKING TOGETHER ON ONE PRODUCT”

A process / a methodology which is …“Lightweight & disciplined”

“Unobtrusive”“Barely sufficient”

?(almost done. Questions, so far?)

pro-Tip I: “You can’t use the things written on the right to fix the things written on the left”

pro-Tip II: AutonomyMasteryPurpose… for your team(s), too

Pro-tip III:“Continuous attention to

Technical excellence and good design enhances agility”

thanks!carlo.beschi at gmail.comslideshare.com/cbeschi

Happy Agile Coach at ASOS

Glad to speak more about: “scaling”, “coaching”, “transforming”, ...

Ping me :-)

Assetshttp://blog.crisp.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Real-life-agile-scaling.pdf

http://www.slideshare.net/JonTerry2/from-chaos-to-confidence-leankits-pd-operating-model

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Rework-Jason-Fried/8324671226

[in italian] https://vimeo.com/113090009

https://pragprog.com/book/rjnsd/the-nature-of-software-development

https://vimeo.com/30419045

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Large-Scale-Scrum-More-Less-Addison-Wesley-Signature-Cohn/0321985710

http://less.works

http://www.informit.com/store/agile-it-organization-design-for-digital-transformation-9780133903355

http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html