Managing agile at scale

Mother, developer, project manager, technology generalist, career coach
@chazonacodes
@maxxpotential

Image: Headshot of Chazona — woman with long dark curly hair and glasses, smiling.

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Recap

What do we remember to this point?

Waterfall

Image: Photograph of a wide waterfall cascading over a rocky cliff into a pool surrounded by green trees and stones in the foreground.

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. - The Agile Manifesto

Agile Methodologies

• Kanban
• Scrum
• Extreme Programming (XP)

Kanban

• Board as a tool adopted by Scrum/XP teams
• No prescribed meetings
• Reducing cycle times

Scrum

• More prescriptive on teams and meetings
• How the work gets done up to teams
• Increasing velocity
• Productivity concern

Extreme Programming (XP)

• Short sprints
• Priority-driven, can add to sprint as priorities change
• Pair Programming
• Test-Driven Development
• Refactoring
• Engineering concern

Commonalities

• Stories
• Features
• Epics

Commonalities: Teams

• Scrum/Agile team
• Scrum Master
• Product Owner

Commonalities: Events

• Sprints
• Daily Standup/Scrum
• Backlog
• Sprint Planning
• Sprint Review/Demo
• Retrospective

Benefits of Agile

• Productivity
• Stakeholder engagement
• Individual ownership
• Focus on users, business value
• Higher quality, fewer deployed defects
• Predictability: delivery, cost

Scaling Agile

Making small teams work for big business

Image: Photograph of a frustrated young man in a black blazer sitting at a desk with a laptop, gripping his head with both hands and grimacing as though he has just witnessed the most horrifying thing in his life. Eyeglasses, a computer mouse and a phone rest on the desk; an office whiteboard is behind him.

Image: Daffodil-branded diagram illustrating how Agile scales upward. Concentric arches show “DAYS” feeding into “ITERATION” capsules, which group into “RELEASE” arches, which group into two “PRODUCT” arches, which together sit beneath a large encompassing “PORTFOLIO” arch.

Problems with Scaling Agile

• Designed for small teams, low overhead
• Flexibility vs stability
• Ownership from the bottom vs power concentrated at the top
• Non-engineering departments
• Culture wars
• Rigid adherence to process
• Governance and compliance

Image: Cartoon white round face with a slightly uncertain, diagonal-mouthed expression.

Push or pull?

Image: Close-up photograph of an old wooden door with a wrought-iron handle, set in a weathered wooden frame.

SAFe and Scrum of Scrums are the Leading Frameworks

Enterprise Agile Framework Adoption — Percentage of Respondents

Pie chart breakdown:

• Already implemented: 63%
• Considered, but not yet implemented: 21%
• Not considered: 15%
• Implemented and abandoned: 1%

Stacked bar chart of framework adoption (Not considered / Considered, but not yet implemented / Already implemented / Implemented and abandoned):

• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): 34% / 36% / 26% / 4%
• Customized Scrum of Scrums: 56% / 15% / 27% / 3%
• Spotify: 74% / 19% / 6% / 1%
• Disciplined Agile Delivery: 73% / 14% / 6% / 2%
• Large Scale Scrum: 78% / 16% / 3% / 3%
• Nexus: 80% / 7% / 3% / 2%

Source: Gartner, 2019.

Enterprise Agile Frameworks

Pre-built options to customize for business need

Enterprise Agile Frameworks

• Water-Agile-Fall/Water-Scrum-Fall
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
• Scrum of Scrums
• Spotify
• Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)
• Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)
• Nexus
• Agile Portfolio Management (APM)

Water-Agile-Fall

Image: Photograph from water level looking at a wide multi-tier waterfall pouring into a still, reflective green lake surrounded by lush forest.

Water-Agile-Fall

• Not a framework
• Haphazard implementation of Agile processes focusing on software engineering
• Business need/requirements gathering and deployment/maintenance continue to follow waterfall mentality

Scrum of Scrums

Image: Photograph of a muddy rugby scrum—players in green and orange/brown striped jerseys piled together on a wet, mud-covered field, with one player gesturing with raised arms.

Scrum of Scrums

• The daily (or weekly) standup of daily standups
• Less framework, more scaling technique
• Team ambassadors meet to align priorities and remove dependencies
• Follows similar progress > problems > plans > anticipated dependencies flow
• Not limited to 15 minutes

Scrum of Scrums: Who

• Scrum Master
• Agile Coach
• Product Owners
• Representative from each team responsible for a deliverable

Image: Diagram of a hierarchical tree of people icons. At the bottom are six small team-of-people icons; arrows lead up to two mid-level team icons, which in turn point up to a single top-level team icon—visualizing reps from many teams feeding two scrum-of-scrums groups that feed a single top group.

Spotify “Method”

Image: Neon sign on a brick wall reading “you are what you listen to” in cursive script with a small musical-note glyph.

Image: Slide titled “Scaling Agile @ Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters & Guilds” by Henrik Kniberg & Anders Ivarsson, Oct 2012. Diagram shows two “Tribe” boxes side by side. Inside each tribe are rows of people grouped into vertical “Squad” columns and horizontal “Chapter” rows. Dashed ovals labeled “Guild” span across both tribes, connecting members with shared interests.

Spotify “Method”

• The not-a-framework that is 3rd most popular with enterprises
• Accidentally sparked by Henrik Kniberg a decade ago
• Largely customized (to Spotify) expansion of Scrum with different naming conventions

Spotify: Naming

• Squad = Scrum team
• Tribe = autonomous, colocated group of squads working in similar area (same product, infrastructure, etc.) with < 100 people
• Chapter = similar skill group
• Guild = community of interest

Disciplined Agile Delivery
DAD

Image: Overhead photograph of a wooden table with empty glasses, a small potted plant, a plate of food with cutlery, and a paperback book titled “Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!)” by George Lois, published by Phaidon.

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

• Not a framework
• Advice on the variety of Agile tools and techniques based on what other companies have done
• Pick and choose what works best for your team or enterprise

Large-Scale Scrum
LeSS

Image: Photograph of a dark painted wood-plank wall with the words “DREAM BIG.” written across it in white chalk lettering.

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)

• Scaled up Scrum teams
• Product backlog vs team backlog
• Singular Definition of Done for all teams
• Teams deliver common shippable product in common sprint
• Teams responsible for collaboration
• LeSS (<= 8 teams) and LeSS Huge (1000s working on same product)

Scaled Agile Framework
SAFe

Image: Photograph of a crowd silhouetted with raised arms and sticks in front of dense red and orange smoke or haze.

Scaled Agile Framework

• Prescriptive but customizable
• 4 configurations based on organizational maturity
• Goal of fusing startup customer-centricity with stable functional hierarchies

SAFe: Principles

• Take an economic view
• Apply systems thinking
• Assume variability; preserve options
• Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles

SAFe: Principles

• Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
• Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
• Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning

SAFe: Principles

• Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
• Decentralize decision-making
• Organize around value

SAFe: Configurations

• Essential SAFe = Diet SAFe
• Large Solution = Complex product, little governance (aerospace, defense)
• Portfolio = Aligned on 1-2 value streams
• Full SAFe = Solutions requiring hundreds of people, dozens of teams

Image: The official “SAFe for Lean Enterprises” overview diagram (full Full SAFe big-picture poster). Rows along the left side label tiers — Organizational Agility, Lean Portfolio Management, Enterprise Solution Delivery, Agile Product Delivery, Team and Technical Agility, Continuous Learning Culture—with corresponding swimlanes showing Portfolio, Large Solution, Essential layers. Includes value streams, Agile Release Trains, Program Increments, and supporting roles, all anchored by Lean-Agile Leadership across the bottom.

Image: Zoomed-in detail of the SAFe Essential configuration diagram, showing Agile Product Delivery and Team and Technical Agility lanes with Business Owners, System Arch/Eng, Product Mgmt, RTE, Agile Teams (Product Owner / Scrum Master), Program Backlog, Team Backlogs, Kanban and XP/Scrum methods, Design Thinking, the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (Continuous Exploration, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, Release on Demand) with the Agile Release Train flowing through Program Increments, plus Solution Context, DevOps, System Team, and Built-In Quality. Footer labels: Core Values, Lean-Agile Mindset, SAFe Principles, Implementation Roadmap, SAFe Program Consultant, Lean-Agile Leadership. Version 5.0.

SAFe: Value Stream

• Operational Value Streams
• Business operations
• Development Value Streams
• Builds solutions for OVS

SAFe: Agile Release Train

• Team of Agile teams
• Long life
• United around value stream

SAFe: ART Principles

• The schedule is fixed
• A new system increment every 2 weeks
• Synchronization is applied
• The train has a known velocity
• Agile teams
• Dedicated people

SAFe: ART Principles

• Face-to-face PI planning
• Innovation and Planning (IP)
• Inspect and Adapt (I&A)
• Develop on cadence, release on demand

SAFe: Implementation

• Waterfall-like process requiring heavy planning and prioritizing from the top before applying Agile practices
• Needs to be applied consistently across the enterprise to work

Image: Scaled Agile's “SAFe Implementation Roadmap” diagram — a curving road map showing sequential steps: Reaching the Tipping Point, Train Lean-Agile Change Agents, Train Executives, Managers, and Leaders, Identify Value Streams and ARTs, Create the Implementation Plan, Prepare for ART Launch, Train Teams and Launch ART, Launch More ARTs and Value Streams, Extend to the Portfolio, Accelerate. A small chart in the upper right shows expected business results in percentage ranges (10–50%, 25%+, 30–75%, 20–50%). “SCALED AGILE” logo at lower right.

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. - The Agile Manifesto

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. - The Agile Manifesto, with emphasis shifted to show the revealed priorities of SAFe according to critics

Criticisms of SAFe

• Maintains bureaucratic overhead
• Requires restructuring around ambiguous value streams
• Overly complex, dependent on team of expensive consultants
• Does not require Agile mindset

Image: Cartoon white round face with a skeptical, slightly uncertain expression.

Enterprise Trends

What else should you be familiar with?

Project to Service Management

Project Management

Applying techniques and knowledge to meet customer and stakeholder expectations with temporary project focus.

Service Management

Ongoing lifecycle approach to delivering IT services that benefit customers.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

• Framework of best practices for delivering IT services
• Goals to manage risk, reduce cost, improve customer satisfaction and create stable IT environment
• The most popular ITSM framework—most others are used in concert with ITIL

ITIL: Lifecycle

Image: Circular ITIL lifecycle diagram. Concentric rings around a central “ITIL” hub label the lifecycle stages — Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation — with an outer ring labeled “Continual Process Improvement” and a bottom band reading “Plan . Do . Check . Act”.

ITIL: Lifecycle

• Service Strategy = align IT dept activities with core business
• Service Design = design and alter services offered to customers
• Service Transition = handover from development to operations phases
• Service Operation = ensure SLAs met
• Continual Service Improvement

ITIL Principles

• Focus on value
• Design for experience
• Start where you are
• Work holistically
• Progress iteratively

ITIL Principles

• Observe directly
• Be transparent
• Collaborate
• Keep it simple

Goal of Less Siloing

DevOps

Increasing holistic collaboration between development, QA and operations, with a focus on applying software engineering principles to deployment and maintenance.

DevSecOps

Security tends to be missed by enterprise development trains, with devastating consequences. Intent to reduce siloing of development and security.

NoOps

Automation and serverless computing applied to the point where operations no longer requires human intervention.

THANKS!

Any questions?

You can find me at:

@chazonacodes · chazona@chazonabaum.com

Image: Headshot of Chazona — woman with long dark curly hair and glasses, smiling.