I gave this presentation at Scrum Deutschland 2015. The main point is that it is not enough to just implement Scrum in your teams in order to reach agility on the organizational level. You also need to focus heavily on technical excellence, culture, collaboration, and measure the results of your efforts.

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The Path from Scrum to Organizational Agility
Mikkel Toudal Kristiansen
Agile Coach & Professional Scrum Trainer
Scrum DeutschlandNov. 6th 2015
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This presentation will cover:
•Scrum without Technical Excellence
•Technical Excellence
•DevOps
•Measuring the Results
•Conclusions
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The Path from Scrum to Organizational Agility

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Mikkel Toudal Kristiansen
• Agile Coach & ALM Expert @ Avanade Denmark
• Professional Scrum Trainer @ Scrum.org
Developer since 1995
• Web and line-of-business applications
• Microsoft .NET platform (certified on all versions)
Agile since 2005
• Scrum, Kanban, Lean
• Introduced agile on many projects
Agile Coach and Scrum Trainer since 2011
• PSD.NET and PSF
• Avanade Scrum courses
• More than 200 students so far
mikkel.t.kristiansen@avanade.com
@otwtbs (on the way to better software)
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About me

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Sandro Mancuso, author of
“The Software Craftsman”***,
calls this the Agile Hangover:
“Many Agile projects are now,
steadily and iteratively,
producing crap code”
* http://www.agilemanifesto.org/
** http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FlaccidScrum.html
*** http://www.amazon.co.uk/books/dp/0134052501
Scrum without Technical Excellence
When most teams move from this to this focus is on doing Scrum:
• Following the rules
• Processes
• Tools
• Artifacts
Often there is no focus on:
• Culture
• Values
• Empiricism
• Technical excellence
• Measuring outcomes
• Being agile
Which leads to:
• Low code quality
• A lack of agility**
or why we are doing Scrum at all:
• A series of mini waterfalls?
• Does quality matter?
• Is flexibility the goal?
Maybe the Agile Manifesto* or
the 12 principles are not well
understood

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Technical Excellence – Code Quality
TEAM ORGANIZATION
High code quality is essential for agility:
• Every Sprint must result in something of business value
• The Increment must be of production quality (potentially shippable) every Sprint
• Clean Code is the only way to keep productivity high:
Use techniques such as:
- The SOLID Principles
- Design patterns
- Pair programming
- Code reviews
- Static code analysis
Source: ”Clean Code”, Robert C. Martin

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Technical Excellence – Strong Version Control and Build Automation
Version control – not just for code!
Strong version control means that everything* must be kept under version control:
* http://www.troyhunt.com/2011/05/10-commandments-of-good-source-control.html
Build – not just compilation!
Build includes (at least):
• Application source code • Configuration settings
• Database schema • Requirements
• Documentation • Test specifications
• Dependencies • Environment specifications
• Getting latest code from version control • Running static code analysis
• Retrieving the relevant configuration • Running unit tests
• Fetching relevant dependencies • Reporting failures back to the team
• Compiling the application • Compiling results into a build report
TEAM ORGANIZATION
v.3

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Without automated tests, there is no way to ensure correctness:
• the amount of functionality keeps growing
• the number of data types typically grows too
• even small and simple manual tests will accumulate
• the manual effort required to rule out regression defects grows exponentially
“If you have plenty of manual testers available,
you can easily automate your tests.
If you have very few testers available, you can’t afford not to.”
Robert C. Martin, a.k.a. Uncle Bob (paraphrased)
Benefits of test automation include:
• Less waiting time for the testers, less human effort involved in testing
• You will be able to do countless deployments, at all times day and night, for free!
Technical Excellence – Test Automation
We don’t automate tests
We don’t have time
TEAM ORGANIZATION

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TEAM ORGANIZATION
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Technical Excellence – Deployment Automation
When the build and the tests have been automated, next step is deployment.
Automate the deployment process, because:
• You eliminate the risk of human error
• You ensure deployment happens consistently
• You save human effort
• You will be able to do countless deployments, round the clock, for free!
To automatically deploy all the way to production you need:
• Automated tests that cover all essential functionality
• Operational aspects tested automatically too
• Automated rollback mechanisms
• An organization that trusts the team and the tests!
Check out the book “Continuous Delivery” by Jez Humble and David Farley
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912

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Continuous release of value to production is not just a technical exercise
- And it cannot be implemented by the team in isolation!
Tight collaboration between Development, Operations AND the Business is key!
- Trust across organizational borders (dev, ops and business) takes lots of deliberate effort to achieve
”The Phoenix Project”* by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford is a must read!
Also check out ”Scrum Culture”** by Dominic Maximini
DevOps – A culture of collaboration
TEAM ORGANIZATION
DEV OPS
DEPLOYMENT
BACKLOG
DEPLOYMENT
PACKAGE
PRODUCT
BACKLOG
PRODUCTION
FEEDBACK
* http://www.amazon.co.uk/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262509
** http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrum-Culture-Introducing-Organizations-Professionals/dp/3319118269

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Measure
• Monitor real
usage
Learn
• Setup hypothesis
• Design experiment
Build
• Build/test
• Deploy
Measure
Learn
Build
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Measuring the Results – The Build-Measure-Learn Cycle
Defined in “The Lean Startup”* by Eric Ries
• Not just for startups!
• Let your software evolve based on
– Hypotheses (“If we build it, they will come!”)
– Experiments (“Let’s build it!”)
– Measurements (“Did they come?”)
Use the Build-Measure-Learn cycle
to measure the effects of evolving
your software
The companies that go through
this cycle the fastest will win!
* http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-Startup-Innovation-Successful-Businesses/dp/0670921602
TEAM ORGANIZATION

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TEAM ORGANIZATION
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The BASICs of Evidence-Based Management (EBMgt*):
10: Frequently measure a number of metrics (for instance every month)
20: Identify metrics you want to improve
30: Define an experiment (adapt) to improve those metrics
40: Run the experiment for a month
50: Inspect the metrics
60: GOTO 20
Use EBMgt to measure the effects
of organizational initiatives involving
people, processes and tools
These metrics make up Scrum.org’s
definition of Organizational Agility.
Think of them as flight controls.
* http://ebmgt.org/
Measuring the Results – Evidence-Based Management by Scrum.org

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Key take-aways:
• The Scrum Guide* is only the starting point
• Technical excellence is essential
–Code quality
–Version control
–Automation, automation, automation!
• DevOps brings a culture of collaboration
• Steer by measuring the results of your experiments
• Beware: Organizational change is HARD!**
* http://scrumguides.org/
** http://www.kotterinternational.com/the-8-step-process-for-leading-change/
Scrum.org Webinars: https://www.scrum.org/Resources/Scrum-and-Agile-Webcasts
Conclusions

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Q & A
Thank you! A
Thank you!
Mikkel Toudal Kristiansen
mikkel.t.kristiansen@avanade.com
@otwtbs
Q & A Q
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Thank you!