2. In the next 60 minutes
My goal
Lay out the big picture of our organizational
improvement flow
Share insights and strenghts and weaknesses we
experienced
You are invited to create your own river of change
3. Background information
Part of Technical University Graz
About 100 people
Currently 7 Feature Teams
Several small component groups
Using Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) as guiding framework
5. Why to establish an organizational
improvement flow?
Organizations are ever changing systems
People are changing every day
Align flow of change with organizational
goals
8. Overall
Retrospective
Inspect & adapt on organizational level
Everyone invited
Facilitated (Large Groups)
Identify Issues & Suggest Improvement Hypotheses
and Goals
discuss cross-team, organizational and
systemic problems within the
organization
9. Meet regularly to share experience, define standards,
decide on actions, ..
Roles: Leader, Sponsor, Member, ..
Community
of Practice
A group of people who share a craft, a
profession, a concern, a set of
problems, or a passion
Voluntary
10. Experiments are integrated into Sprint Events and
Activities
Backlog items pass through sprint cycle
We are on a high level view, for details I‘m available for individual questions throughout the rest of the conference
+ plus recommendations at the end of the talk
It is a first time talk
I‘m doing ‚a retrospective‘ with you
Believe in active involvement for better takeaways (opt out if you want)
Add anytime, with post-its
Between every section a few min discussion what to change in your river
Summarize at the end
Get the flipchart pictures with conference pictures
Software development departement is part of
Component groups yet to include
The quote that inspired this talk
Ever changing - in other words - change is the only constant
LeSS Optimization Goals
High Customer Business Value
Flexibility?
If things change then they don‘t abide, so they flow. The questions is, how much change is free flowing and what part more transparent and controlled
The picture is what we‘ve established so far, let‘s zoom in
Weg
- Issue – Idea – Improvement – new state
Elements (What we use now)
Overall Retrospective
Community
Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Team
Planning
Issue: Something bugs the organization or the product
Product: Technical debt in the layer architecture
Organization: Sprint commitment not delivered frequently
Idea: Someone takes ownership of that issue and has an improvement idea
Finally, new state: Product has new architecture and the organization has learned how to deal with such issues in an effective way
Of course the CoP might design an experiment, or call for an overall retrospective, those are the most common improvement flows
If we think in terms of rivers and flow, then we can also think of hydro power stations and those elements as gates transforming our change into new energy. Now let‘s have a closer look at the important gates and what happens there
First
What is an Overall Retrospective
Invitation: Special interest groups up to the whole organization
Why: team level retrospective goals depend on the organization, issues in Product Ownership influence all teams
Then
Why: learning and innovation
When what?
Then there is the whole sprint
Goals:
eg. Stories are no bigger than 13 Story Points (DoR)-> keep that in mind in all Refinement and Planning activities
Code Review is done in pairs -> Daily StandUp, all development activities
Backlog Items:
Configure Tool for static Code Analysis
Replace Framework A with Framework B
Use Development Pattern X
As always there are certain strenghts and weaknesses to all approaches and we have to balance them out, just as when we play the lyre with the bow. Unbalance dissonances
Ownership: Multiple Owners vs. One Owner vs. Meeting Owner
Hypothesis: may fail, how to I know if failed or succeeded?
Goals: SMART
BV: What is the Value for the organization/product? How does it fit into the overall strategy and plans? How to prioritize against the other PBI?
Other PBI: refinement (splitting and cutting, detailing), acceptance criteria
What can people, managers and spefically Scrum Roles do, to block or facilitate the flow of improvements through the organization?
In Heraclitus words: We determine our fate by our attitude: e.g. if I block improvements, I‘ll end up in an organization that is stuck in
So what can I do day by day to form my character and hence company culture into one that embraces improvement?
Roles
Scrum Master
facilitate
ZDF
Vorbildfunktion
Block
Step out of the neutral position as facilitator
Preaching over understanding
Product Owner
Prioritize low or high
Management
Community Sponsoring
Have improvement goals as part of strategy
Assign budget for improvements
Leadership – Build Trust
Vorbildfunktion
Block
Assign Responsiblity to meetings or people not in the room
No Trust (to Get Help, safe to fail
What we currently plan to add and what might follow in future, the bigger results we want the bolder our experiments must be
Improvement workshops:
further details goals or refine backlog items defined in overall retrospective
Community of Agile
Educate and discuss specific agile principles and practices (e.g. estimation and techniques) hence impact on all of the elements (e.g. with Agile Lunches)
Align Team retrospectives with organizational retrospectives (add to flow)
Now I‘ve told many things, I‘d like to ask you to wrap up your understanding ->
One sentence from each river