Agile Transformations that Stick: Lessons from Salesforce.com’s Enterprise Journey In 2006 salesforce.com embarked on a radical transformation moving 200 technologists from Waterfall to Agile. Since that time, we have scaled Agile to more than 2000 technologists, with new transformations yearly - bringing our brand of Agile - which blends Scrum, Lean, XP and Kanban - into R&D, Technical Operations/Infrastructure, internal IT and our many acquisitions. We embrace values and principles over mechanics, which allows us to create an agile culture that pushes decision making down and asks everyone to continuously improve new ways of working. This talk will share how salesforce.com rolls out Agile, our lessons learned, what mistakes to avoid and how it is possible for companies to move from team mechanics to true sustained agility.

1. Agile Transformations that Stick:
Lessons from salesforce.com’s
Enterprise Journey
Agile Summit Turkey, 2013
Nicola Dourambeis

2. Safe Harbor Statement
Safe harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This presentation may
contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If any such
uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions proves incorrect, the results of salesforce.com, inc.
could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make. All
statements other than statements of historical fact could be deemed forward-looking, including any
projections of subscriber growth, earnings, revenues, or other financial items and any statements regarding
strategies or plans of management for future operations, statements of belief, any statements concerning
new, planned, or upgraded services or technology developments and customer contracts or use of our
services.
The risks and uncertainties referred to above include – but are not limited to – risks associated with
developing and delivering new functionality for our service, our new business model, our past operating
losses, possible fluctuations in our operating results and rate of growth, interruptions or delays in our Web
hosting, breach of our security measures, the immature market in which we operate, our relatively limited
operating history, our ability to expand, retain, and motivate our employees and manage our growth, new
releases of our service and successful customer deployment, and utilization and selling to larger enterprise
customers. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of salesforce.com,
inc. is included in our annual report on Form 10-K for our fiscal year ended January 31, 2008, our quarterly
report on Form 10-Q for our fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2008, and in other filings with the Securities and
Exchange Commission. These documents are available on the SEC Filings section of the Investor
Information section of our Web site.
Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not
currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase our services should
make the purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com, inc.
assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

3. Nicola Dourambeis
VP Agile Infrastructure Delivery
Salesforce.com

4. Who We Are: Cloud Computing Driver, Catalyst
and Evangelist
Mainframe
Client/Server
Enterprise
Cloud Computing
No Hardware/Software
Subscription Model
Automatic Upgrades
Constant Innovation
1960s
1980s
Today

5. #1 in Cloud Computing and CRM
#1
World’s #1
CRM
Cloud
Computing
Innovation
2011, 2012, 2013

6. The back story

7. Number of people in R&D

8. smart
fast
innovative

9. 7 years later

10. rapid success

11. 47,700+
Customers

12. 1,100,000
Subscribers

13. 10 Billion
transactions per quarter

14. and it was becoming more difficult to deliver

15. Days between Major Releases
Features Delivered per Team
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006

16. Lack of responsiveness, lack of team
alignment on priorities

17. Unpredictable completion of anything

18. Lack of
Visibility

19. Resource Bottlenecks

20. Infrequent Customer Feedback

21. What did we do
about it?

23. What is ADM?
ADM (Adaptive Delivery Methodology)
salesforce.com’s flavor of agile
Scrum project management framework
XP practices
Based on Lean principles

24. The Rollout

25. Gain
Executive
Alignment

26. Figure out your team structure
Projects
Prioritized
Backlogs
Self-organized
Scrum Teams

27. Invest in training
Everyone

28. Everyone jumps in
together

29. Create a dedicated, cross-functional rollout
team

30. Position as a return
to our core values

31. Get
Coaching
Help

32. Create ScrumMaster
and Product Owner
communities

33. Experiment, be patient and expect
to make mistakes

34. Transformation Results
Features Delivered per Team
Days between Major Releases
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007

35. The Beginning (2006)
2006
25+ agile teams
in R&D

36. This will work when
your organization is
small
But when you grow
large, you need
more

37. We scale both
deep and wide

38. Embrace
Difference and be
prepared to
stretch Agility

39. Scale with
values

40. One
Codeline

41. Just
enough
structure
but no more

42. ADM Release Cycle
Release
Feb
Release
Mar
Apr
May
Planning cycle for
next release
Jun
Release
Jul
Aug
Sep
Planning cycle for
next release
Oct
Release
Nov
Dec
Jan
Planning cycle for
next release
Coordinate release
planning with generic
framework

43. Tools Help

44. But really, it’s the
people that make
things happen

45. And we make a big
investment in
collaboration

46. Maintain Technical Health
Debt is the Enemy

47. Create a
Single
Definition
of Done

48. Stop the codeline when test
failures are too high

49. Strong
Attention to
metrics
Status
Metric
Now
(7/30)
Potentially Releasable Metrics
Release Criteria
Feature Freeze
Threshold
Basic Ftest
100%
100.0%
Utest
100%
100.0%
Full Ftest
100%
>99.8%
Extended Ftest
96.86%
>99.75%
Basic Selenium
99.76%
100.0%
Selenium
99.6%
>99.5%
0
0
Unresolved Integrations

50. Maintain team
focus

51. Hire for Values
and Culture Fit

52. 2013
200+ agile teams
R&D, IT, & Technical
Operations

53. Lessons Learned

54. Be Bold
and
don’t go
Halfway

55. Get everyone aligned and
committed

56. Always look for
things to improve
It’s ok to fail along
the way

57. Stick to your principles
Focus on values over
mechanics

58. Agile does work at scale
Let small successes give you
confidence to push further

59. Questions?