During Discuss Agile Day Delhi 2019 - One Day Conference (14 September), Janmejay Rai presented his talk on "Scaling or No Scaling - A Scrum Perspective". Check out the exclusive Interview of Janmejay at the last slide. Description about the talk: When is the right time to scale Scrum teams has always remained a big question for organisations. It has always been observed that organisations tend to start thinking of scaling scrum even when the projects can be delivered by simply following the basics of Scrum. My talk would focus on when & how to scale scrum and using which scaling framework to be used for the same. Discuss Agile an user group of Scrum Alliance conducted an One Day Conference On 14th of September, 2019. This was the 5th conference organized by Discuss Agile & sponsored by iZenBridge Consultancy in Delhi. Discuss Agile Day is an one day event of like-minded Agile practitioners, trainers, coaches, and enthusiasts.

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2. Scaling or No Scaling –
A Scrum Perspective
September 14, 2019 By Er. Janmejay Rai (Jay)
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3. About Me
• 10+ years of experience in IT industry
• ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP – ACC) Agile Coach
• Certified Scrum Master (CSM) from Scrum Alliance
• Certified Scrum Professional – Scrum Master (CSP – SM) from Scrum Alliance
• Disciplined Agilist (DA) from Disciplined Agile Consortium
• Scaled Agile Framework 4.0 Specialist (SAFe) from Scaled Agile Academy
• Team Kanban Practitioner (TKP) from Lean Kanban University
• Kanban System Design & Kanban Management Professional (KMP – I & II) from Lean
Kanban University
• Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK – I) from Scrum.org
• Scaled Professional Scrum (SPS) using Nexus from Scrum.org
• DevOps Architect from International DevOps Certification Academy
• Certified Big Data & Hadoop Developer from Simplilearn
• Trained in PMI – ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner)17-10-2019 3

4. Why are we here ?? What is the Agenda of
this session ?
Setting the right expectation…
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5. Roles Events Artifacts
Team Member
Scrum Master
Product Owner
Product Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Visible Work
Daily Scrum
Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospective
Sprint Planning
Backlog Refinement17-10-2019 5

6. Roles
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7. Team Member
Team is responsible for:
• The How
• how to implement User Stories
• how much work to pull into a sprint (100%)
• Self-organized & Self-managed
• Collaborates with Product Owner
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8. Scrum Master
• Responsible for:
• Continuous improvement of team
• Team Happiness
• Protects the process
• Removes impediments
• Servant Leader
Every Scrum Master is a coach.
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9. Product Owner
• Responsible for The What
• All the value flowing back to the business
• KSI – Known Stable Interface
• Owns the Product Backlog
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10. Events
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11. Daily Scrum
Product Owner is optional.
Attend “whenever you’re in the building.”
Do we have to stand up?
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12. Sprint Review
• Conversation about Done work with customers.
• Informs prioritization of the Product Backlog.
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13. Sprint Retrospective
• Decide on the Kaizen.
• Make it a story in the next
sprint.
• Inspect and adapt.
• Reflect on the previous sprint.
• Team only.
Exercise: as a team, talk about
the pros and cons of a Sprint
Retrospective.
Forrest starts the retro.
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14. Sprint Planning
Review velocity and set team capacity.
Select highest priority user stories from Product Backlog.
Talk about and finalize Ready user stories.
Forecast how many stories to include in next sprint (20% variability).
1 hour/each week of the sprint.
Corvus corax – able to plan
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15. Backlog Refinement
Continuous Process
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16. Artifacts
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17. Product Backlog
The Product Backlog lists all features, functions, requirements,
enhancements, and fixes that constitute the changes to be made
to the product in future releases. Product Backlog items have the
attributes of a description, order, estimate and value.
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What is Scaling Scrum ?

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• Scaling Scrum is just Scrum. ... Scrum is based on the delivery of a product.
• The optimal development team size is between 3 and 9 people plus the product
owner and Scrum Master.
• This means that if you can deliver your product with a team of 9 people or less,
then there is no need to scale.

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Why Scale?

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• Before you add people or teams, ask yourself what are you trying to achieve.
• How much more productivity will be gained if you add one Scrum Team to three
existing teams?
• How much more productivity will be gained if you add Scrum Team to seven
existing teams?

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• Don’t scale until you have fixed your issues with Scrum adoption. Many reasons to
Scale can be removed by “doing Scrum” properly.
• Don’t scale broken Scrum.
Always Remember

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What is the right framework to choose?

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• Numerous options available in the market to choose from.
• Let’s perform a self-assessment to understand our need:
• What is the business strategy, and how has agile helped to achieve it so far?
• How many agile projects are planned, and how many teams are available to
execute them?
• Are current agile teams skilled enough to maintain high performance in a scaled
environment?
• What is the average size and complexity of agile projects?
• What additional benefits are possible with a scaled solution?
• What are the critical success factors of the scaled agile transition?

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• LeSS stays closest to Scrum’s purpose and therefore it is best suited for small to
medium sized scaling frameworks.
• Scrum@Scale is Scrum scaled for the whole organisation. It is best suited for large
scaling frameworks.
• Spotify Engineering Culture may be a best fit for component teams.
• SAFe puts Scrum’s purpose under heavy pressure.
Scaling – shorter version

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As a general remark:
think hard if you really need to scale Scrum.

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• If you really think Scaling Scrum is needed, then below are some of the
frameworks:
1. LeSS
2. Nexus
3. Scrum@Scale
4. SAFe
5. Spotify
6. Scrum of Scrums
Scaling – longer version

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• LeSS stays closest to Scrum’s purpose and framework as only little complexity is added (some
events have a part with the team and a part with representatives of the teams). As a result
LeSS is the best scaling option for small or medium sides scaling solutions.
1. Less

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• Nexus is also true to Scrum, with some additional roles, events and artifacts.
2. Nexus

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• Scrum@Scale is a very interesting
concept. The whole organisation
(delivery and product, bottom to
top) working in Scrum Teams. In
theory this would be working
very well and truly in the spirit of
the Scrum Guide.
3. Scrum@Scale

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• SAFe puts the purpose of Scrum under heavy pressure due to it’s top-down approach,
additional layers and as a result additional roles, events and artifacts.
4. SAFe

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• Spotify allows for a lot of autonomy
for the teams to work according to
Scrum.
• The focus is on small
decoupled systems however is a
different perspective than Scrum’s
perspective of optimizing the value of
a product.
• Spotify can be your scaling approach
of choice if you don’t have the
concerns of systems vs product.
5. Spotify

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• Scrum of Scrums is the simplest solution to scale Scrum.
• Still one or more events are added that allow companies to ignore possible issues with
cross-functionality and transparency.
6. Scrum of Scrums

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• Scrum of Scrums adds two additional events to Scrum: the Scrum of Scrums and the
‘Scrum of Scrum of Scrums’. Apart from this the Scrum framework with its roles, events
and artifacts remains intact.
• Typically the Scrum of Scrums tackles dependencies and integration

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The Final Conclusion

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• Don’t scale until you have fixed your issues with Scrum adoption. Many reasons to
Scale can be removed by “doing Scrum” properly.
• Don’t scale broken Scrum.
• Think hard if you really need to scale Scrum.
Always Remember

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Name: Er. Janmejay Rai (Jay)
Twitter: @jay2631
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janmejay3126/
Mobile: +91-9810303126, +91-7666617811 (both on whatsapp)
Email: janmejay.rai31@gmail.com
Connect with me

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Interview of Janmejay Rai - Discuss Agile Conference Delhi 2019
Interview of Janmejay Rai during Discuss Agile Conference Delhi on 14th
September, 2019. He explains about his talk on "Scaling or No Scaling - A
Scrum Perspective". Janmejay also shares why he choose the specific topic
for talk.