Adopting Agility across an Enterprise Presented by Arlen Bankston (2013)

1. Five Steps to a More Agile
Organization
Adopting Agility across an Enterprise

2. Meet your Presenter
Arlen Bankston
• Co-Founder of LitheSpeed, LLC
• User experience & product
development background
• 14 years of Agile experience
• Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
• Lately 40% training, 20% each of
coaching, product development &
management
2

3. A Common Scenario
• Several teams have
done well using agile
• There is a feeling agile
could be applied more
broadly
3
• But resource management, metrics, audit and compliance, team
structures, customer engagement model, HR practices, etc are
all aligned for waterfall delivery
• And change management is not one of our core competencies
Where do we start?

4. Enterprise Agile Misalignment
4
Enterprise
Dimension
Misalignment Agile Approach
PMO Too many simultaneous projects. A lot
of spending, not a lot of delivery
Fewer simultaneous projects. Lower WIP
to reduce delivery time
Resource
Management
Focus on utilization by allocating
individuals across too many projects
Dedicated, independent, cross-functional
standing teams with common missions
Real Estate Cubes that stifle communication Open spaces for collaboration
HR Hiring & performance management
not aligned with agile approach
Team based performance management
and hiring for agile skills
Functional
Managers
Local measures and optimization by
activity or skillset
Value stream optimization of end-to-end
delivery flow
Business
Partners
Big requirements, usually late and
inaccurate
Light, real-time requirements
Compliance Heavy and prescriptive Focused on principles and continuous
improvement

5. Presentation Agenda
Build your people
• Build a career path
• Train by role
Make your adoption agile
• Educate & align on goals
• Establish accountable adoption
teams
• Launch & assess pilot projects
• Expand adoption breadth & depth
Focus at all levels
• Tone your Portfolio
• Release more
• Let your teams flow
5
Don’t forget innovation
• Scrum patterns
• The Lean Startup
• Budgeting & Contracting
Frameworks are just tools
• Core agile frameworks
• Scaling Patterns & Methodologies
• Agile Tools

6. Build your People

7. Agile Team Development Process
7
Determine
Standards
Standard Work &
Experimentation
Adjust Standard
Work
Assessment
Learning
Teaching
Leading Doing
Process People
Visual Management Systems
Lean Management
Agile Delivery
• Process – Assessing current practices, comparing to Standard Work, and team experimentation to
continuously improve practices and processes.
• People – Role development and equipping teams with the skills to successfully implement Agile practices.
• Product – Product discovery, execution, measurement and learning.
RoleDevelopment
ProductDelivery
StandardWorkAssessment&Evolution
Discover
Measure
Learn Build
Product
7

8. Developing People
Agile Role Progression
• Provide people with clear paths for
developing skills and core
competencies
• Provide career progression model
Learning model
• Learning – Acquire knowledge by
being a student and mentee
• Practicing – Acquire real-world
experience
• Teaching – Prove and advance
expertise by teaching others
8
Learning
Teaching
Leading Doing
People
RoleDevelopment
8

9. Agile Role Progression
Establish a personnel development system
• Define a clear career progression path for each role
• Functional managers establish and maintain
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and a collaborative culture
9
Learning
Level 1 Practitioner
Taken all required
training
Doing
Level 2 Practitioner
Practicing within their
specific role on an
initiative for at least six
months
Leading
Level 4 Practitioner
Leading at least 10
training sessions and
coaching at least three
apprentices within
their role
Teaching
Level 3 Practitioner
Leading at least three
training sessions and
coaching an apprentice
within their specific
role
9

10. Training by Role
10
All Agile Practitioners
• Core Training:
Agile + Lean
Overview
• Agile Kickoff Boot
Camp
ScrumMasters, Project Managers & Team Leads
• Agile Management Toolset Training
• Certified ScrumMaster + PMI ACP Training
• Coaching Workshop
• Kanban workshop
Functional & Departmental Managers
• Agile Management & Governance
Developers:
• Agile Platform and Tool Introduction
• Agile Engineering Workshop
Testers:
• Agile Testing Overview
• Testing Tools & Roles
Agile Team Members
Product Owners & Agile Product Managers
• Agile Tools for Product Owners
• Agile Requirements Workshop
• Certified Scrum Product Owner
10

11. Make your Adoption Agile

12. Adaptive Executive Leadership
Adapting to Reality in Real
Time:
• You will need to think holistically in order
to remove the broad barriers to adoption
• But changing everything may take years
• And you won’t get it right the first time
• Start with a wide path and get everyone
aligned with goals, principles, and a basic
approach
• Evolve to more detailed, deeper levels
of alignment over time
• Discover what needs to be done and
adapt to the actual problems at hand
• Otherwise, you will end up being slow and
overly bureaucratic
12
Use Agile to Implement Agile
• Discovery of problems and
goals
• Organizational Release
Planning
• Incremental and iterative
implementation
• Retrospective

13. 1. Educate, Align and Assess
Before you begin, take a week or two to:
Educate & Align on Principles & Rationale
• Educate wide band of organization on principles and practices of
agile
• Address senior management, middle management, and team leads
• Address software dev, QA, BA, PMO, HR, Production Operations,
etc
Assess the Impacts
• Work with each of the groups, at each of the levels, to determine
their goals, concerns and possible solutions
• Prep each group for the coming pilot projects
• Plan for quick, simple first-cut solutions to a wide range of concerns
• But don’t go too deep yet
13

14. 2. Establish Accountable Adoption Teams
Big changes require dedicated attention:
Executive Agile Steering Group
• Set broad, organizational goals
• Define measures of success
• Communicate to middle management and staff frequently
• Review progress regularly
• Address organizational barriers to adoption
Agile Working Group
• A cross-functional problem solving group
• SW Dev, QA, Production, BA, PMO, Resource Managers
• Anticipate, uncover, address tactical issues
• Make recommendations to executive team
14

15. Some Typical Agile Metrics
158/26/2015
Product
(Led by Product Owners &
Managers)
Process
(Led by ScrumMasters &
Coaches)
People
(Led by Functional Managers)
External Stakeholder Satisfaction
• Quarterly survey
• Assessment score
Quality:
• % Code Coverage
• % Scenario Coverage
• % Delivered features with
zero critical post iteration
defect count
Delivery Cadence:
• Time from concept to cash
• Velocity stability
Standard Work Assessment
Process Adoption
• # of Agile teams
• # of certifications
Process Improvement
• Change in Assessment scores
• Updates to standard work
• Retrospective actions &
impacts
Associate Engagement
/Happiness
• Assessment Score
Learning Organization
• # of Agile Practitioners at
various levels
Collaboration

16. Incremental Rollout Strategy
Initial Pilots - Pilot
Projects With Day-
to-Day Oversight by
Agile Coaches
Expanded Pilots - Projects Using
combination of Experienced
Associates and Trained Associates
with Agile Coaches’ oversight across
Multiple Projects
Enterprise Rollout - Autonomous
agile capability using experienced
and trained associates.
Occasional Agile Coaches’
involvement on an as-needed
consultative basis
16

17. 3. Launch and Assess Pilot Projects
Your first projects need:
• Product Owner involved,
accountable & empowered
to control scope & schedule
• ScrumMaster empowered
to control process
• Dedicated, integrated team
• Executive support for
learning and exploration
• Short term initial release timeline (< 3 months)
• Potential for measurable business results and impact
17
Thanks to Mike Cohn for the image:
http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/four-attributes-of-the-ideal-pilot-project

18. 4. Expand Adoption Breadth & Depth
After some initial wins, grow and mature:
• Expand Agile to encompass agile engineering
practices that will allow teams more agility:
– Daily build capability and continuous integration
– Automated testing: unit, system and acceptance testing
– Test-Driven Development
– Emergent architecture and design
– Pair-programming
• Use Agile for outsourced or off-shored projects
• Use Agile on larger, more complex projects
18

19. Focus at all Levels

20. Interactive Layers of Planning
Story (Backlog Item)
What user or stakeholder need will
the story serve?
Story Details
How will it specifically look and
behave?
Low-fi Prototypes & Wireframes
How will I know it’s done?
Acceptance Tests
Iteration / Sprint
What specifically will we build?
User Stories & Scenarios
How will this Sprint move us
toward release objectives?
Sprint Plan
Development Tasks
Release
How can we release value
incrementally?
Release Roadmap, Story Map
What subset of business objectives
will each release achieve?
Release Plan
What user constituencies will the
release serve?
Personas, Stakeholders
What general capabilities will the
release offer? Epics, Features
Product / Project
What business objectives will the
product fulfill?
Product Roadmap
Product Goals
Product Charter / Lean Canvas
Vision, Unique Value Proposition
Company Vision
What is our value proposition and
how do we differentiate?
Vision Statement
Product Portfolio
What is our mix of products?
Product Visions
Integrated Roadmap
20

21. Focused Portfolio
• Terminate sick projects
• Split large projects in smaller ones
• Prioritize projects by business value,
at least within business unit
• Limit development timeframe to months
• Re-prioritize projects regularly
21
1
Development
3 24
Little’s Law
WIP
completion rate
Business Goals
& Strategy Production Sunset
Cycle
Time =
Backlog

22. Focused, Stable Teams
• Multiple, stable teams each
focused on one thing at a time
• Dedicated to platforms or
lines of business
• Platform owner prioritizes next
project
• Result:
– Support multiple lines of
business simultaneously
– Focused effort results in
quick delivery for individual
projects
– Clear accountability
– Stability and predictability
22 Source: The Lean-Agile PMO, Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar (Cutter Consortium 2006)

23. Focused Releases
23
R3: Progress Tracking
Benefit: Powerful & beautiful improvement
visualization & reporting.
Features:
• Visualize Sprint Rating, Happiness Index, Action
Results, Customer Satisfaction & more.
• Custom metrics
• Track and trend multidimensional improvement
R2: Retrospective Customization
Benefit: Make and share your own retros.
Features:
- More built-in retro flows & visualizations
- Customizable questions and flow
- Tips for moderators
R1: Guided Retrospective (MVP)
Benefit: A guided retrospective that tracks
improvement & works for remote teams too.
Features:
- Moderate retros locally or remotely
- Facilitates and tracks retros
- Plan and review actions and their results

24. Scaling Agile Teams
Productive, independent,
self-organizing teams:
• Independent, cross-functional
• Grow poly-skilled individuals
• Size limit of 5-7 people, ideally
• To scale, create new integrated
Agile teams
• Coordinate among teams via an
Agile PMO
24

25. Don’t Forget Innovation

26. Scrum in an R&D Context
Sprint Review includes analysis of
“validated learning”, explicit decision
to “Pivot or Persevere” and
dedicated scan for “happy accidents”
“Potentially Shippable
product” includes MVP
with experiments to
validate assumptions
Product Backlog includes
explicit list of assumptions
or decisions that PO needs
to validate, or risks that
must be addressed
1 2
3
Thanks to Alex Brown at Scrum Inc for the illustration26

27. The Lean Startup Cycle
Ideas Product
Data
Build
Measure
Learn
27
• Clear, short-term
experiments
• Direct customer
observation and
interaction
• Release planning
driven by feedback
data
• High-quality agile
development with
strong UX

28. Two Central Lean Startup Concepts
A “Minimum Viable Product” might be:
Learning: Onsite observation, fake menus,
ads
Pitching: Preorders, comparisons, joint
design
Experiencing: Concierge, prototypes
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) The Pivot
Based on what you learn, you might:
• Target another customer group
• Target a different need
• Expand or contract feature focus
• Change platforms or architecture
• Change channels
Early releases focus on
quickly & cheaply
testing ideas
Later releases focus on
scaling
28

29. Budgeting & Contracting Shifts
• Innovation accounting
• Sustaining vs.
disruptive innovation
management
• Appropriate financial
accounting processes
• Modular development
29

30. Frameworks are just Tools

31. The Agile Landscape
“Agile” describes a number of
related methods.
Scrum is the most popular.
• Scrum
Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber
• eXtreme Programming
Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, Ron Jeffries
• Kanban
David Anderson
Source: 2010 State of Agile Development Survey,
VersionOne
Scrum
Scrum /
XP
31

32. Scaling Patterns & Methodologies
Frameworks for scaling agile are growing in
popularity. Refer to them, but don’t rely on
them.
• Scaled Agile
Framework (SAFe)
• Disciplined Agile
Delivery (DAD)
• Large-Scale
Scrum (LeSS)
http://www.scaledagileframework.com
http://www.crosstalkonline.org/storage/issue-archives/2013/201305/201305-Larman.pdf32

33. Use Tools that Support Scaling
Agile lifecycle management tools should
support the program and portfolio levels:
• VersionOne
• AgileCraft
• LeanKit Kanban
33
Create a simple but reliable process:
• Standardize high-level process steps, deliverables, tools and artifacts
• Agree on process audit procedures
• Develop standard process metrics

34. Parting Thoughts

35. In Summary
35
Enterprise
Dimension
Misalignment Agile Approach
PMO Too many simultaneous projects. A lot
of spending, not a lot of delivery
Fewer simultaneous projects. Lower WIP
to reduce delivery time
Resource
Management
Focus on utilization by allocating
individuals across too many projects
Dedicated, independent, cross-functional
standing teams with common missions
Real Estate Cubes that stifle communication Open spaces for collaboration
HR Hiring & performance management
not aligned with agile approach
Team based performance management
and hiring for agile skills
Functional
Managers
Local measures and optimization by
activity or skillset
Value stream optimization of end-to-end
delivery flow
Business
Partners
Big requirements, usually late and
inaccurate
Light, real-time requirements
Compliance Heavy and prescriptive Focused on principles and continuous
improvement

36. Contact Us for Further Information
36
Arlen Bankston
Vice President
Arlen.Bankston@lithespeed.com
Sanjiv Augustine
President
Sanjiv.Augustine@lithespeed.com
www.lithespeed.com
"I only wish I had read this book when I started my career in
software product management, or even better yet, when I was
given my first project to manage. In addition to providing an
excellent handbook for managing with agile software development
methodologies, Managing Agile Projects offers a guide to more
effective project management in many business settings."
John P. Barnes, former Vice President of Product Management at
Emergis, Inc.