scaling! oh the horror!

11 July 2014!Swinburne University, Melbourne

LAST Conference 2014

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Scaling! - Oh the horror!

Alexandra Stokeswww.alexandrastokes.com@StokesXandra

Scaling

• Why do we want to scale?

• Why is it horrifying?

• 3 software development scaling case studies - it’s real life folks!

Why scale?

Is it human nature?!Is it greed?!Is it just bad math?

Audience scaling dilemma

If you were faced with this scenario, what would you do? !

A. Start new business from scratch, i.e. duplicate results duplicate costs.

B. Leverage current business knowledge for new business line, i.e. duplicate results without duplicating costs.

Scale what?

• Amount of people/teams?

• Amount of throughput/output?

Or actual performance?

bigger numbers do not stack up when you are building software products

Communication Contracts

• Smaller the team less communication contracts required

• Larger the team more communication contracts required

diagram taken from lunar tractor www.lunartractor.com

Contracts per team size - let’s do the math!

3 person team => Contracts = (3-1) + (2-1) + (1-1) = 3

5 person team => Contracts = 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10

10 person team => Contracts = 9 + …… + 1 = 45

100 person team => Contracts = 99 + ….. + 1 = 4950

Adding 1 person to a [team size] team, adds [team size] contracts.

Adding 1 person to a 3 person team adds 3 more contracts.

Adding 1 person to a 100 person team adds 100 more contracts!

scary graph!

team%size%

#%contracts%

0%

500%

1000%

1500%

2000%

2500%

3000%

3500%

4000%

4500%

5000%

3% 4% 5%10%

20%30%

40%100%

team%size%

#%contracts%

Productivity of teams as they grow

Proportion of time spent in communication

• 3 person team = 2% of time

• 5 person team = 4% of time

• 10 person team = 10% of time

• 100 person team = 103% of their time….huh?!

Result

• Communication fractures and halts

• Cells of communication form

• Silo’d thinking prevails

• Competition between teams

• Opposing agendas

• Politics

No longer serving aligned goals

it depends

Does that mean we should never scale software delivery?

case studies

Insuranceline

• Software itself couldn’t scale

• Distrust of IT by Business

• Pressure to beef up delivery capacity - do more

• Great cultural values

• No software Vendors - woo hoo!

• approx. 45 people in software delivery

Success factors for scaling at Insuranceline

AIA

• Oppressed workers

• Rigid legacy systems

• Heavy PMO and governance = slow and costly delivery

• Many single point failures

• Distributed delivery teams

• Bad Vendor

• approx. 90 people in software delivery

Success Factors AIAParters

Auspost DDC

• New department inside a giant org

• Insatiable appetite for digital

• Heavy PMO and governance

• Desire to prove agile

• Slow hiring processes

• New leadership team

• Growing from 20 - 120 rapidly

Success factors DDC

Principles, Values and Culture

Build Cells `

What have we learned?

• Organisations desire scale, scaling what?

• Maths doesn’t stack up for large teams to be effective

• Success factors for when you have to scale

• Stay faithful to your principles; people & culture

• Use scaling techniques we know work

• Impress your first customer before scaling

• Create self sufficient cells of teams

Any Questions? Alexandra Stokeswww.alexandrastokes.com@StokesXandra