self-designing feature teams

KEGON AG 2014 1

Self-designing Feature Teams

Agile Lean Europe (ALE)

Krokow, 21.08.2014

Josef.Scherer@KEGON.de

KEGON AG 2014 2

Agile Management Consultant

Solution Focused Coach

25 years of experience in software development

7 years of experience with Large Scale Scrum

3 Enterprise Agile Transitions (bwin, ADAG, Telekom P&I)

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Program Consultant and Trainer

07.2012-03.2014 Senior Agile Coach @BMW (via Valtech GmbH)

Josef Scherer

KEGON AG 2014 3

Training and Consulting for Agile@Enterprise

Leading SAFe consulting company in Germany (5 SPCs, 5 SAs)

Scaled Agile Inc. Partner

Customers using SAFe

KEGON AG

What are self-designing teams?

Principles of organizational design in Large Scale Scrum

Stories of self-designing teams @ BAML and BMW

Why do it?

How to do it?

Role of management?

Role of facillitators?

How does it feel like for a team member?

Learnings from these stories

Two Stories about Forming Teams in Large Scale Scrum

Large Scale Scrum as Organizational Design Framework

KEGON AG 2014 5

Organizational Principles behind the Agile Manifesto

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need,

and trust them to get the job done.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts

its behavior accordingly.

http://agilemanifesto.org/iso/de/principles.html

Motivated Individuals Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

7

4 Levels of Team Autonomy Self-designing Teams

KEGON AG 2014 8

Scaling Scrum starts with understanding and being able to adopt standard real one-team Scrum with

Direct collaboration between business & development

Customer focused Feature Teams

Self-managing cross-functional Teams

Start a large-scale agile Scrum adoption by ensuring leadership understands the organizational implications.

Real agile development with Scrum implies a deep change to become an agile organization; it is not a practice, it is an organizational design framework.

Large Scale Scrum as Organizational Design Framework

http://www.crosstalkonline.org/storage/issue-archives/2013/201305/201305-larman.pdf

Direct collaboration between PM and R&D

„Contract Game“ PM & R&D Product Manager as PO

Product

Management

R&Dstart end

(release)content freeze

(release contract agreed)

The Milestone point

is arbitrary

more,

more,

more!

less,

less,

less!

1 2

The Contract

www.craiglarman.com

www.odd-e.com

Copyright © 2010

C.Larman & B. V odde

All rights reserved.

Customer focused Feature Teams

Component Design Fokus

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

Item 4

...

…

system

comp

C

Team

comp

A

Work from multiple teams is required to finish a customer-centric feature. These dependencies cause waste such as additional planning and coordination work, hand-offs between teams, and delivery oflow-value items. Work scope is narrow.

Product

Owner

comp

B

Team

comp

A

Team

comp

B

comp

C

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

Item 4

...

…Team

Wu

Product

Owner

Team

Shu

Team

Wei

system

comp

A

comp

B

comp

C

Every team completes customer-centric items. The dependencies between teams are related to shared code. This simplifies planning but causes a need for frequent integration, modern engineering practices, and additional learning.Work scope is broad.

Component teams Feature teams

www.craiglarman.com

www.odd-e.com

Copyright © 2010

C.Larman & B. Vodde

All rights reserved.

Customer Feature Fokus

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

Item 4

...

…

system

comp

C

Team

comp

A

Work from multiple teams is required to finish a customer-centric feature. These dependencies cause waste such as additional planning and coordination work, hand-offs between teams, and delivery oflow-value items. Work scope is narrow.

Product

Owner

comp

B

Team

comp

A

Team

comp

B

comp

C

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

Item 4

...

…Team

Wu

Product

Owner

Team

Shu

Team

Wei

system

comp

A

comp

B

comp

C

Every team completes customer-centric items. The dependencies between teams are related to shared code. This simplifies planning but causes a need for frequent integration, modern engineering practices, and additional learning.Work scope is broad.

Component teams Feature teams

www.craiglarman.com

www.odd-e.com

Copyright © 2010

C.Larman & B. Vodde

All rights reserved.

Self-managing, cross-functional Teams

R&D Departments Cross-functional Teams

Lead Designer

Designer

Designer

Lead Arch.

Architekt

Architekt

Lead Dev

Developer

Developer

Developer

Developer

Developer

Developer

Test Lead

Tester

Tester

Tester

Craig Larman, Ahmad Fahmy Self-designing Teams @ BAML

KEGON AG 2014 13

http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/2013-april/how-to-form-teams-in-large-scale-scrum-a-story-of

Traditional program @BAML Bank of America‘s Merrill Lynch

42 people, 35 „team“ members

Business-analysis group

3 component groups, „private“ code ownership

Test group

7 week integration testing and release phase

Background

increase customer value,

reduce waste and lead time

by forming „real“ Scrum Feature Teams

co-located, self-designing Teams

cross-functional, cross-component teams to reduce handoffs and dependencies

team size ~7 team members (excluding PO & SM)

able to deliver any item from the backlog and

deliver completely „done“ end-to-end functionality

Goal

Management: introduction and background: 20 minutes

Ideal team definition: 20 mins.

Management leaves

Cycle 1: 25 mins., Review: 10 mins.

Cycle 2: 25 mins., Break: 20 mins., Review: 10 mins.

Cycle 3: 25 mins., Review: 10 mins.

Choose ScrumMasters & Team names: 15 mins.

Retrospective: "Plus-delta" feedback: 5 mins.

Conclusion and thanks: 5 mins.

Workshop Schedule

Plus-Delta

Plus

process, facilitation, and timekeeping (11)

creation of well-balanced team (8)

sense of empowerment (7)

sense of team spirit (3)

Delta

Inadequate room choice (6)

More facilitation required to break deadlocks (5)

Pressure to join a team you're not happy with (3)

More information ahead of the meeting (3)

Reluctance of team members to move out of the initial teams (3)

Mark Bregenzer Self-designing Teams @ BMW

KEGON AG 2014 18

http://www.agileworld.de/content/self-designing-teams-bmw

5 component teams incl.

1 IT PO,

2 Business Analysts (POS) and

6-7 Developers, one as SM

4 “cross cutting” teams

2 PMs as

Chief PO and

Chief Architect

1 Agile Management Coach, 4 Agile Team Coaches

Background

© valtech gmbh

Backlog items cannot be pulled by all teams due to know how constraints -> Redesign teams s.t. any team can pull any item

Routine work led to decreased motivation -> drive up motivation through increased autonomy and purpose

Social conflicts between team members -> let teams reform themselves

„Selfish“ teams instead of „one team“ spirit

Reduce number of „cross cutting“ teams and include members in feature teams.

Challenges, Goals

About 80 participants including management

Management explained project vision and workhop target and left.

Management came back at the end for the team presentations and closing.

Workshop Schedule

Skill Cards

© valtech gmbh

Team Org Chart

1st Iteration 4 new teams formed except one team x which remained almost unchanged

2nd Iteration Some members left team x but other teams tried to keep their members. Team x was incomplete and the process stagnated.

3rd Iteration After the break someone voluntered to join team x.

Iterations

Choose Team Names, Rooms, SMs …

Self-Designing Teams @BMW KEGON AG 2014 25

The opening practices helped to warm up and get used to move around the room.

Stagnation at iteration 2 seems normal. Have a break and trust the people to get the job done.

One facilitator for each team helps to speed up inspection & adaption of team composition.

A lot of positive energy from the workshop.

Increased trust of management in teams ability to self-organize.

Know how bottlenecks don‘t disappear, if you don‘t invest in mentoring, coaching, pairing etc.

Social conflicts might recur and must be addressed.

Key Learnings

KEGON AG 2014 27

Train all participants in Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) and let them figure out, how to form feature teams in 2 hours.

Vote Scrum Masters and let them facilitate the team forming event (EduScrum)

Let Product Owners pitch their product vision and ask them, what skills they need to develop the product (Lean Startup)

Have people with different work preferences and sufficient linking skills in the same team (Team Management System)

What would work for your organization and environment?

Some Alternative Approaches