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The Voyage Toward Agility: an Experience ReportDan LeFebvreAgile/Scrum Coach, CSP© DCL Agility, 2009

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Dan LeFebvreFounder & Agile Coach,DCL Agility, LLC

• Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP)

• Extensive experience in software product development as a developer, manager, director, and coach

• Last 6 years using agile practices• Last 3 years implementing Scrum in a 700 person

engineering organization as an Agile Coach▫Sites in MA, OR, TX, GA, IL▫Also in Canada – BC, Que▫Also in Belgium and Noida, India

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Intent of this Session

•To take you through the journey of that 700 person engineering organization toward agility through Scrum.

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Something is not right

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The Situation

VersionPlanned (Dev-Test)

Actual(Dev-Test)

Total (Plan-Actual)

5.0 8-4 8-6 12 -14

5.1 6-6 6-7 12-13

5.2 5-7 12-?

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“Agile Lite” Goal 11-1

•Iterative/incremental development•Test Driven Development•Emergent/Evolutionary Design•Daily Standups•Retrospectives

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Phase gated governance model • Commit to contents, dates,

cost for a 12 month release• Account for entire

organizational effort

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Weakest Link Theory

•Interdependent suite of products•All must ship simultaneously•If any of them not agile, suite is in trouble

•Rolled out to entire organization at once

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Results

•Delivered 7-5•Improved Quality•More automated tests•Feeling that “Agile in the culture”

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First Waypoint:Entropy“Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.”

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

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Next Release

•All part-time coaches back to their day jobs•Committed to 3 suite-wide projects

(each considered all or nothing)•Results

▫Projects fell behind▫2 projects stopped doing retrospectives▫All UI-based automation broke▫Team morale suffered▫No or meaningless burncharts

so no transparency

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The Agile Coach

•Observe and help teams that are struggling

•Teach agile to new employees•Roll out agile to newly acquired

companies•Become the agile conscience of

the organization

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Results

•Teams got help•New teams started getting results sooner•Organization had a catalyst for change

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Second Waypoint:Culture“The sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another.”

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition.

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“Command and Control”

•Very hierarchical•People treated as “resources”•Management makes most

decisions•“Blame” is typical reaction•Little management agile training

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Organization Divided

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Customer CommunityCustomer

CommunityDeveloper

CommunityDeveloper

Community

ManagerCommunityManager

Community

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Collaboration Explained

•90 people trained in collaboration skills by Jean Tabaka and Ronica Roth from Rally▫Organizing tools▫Facilitation techniques▫Lots of hands-on exercises

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Agile Management Framework

•Scrum is a management framework•Training focused on the managers and

product managers•Create true cross-functional teams•Managers became ScrumMasters

Product Managers are now the Product Owners

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Results

•Meetings ran better•Better agendas and capturing of group

learning•Better retrospectives•Better team collaboration•Managers knew their jobs•Much better transparency•Single voice for the teams

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Third Waypoint:Size“The physical dimensions, proportions, magnitude, or extent of an object.”

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

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Large Interdependent Suite

CTO/Executive VP

VP Applications

Director – Flagship

Director – Add-ons

VP Systems

Director – Development Director – QA

VP Customer Engineering

Director – Development Director – QA

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Parallel Project Organization

•Suite Management Team (SMT)•Suite Integration Team (SIT)•Suite Release Team (SRT)

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How do they synchronize and review the suite?

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Heartbeats

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RC1 RC2 RC3

Sprint 1

Sprint 2

Sprint 3

Sprint 4

Sprint 5

Sprint 6

Sprint 7

Sprint 8

Sprint 9

Suite heartbeat

Team 1 heartbeat

Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 Sprint 4 Sprint 5 Sprint 6Team 2 heartbeat

Sprint 1

Sprint 2

Sprint 3

Sprint 4

Sprint 5

Sprint 6

Sprint 7Team 3

heartbeat

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Results

•Better communication between teams•More suite-wide transparency•More focused suite-wide decisions•Better team collaboration

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Fourth Waypoint:Impediments“Something that impedes; a hindrance or obstruction.”

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

“Anything that prevents a team member from performing work as efficiently as possible is an impediment.”

ScrumAlliance.org

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Suboptimization

•Each team is run fairly independently•Each identify and resolve impediments

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First Attempt – Etc.

•Senior Execs doing the work of prioritizing and resolving organizational impediments

•Issues▫Execs had no time for this work▫Reluctant to assign people to impediment

removal teams

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Second Attempt – Scrum Implementation Team•Small group of 8 people from across the

organization •Issues

▫Focused more on process definition instead of impediment removal

▫Not all the skills represented▫Limited time to work on this, still had day

jobs

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Third Attempt – ScrumMaster Meeting

•Hold a regular meeting of ScrumMasters to identify, prioritize, and volunteer to resolve impediments

•This group got some traction•Issues

▫Many impediments around Product Ownership

▫Also many architectural impediments

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Final Attempt – Agile Leaders Meeting

•ScrumMasters, Product Owners, and Architects

•Facilitated by Agile Coach•A brief coaching session on an agile•Organizational Impediment Handling

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Results

•Resolved over 50 impediments in 1 year•Increased sense of ownership•Better communication between teams•Improved automation•Increased productivity

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Fifth Waypoint:Commitment“An agreement or promise to do something in the future.”

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law

“The state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to a course of action.”

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

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Suite planning still phase-gated•Need still exists to commit to an annual

plan •Company expects large features to justify

the 700 person engineering staff•Outside engineering still driven by

“waterfall” model▫Cannot or will not take advantage of

iterative delivery

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Created a Multi-tiered Content Strategy•Commit at the high level•Establish budgets at the mid-level•Stay flexible at the details

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Requirements hierarchy

• Initiatives – Broad areas of focus tied to corporate strategy

• Headlines – Major Feature Sets/Capabilities within an Initiative

• Shippable Units – The smallest feature that is worth shipping

• Stories – User stories as we all know and love

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Planning Onion

Strategy – Sets Initiatives

Portfolio – Headlines to Products

Product – Shippable Units to RCs

Release – Stories to Sprints

Sprint – Tasks

Daily – Updates

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Planning and Outputs

Release PlanSprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3

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Product Plan

SU

RC 1 RC 2 RC 3 RC 4

SU SU

SU SU

SU SU

SU SU

SU SU

SU SU

SU SU

SU SU SU

SU SU

Portfolio Plan

Rel 6.2

Rel 6.1.1

Rel 6.1.2

HeadlineHeadline

HeadlineHeadline

HeadlineHeadline

HeadlineHeadline

HeadlineHeadline

HeadlineHeadline

HeadlineHeadline

Headline Sprint PlanAs a User, I can jfh hf jahdsdf

Started Done

TaskTask

TaskTask

TaskTask

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Results

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Increased Automation

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RC1 RC2 RC3 RC4 RC5 RC6 RC7 RC80

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

Automated Tests Run

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What happened to quality

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0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 1001101200

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

V6.0V6.1

Weeks

Op

en

D

efe

cts

Pre-Scrum

Scrum

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Where are they?

•Scrum is implemented throughout•Mechanism for organizational

impediments in place•Transparency is improving•Engineering practices are

getting better•Quality is improving•Planning is becoming more flexible

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Questions?Dan LeFebvreScrum/Agile CoachDCL Agility, LLCDan@DCLAgility.comhttp://www.DCLAgility.com

9/17/2009