From Agile Teams to Agile organizations
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Steve Mercier, a director with over 20 years in software development and extensive experience in agile and devops, discusses the transition from agile teams to agile organizations, outlining the promises, challenges, and potential solutions for scaling agile practices. Key challenges include team composition, cultural differences across teams, and the need for an end-to-end agile process. The document emphasizes the importance of using a delivery pipeline system, continuous improvement, and the integration of agile with lean and devops to enhance delivery speed and reduce inefficiencies.
From Agile Teams to Agile organizations
- 1. Steve Mercier, Director of Software Engineering Practices From Agile Teams to Agile Organizations
- 2. Who am I ?
- 3. Steve Mercier 20 years+ of software development experience, 10 years+ of using Agile methodologies daily, 5 years+ of using DevOps philosophy daily Specialized in Best practices: Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery/ Deployment, Software Production Lines, Infrastructure As Code, Continuous Improvement, Lean engineering Currently Director of Software Engineering Practices at Lightspeed, responsible of DevOps, Test Automation, QA, Security and Documentation practices
- 4. The (ongoing/chaotic) journey from Agile Teams to Agile Organization
- 5. The Agile Organization Journey ‣ Promises ‣ Challenges ‣ Questions ‣ (Tentative) Answers ‣ Conclusion ‣ Q&A
- 7. The Agile Promises ‣ Faster time to market ‣ Development costs reduction ‣ Quality improvement ‣ Business value driven, aligned with customers needs ‣ Better team work, better focus ‣ Technical debt reduction ‣ No useless architecture and documents ‣ Only good code adding business value!
- 8. The Agile Promises - graphically Who would not want that? Maybe a little simplistic…
- 9. The Agile Promises - The journey begins We send the first team(s) to training
- 10. Agile SCRUM at its core is quite simple
- 11. The Agile Promises This first team comes back, full of good intention the team starts using Agile, and it works!
- 12. The Agile Promises So it seems Agile works, right? Question: does it work for you?
- 13. The Agile Promises By experience, Agile typically works well if: You are working on new software, with small teams and a limited number of teams Agile tends to work less if: You are trying to scale Agile to multiple teams on larger projects
- 15. Challenge #1 - Scaling to multiple (independent) teams Based on early successes, other teams are asked to try it With possibly less training, less passion, less mentoring possibly even resisting the transformation
- 16. Challenge #2 - Scaling it to dispersed (independent) teams Not colocated teams, across time zones Teams have different cultures, values Teams do not all see Agile in the same way
- 17. Challenges #3 - Scaling it to dispersed dependent teams Individual teams, OK, dispersed independent teams, also OK But if the business requires different teams to deliver a common product across continents… more challenging!
- 18. Scaling Agile to multiple teams is complex…
- 20. Challenge #4 - Wrong team composition QA, Ops not part of the Agile teams PO/PM not part of the teams or not available
- 21. Challenge #5 - Not having an end to end Agile process Having handoffs between the Agile teams and Ops for example Definition of Done not including Shipping It
- 22. Challenge #6 - Too much manual process Red tape / Various Authorizations Agile is about empowering teams
- 23. Challenge #7 - Old school management “New” Agile management should focus on: Creation of a “safe” environment for trying things, enforcing the fail fast / fail differently model Rewarding the right behaviours Fostering a learning organization culture
- 24. The Questions
- 25. Is SCRUM enough to obtain Agile organizations? No. Does it help? Sure!
- 26. Is Scrum of Scrums a solution? ‣ How could we frame the common work across multiple teams? ‣ How to structure the whole software development effort of many teams? ‣ Scrum of Scrums can help; sufficient?
- 27. What could be this structuring frame?
- 28. The (Tentative) Answers Hint: Ever heard of a Software Delivery Pipeline?
- 29. Step #1 - Leverage Software Engineering Practices ‣ Use Software Engineering Best Practices as a frame to constrain how software is developed and connected together ‣ Helps mostly with structuring the How ‣ Communities of Practices can be helpful
- 30. Step #2 - Develop/Use a Delivery Pipeline System Engrain those defined practices into a single Software Delivery Pipeline system
- 31. Step #3 - Feed your system with the real customers needs Ensure you feed your delivery pipeline with the right things - do the right thing for your customers The best pipeline system in the world will not help your agility if you do the wrong thing with it!
- 32. Step #4 - Apply Continuous Improvement to your pipeline Use Lean / Plan-Do-Check-Act principles and Continuously reflect on the system to optimize it to your business
- 33. Why a Delivery Pipeline system? “Average leaders have quotes. Good leaders have a plan. Exceptional leaders have a system.” - Urban Meyer Your Automated Delivery Pipeline is your system
- 34. But what should be in a typical pipeline? What is the scope of such a system?
- 35. Delivery Pipeline Elements ‣ Starts with a feature file -like input (i.e. a clear customer need) ‣ Code Commit (everything should be under SCM) ‣ CI - Continuous Build / Unit tests / Continuous Testing / System tests ‣ Continuous Delivery / Deployment ‣ Continuous Monitoring of all systems
- 36. How to measure progress - The (true) Agility KPIs ‣ Total Lead time for any improvement ‣ Number of deployments per day ‣ Number of incidents in production ‣ Impact of the incidents, duration ‣ The time to onboard a new developer
- 37. Agility KPIs - top DevOps performers Before After Lead time Months Days / Minutes # of deployments Quarterly Multiple Daily # of incidents Multiple per deploy Almost none Incidents impact Days of downtime 0 downtime On-boarding time Months Days
- 38. How to get there? Use SCRUM and Agile principles, values, processes, yes. But also: ‣ Put in place the feedback loops, Continuous Improvements, Lean processes in place ‣ Apply the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach on small process improvements ‣ Find your waste, using Value Stream Mapping analysis, reduce your batch size
- 39. Use your Pipeline to make the issues visible A global Continuous Delivery pipeline for all the company’s software would help highlighting the issues, challenges, areas requiring improvements
- 40. Reduce cycle time by enforcing Automation ‣ Continuous Integration with automatic tests at unit, system and system of systems levels ‣ Continuous Delivery or Deployment using Infrastructure As Code
- 41. Keep the focus on the global system, not on small teams Company Continuous Delivery pipeline help keep the focus on the company delivered business value to external customers, reducing the natural silos barriers impacts.
- 42. What more ‣ Teams’ composition is key - all the required roles must be fulfilled within the teams ‣ Complement Agile and Scrum with other compatible approaches such as LEAN and DevOps to optimize global organization and not just a small team work ‣ Ensure an environment permitting trials and failures is in place; create a safe environment for contributions; learn from failures, i.e. Fail fast and fail differently each time
- 43. Conclusion
- 44. Conclusion Having an Agile organization is a journey that can certainly start with Scrum, but cannot really stop until all the software you produce and operate is continuously delivered to your end customers The key here is to deliver faster, faster than your competition, to disrupt yourself before your competitors do disrupt your business The Agile philosophy, values and tools are only a partial answer The DevOps/Lean philosophy, values and tools are only a partial answer Ask yourselves what prevents you from delivering value faster?
- 45. Conclusion Break Silos, Work end-to-end, in small batches of work Empower your teams, Evolve your management style Remove all your red-tape and manual processes, one by one Measure your true Agility KPIs Put in place a system delivering customer’s value!
- 46. And be cautious… “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all” - Peter Drucker (the inventor of modern management)
- 47. Q&A Questions and answers - What do you think about this?