Group hug - Implementing Agile Across Multiple Teams

Editor's Notes

• #7: Kennedy video – we choose to go to the moon.
• #10: Don’t map work to people, focus on delivery of value
• #14: Kennedy video – we choose to go to the moon.
• #18: Kennedy video – we choose to go to the moon.
• #25: Kennedy video – we choose to go to the moon.
• #31: The fundamental observation was that many organizations were struggling with how to scale agile methods, in particular Scrum. We felt that the first step was to identify how to successfully develop a solution from end-to-end. Although mainstream agile methods clearly provided a lot of great strategies, there really wasn’t any sort of glue beyond consultantware (e.g. hire me and I’ll show you how to do it) putting it all together. This is where the DAD framework comes in, but that’s only a start as you also need to tailor your approach to reflect the context in which you find yourself. The DAD framework provides a better foundation for scaling agile: Risk and value driven lifecycle. Scrum has what is called a value driven lifecycle. Work is prioritized by value to the business and is performed in priority order. This is a pretty good approach, but it’s possible to do better. Disciplined agile teams recognize that it’s a pretty good idea to tackle the riskier work early in an endeavor in order to help eliminate some or all of the risk. Some people like to refer to this as an aspect of “failing fast” although we like to put it in terms of succeeding early. A risk-value approach to work prioritization, and better yet explicit risk-based milestones (such as reaching stakeholder agreement early and proving the architecture with working code early), can increase your chance of project success. Self organization with effective governance. There has been much ado made over the strategy of self organizing teams with the agile community and rightfully so as it is an effective strategy. But, agile project teams don’t work in a vacuum but instead work within the scope and constraints of a larger, organizational ecosystem. Instead of optimizing the project part as many agile methods imply that you should do in DAD we recommend that you adopt an effective governance strategy that guides and enables agile teams. Delivery of consumable solutions over construction of working software. There are two issues here, a delivery focus over a construction focus and a solution focus over a software focus. First, disciplined agile teams recognize that there is some up-front project initiation/inception work that occurs early in a project. DAD also recognizes that there is often some deployment/transition effort that occurs towards the end of a project. The end result is that DAD promotes the idea that you need to adopt a full delivery lifecycle, not just a construction-focused lifecycle, if you’re to successfully avoid common mistakes such as a Water-Scrum-Fall approach. Futhermore, because DAD isn’t prescriptive it suggests several versions (agile, lean, continuous delivery) of the lifecycle. Second, agile teams do far more than produce software. We create supporting documentation. The software runs on hardware that may need to be upgraded and/or redeployed. We potentially change the business process around the usage of the system we’re producing. We may even affect changes to the organization structure of the people using the system. In short, it is blatantly obvious that we’re not just producing “potentially shippable software” but instead are producing “potentially shippable solutions”. Moreover, producing something that is just “potentially shippable” isn’t what our stakeholders actually want. What they really desire is something that’s consumable, something that they can easily understand and adopt to help them achieve their goals. The rhetoric “potentially shippable software” plays well to some developers, but it isn’t a sufficient goal. Enterprise awareness over team awareness. We alluded to this in point #2. Disciplined agile teams recognize that they work in a larger organizational ecosystem. This enterprise awareness motivates them to leverage existing assets; enhance existing assets; work closely with enterprise professionals such as enterprise architects, reuse engineers, portfolio managers, and data adminstrators; and produce solutions that reflect the technology and business roadmaps of your organization. Done right this increases a team’s ability to deliver. Context-sensitive and goal driven over prescriptive. One process size does not fit all. A strategy that works for a small co-located team will put a large geographically distributed team at risk. A strategy that works well in a non-regulatory environment may result in people’s deaths in a regulatory one (or more likely fines because hopefully you’ll be caught before you ship). So, if you want to build an effective team you need to be able to select the right strategy for the situation you find yourself in. DAD describes a straightforward, easy to consume strategy that is goal driven