Partner Article

The Three Things You Need to Scale Agile Successfully

Maybe you’re feeling pressured to deliver new features your customers have been demanding, but you don’t know which ones to prioritize. You’re feeling the heat from your competitors, but your teams are already maxed out with other work.

Maybe you have development teams already using Agile practices, but you’ve realized that’s not enough: your business initiatives still fall short, and the competition is gaining ground.

I’m guessing you’ve read some articles, seen some analyst reports, and heard the buzzwords touting the virtues of enterprise agility, scaled Agile, Agile programs, and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe); but perhaps you’re unsure what these really mean and how they relate to each other.

Don’t freak out! If your teams are doing well with Agile it means you’re already on your way to delivering more value to your customers AND your business. What you need is a plan that helps you do the right work faster and continuously.

We call this Strategy Meets Execution. As Forrester explains in its report from January 7, 2014, “Connecting The Dots: Building An Integrated Strategy And Execution Plan”:

“Connecting above-the-line strategic portfolio planning with below-the-line execution practices in a way that stresses pragmatism over process is essential to adding visibility without adding levels of bureaucracy.”

This connection is the sweet spot where you build mid-range plans and realize exponential business value from coordinated work across multiple Agile development teams.

Scaling Agile across teams and connecting your strategy with your Agile execution isn’t easy. It requires a fundamental cultural shift in how you plan and execute work, and commitment from top-to-bottom within your organization. It can’t be accomplished overnight—it takes time and investment to transform a business, with plenty of “inspecting and adapting” along the way.

But we’ve seen customers successfully tackle this challenge over and over again, and from our experience helping some of the largest enterprises in the world transform their practices and culture, we’ve identified three key things you need in order to get it done.

Team-level proficiency with Agile development practices across the development organization—or for starters, across teams dedicated to a pilot program or product. Though you may have many or all of your teams running Agile, you may find that they use inconsistent approaches and processes, or that you have different teams using different tools. Without consistency in both process and tools, it will be impossible to coordinate the work of teams of teams—much less align that work to the business initiatives that fund large-scale programs or product development. Commitments from executives, the business, and the PMO to change the way strategic work is defined, planned, and managed. The impact of top-down support cannot be understated, as successful transformation—including release trains of Agile execution teams—relies on an organization-wide dedication to doing things differently. Change is hard for most humans, but it’s a lot easier if there’s top-to-bottom support. A methodology and tooling that links Agile execution to strategic plans; scales to support multiple, coordinated teams and programs; and provides the visibility business stakeholders need to to quickly meet new opportunities, address risks, and respond to competitive pressures.

As you consider your process (such as Scaled Agile Framework) and your tooling options, you should ask the following questions: Does the methodology accommodate all the roles in the organization who need to participate in portfolio planning and Agile execution? Does the Agile tool or platform support rollups that connect the work of teams to programs or teams of teams, and connect user stories to features and initiatives? Will you have access to metrics that let you benchmark your development teams’ work and get insights that increase performance and predictability? Can your executives and business stakeholders look at dashboards and reports and know whether they’re on track to deliver on a major business initiative?

Getting these three things in place will give you the foundation for a successful transformation. It will align your business goals with the actual development work being done. It will help you figure out what’s the most important work, give you visibility into the progress that work, and help your business adapt to fast-moving market opportunities and needs. It will also transform the culture of your organization into one that values innovation, servant leadership, customer empathy, and adaptability in a fast-moving, competitive market.

By Steve Wolfe, Director of Product Marketing, Rally Software

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rally Software .