{"id":977,"date":"2021-01-12T08:52:12","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T07:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agilerasmus.com\/wordpress\/?p=977"},"modified":"2021-01-12T08:52:13","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T07:52:13","slug":"safety-goggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agilerasmus.com\/wordpress\/safety-goggles\/","title":{"rendered":"SAFety goggles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Many experts have previously written about the challenges seen in the market when scaling agile using official frameworks. Doing a simple job search online, I find a steady increase in the number of postings for agile jobs as Scrum Master and Product Owner but also for some of the more debatable titles as Release Train Engineer, SAFe Program Consultant and Product Manager. This trend underlines the importance of understanding the mechanics behind the frameworks but also the consequences of introducing them in an organization. The result can be festive and colorful like fireworks, but without safety goggles and proper handling it is easy to get into trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luxshan Ratnaravi who is an agile coach with Bankdata in Denmark, has made a list of questions that could be answered to determine if agile scaling is the right solution \u2013 and if you should use an official framework:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. What challenges can we not solve without scaling?<\/li>
  2. What is our goal with scaling agile?<\/li>
  3. How can an existing scaling framework help reach our goal? Or should we rather cherry-pick elements form the different frameworks?<\/li>
  4. What are the leading indicators of whether our chose scaled agile setup is (still) solving our challenges?<\/li>
  5. Are our existing agile teams sufficiently mature for us to scale?<\/li>
  6. Have we tried to remove the dependencies between our teams?<\/li>
  7. Will we organize our team of teams around a value stream that is relevant to all teams?<\/li>
  8. Can we align all involved teams on a relevant and common vision, roadmap and program\/product backlog?<\/li>
  9. Are the involved teams better together (define \u2018better\u2019 as you wish) as a team of teams than separately as individual teams?<\/li>
  10. Should the involved teams work as feature teams with a collective program\/product backlog?<\/li>
  11. Will we prioritize the high-level PBIs across all involved teams, their products and competencies in order to enable team swarming?<\/li>
  12. Do our stakeholders agree that the benefits of scaling are greater than the overhead of it?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    These questions are extremely relevant and should be part of any decision on agile scaling. In addition, it is my opinion that agile scaling is temporary mitigation of shared impediments. And what does that mean? It implies that introducing e.g. SAFe should be a temporary solution to the shared impediments found by answering the 12 questions above. In the course of time, the organization should reduce the need for shared goals, visions and road maps with a target condition of having independent self-managing agile teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It is important the stress that no matter which framework \u2013 or no framework \u2013 you chose for scaling you must have deep understanding of the mechanics behind. A success requires experience with the frameworks, knowledge of the organization and an ability to implement and facilitate the change. This is typically solved in a strong coalition between external specialists and internal employees and internal managers. No change can be implemented solely by external specialists with the hope of creating sustainable change in the organization. It requires a change of organization, employees, ways of working and delivery model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The most common framework for agile scaling is SAFe. This framework provides a silver bullet for transforming an organization from plan driven development into iterative and incremental development. The silver bullet is called \u201cSAFe Implementation Roadmap\u201d. As you know, there are no silver bullets, and nothing is as easy as a text book prescribes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n