A holistic approach to scaling agile at Salesforce.com

Agile 2010 ConferenceOrlando, Florida

Steve GreeneNicola Dourambeis

Who are we?

Steve GreeneVP, Program Management

Nicola DourambeisDirector, Agile Delivery

Problems?

Unpredictable completion of anything

Lack of Visibility

Resource Bottlenecks

Infrequent Customer Feedback

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Features Delivered per Team

Days between Major Releases

What did we do about it?

The Beginning (2006)2006

25+ agile teamsin R&D

2010

100+ agile teams

R&D, IT, & Technical Operations

What is ADM?

ADM (Adaptive Delivery Methodology)

Salesforce.com flavor of agile

Scrum project management framework

XP practices

Based on Lean principles

Next steps to scale

We scale both deep and wide

After success with R&D, ADM was rolled out to IT

3 month rollout:Don’t overthink it, start, inspect and adapt

Next Up: Technical Operations moved to ADM

Embrace Difference and be prepared to stretch Agility

Wide scale has challenges, scaling deep has more

Challenges

Aggressive Hiring

Let’s change the world!

Scale with values

One Codeline

ProductDependencies

Leadership

Solutions

Scale Problem #1Dependency Management is Hard

Dependency Management is Hard

Just enough

structure but no more

ADM Release Cycle

Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan

Release Release ReleaseRelease

Coordinate release planning with generic

framework

Planning cycle for next release

Planning cycle for next release

Planning cycle for next release

Tools Help

But really, it’s the people that make things happen

And we make a big investment in collaboration

Maintain Technical HealthDebt is the Enemy

Create a Single Definition of Done

Stop the codeline when test failures are too high

Status Metric Now(7/30) Release Criteria

Potentially Releasable Metrics Feature Freeze Threshold

Basic Ftest 100% 100.0%

Utest 100% 100.0%

Full Ftest 100% >99.8%

Extended Ftest 96.86% >99.75%

Basic Selenium 99.76% 100.0%

Selenium 99.6% >99.5%

Unresolved Integrations 0 0

Strong Attention to metrics

Maintain team focus

Hire for Values and Culture Fit

Let’s go deeper

Case Study

Agile Program Management

Urgent change based on new strategic direction

The ugly baby

High LevelGoals

Design & Priorities

Global Prioritized “Feature” backlog

Move teams not people

26 to 33 to 27 Teams

Team 13

Team 11

Team 9

Team 10

Team 14Team 8Team 7

Team 12

Team 19

Team 18

Team 16

Team 15

Team 17

Team 25

Team 21

Team 20

Team 27

Team 22

Team 23

Team 24

Team 26

Team 2

Team 3

Team 4

Team 5

Team 1

Team 6

Launch & Collaborate

Align to Workgroups

Team 13

Team 11

Team 9

Team 10

Team 14

Team 8Team 7

Team 12

Team 19

Team 18

Team 16

Team 15

Team 17

Workgroup 4

Workgroup 2

Team 25

Team 21Team 20

Team 27

Team 22

Team 23

Team 24

Team 26

Team 2

Team 3

Team 4

Team 5

Team 1

Team 6

Workgroup 1

Workgroup 3

Collaboration is key (up, down, across)

Meet to realign every day

Full Coordinated Transparency

Visibility to Program feature priorities

Visibility to Workgroup feature priorities

Features Priority Status

Console 1

Client-Side Data Binding 2

Sharing model 3

Home page redesign 4

Workbench 5

Prioritizer UI 6

Investigations support 7

VF redesign 8

RCA support 9

Universal workflow 10

api 11

Program Dependencies

Delivering Team & Feature

Consuming Team & Feature

May June July

Team 8

Team 7

Something more

Something I want Team 22

HighHighMedMedLowLow RiskDone

Done – DeliveredLow – On trackMedium – Possible concerns/may miss deadline High – Not scheduled, cannot deliver, or deadline missed

Feature at risk

Feature

Team 12

Team 18

Something I need Cool Feature

Team 10

Team 11Something else I need

Another Cool Feature

Monitor complexity & maintain visibility

Lessons Learned

Be Bold and don’t go Halfway

Don’t be satisfied, always look for things to improve

Stick to your principles

Trust the teams over creating mandatory process & structure

Agile does work at scale

Lightweight structure & more autonomy

Questions?

http://www.slideshare.net/sgreene