member ofmember of

Beat Fraefel

Agile Business Analysis – Agile at Scale

Beat Fraefel – November 27, 2021

member of

Beat Fraefel

■ Why Scaling?

■ Ideas and Methodologies for Scaling

♦ Independent Teams

♦ Product Owner as a Team Role

♦ Large-Scale Scrum – LeSS

♦ Scrum @ Scale

♦ SAFe® – Scaled Agile Framework

♦ Spotify Model

2Agile at Scale

Agenda

Beat Fraefel 3Agile at Scale

I have to admit …

Agile is effective

scaleable?

(in complex situations)

efficient

Beat Fraefel

■ Self-organized agile teams depend on proper communication

■ A group’s complexity grows faster than its size

■ Scrum Guide on Development Team Size: “Having more than nine

members requires too much coordination. Large Development Teams

generate too much complexity for an empirical process to be useful.”

4Agile at Scale

Agility works for small teams,

but does Agility scale?

5 members -

10 connections

10 members -

45 connections

15 members - 105 connections

Communication and

coordination across

multiple teams and within

larger teams is impaired.

Beat Fraefel

Why scaling?

Agile at Scale 5

Strategic Coordination

(product width)

Tactical Coordination

(bandwidth / capacity)

Team

Unit(many teams for

one product/service)

Organization(many teams for many products/services)

Large Scale Organization(many units for many products/services)

product/service

requires one team

large scale product/service

requires many teams

1 product/service

→ 1 Product Owner

many products/services (suite)

→ many Product OwnersSource: Foegen/Kaczmarek:

Organisation in einer digitalen Zeit

Beat Fraefel

■ The need for coordination is identified too late

♦ Agile Teams may turn into Silos

♦ Lack of coordiation undermines trust in agile approach

■ Traditional hierarchical approach:

Line Managers direct and/or coordinate

♦ Push instead of Pull

♦ Often frustating for teams

♦ Prone to politics

➔ Scaling needs some structural elements – only culture does not work

6Agile at Scale

Typical Problems with Scaling Agile

Beat Fraefel

■ Why Scaling?

■ Ideas and Methodologies for Scaling

♦ Independent Teams

♦ Product Owner as a Team Role

♦ Large-Scale Scrum – LeSS

♦ Scrum @ Scale

♦ SAFe® – Scaled Agile Framework

♦ Spotify Model

7Agile at Scale

Agenda

Beat Fraefel

■ Make teams as independent as possible

to lower the need for coordination

■ «Productization»:

♦ many small, independent product-like functions instead of one

huge product

♦ strong product vision needed to set a common direction

■ Feature Teams instead of

technology/functional silos

8Agile at Scale

Independent Teams

Frontend

Backend

Database

Operations

Prod.mgmt

Te

chn

olo

gy/

Fun

ction

alS

ilos

Feature 1Product

catalog

Feature 2Payment

Feature 3Shopping

cart

Feature 4Community

Feature Teams with end-to-end responsibility

Beat Fraefel

Product Owner Role owned by an interdisciplinary, self-organized team.

→ strategic coordination

9Agile at Scale

Product Owner as a Team Role

PO Team with representatives of Product Management, Engineering, Operations

Joint responsibility for Product Backlog

Multiple development teams

Sync between teams

after each sprint

Beat Fraefel

Large-Scale Scrum – LeSS

Agile at Scale 10

Beat Fraefel

■ LeSS is Scrum

…applied to many teams

…working together

…on one product

■ One single Product Backlog, one Product Owner

■ Many cross-functional teams

♦ LeSS: Up to eight teams

♦ LeSS Huge: Up to a few thousand people on one product

■ Comprehensive website www.less.works

11Agile at Scale

What is LeSS?

Beat Fraefel

LeSS Cycle

Agile at Scale 12

Joint execution with all teams

Execution for each team separately

Image source: wibas.com

Beat Fraefel

Scrum @ Scale®

Agile at Scale 13

Scrum Team Scrum of Scrum Team

(SoS of 5 Teams)

Scrum of Scrum of Scrum Team

(SoSoS of 25 Teams)

Executive Action Team EAT

Coordinating 5 groupings of 25 teams

■ Created by Jeff Sutherland

■ Comprehensive Guide on

www.scrumatscale.com/scrum-at-scale-guide-online/

Beat Fraefel

Scrum @ Scale Framework

Agile at Scale 14

Beat Fraefel

Scaled Agile Framework – SAFe®

Key Concepts

Agile at Scale 15

■ Classic projects: Bring people to work (Staffing of projects)

SAFe: Bring work to people (stable teams are supplied with work)

■ An Agile Release Train ART is a «Team of agile Teams» which

is aligned to a joint mission (50..125 people)

♦ A Program Increment (PI) consists of 5 Sprints @ 2 weeks each

♦ Last Sprint is an Integration Sprint

♦ PI Planning: joint planning of a Program Increment, also known

as «Big Room Planning»

■ Program Management uses Kanban for Backlog Management

■ Agile Teams choose their own methodology (Scrum, Kanban, XP),

but operate on a synchronized cadence

Beat Fraefel

Essential SAFe®

Agile at Scale 17

Beat Fraefel

Portfolio SAFe®

Agile at Scale 18

Beat Fraefel

■ Team Level – as in Scrum:

Development Team, Product Owner, Scrum Master

■ Portfolio Level:

♦ Product Management: responsible for the Program Backlog;

works with Customers and Product Owners (Product Owner on Program Level)

♦ Release Train Engineer (RTE): the chief Scrum Master of the

Release Train; facilitates PI Planning (Scrum Master on Program Level)

♦ System Architect/Engineer: Define overall architecture, help

define nonfunctional requirements, determine major elements

and subsystems

♦ Business Owners: key stakeholders with business, technical and

governance responsibility

19Agile at Scale

SAFe® Roles

Beat Fraefel

WSJF – weighted shortest job first: estimation of «cost of delay»

20Agile at Scale

Prioritization in SAFe®

BV: Business value

TC: Time Criticality

RR/OE: Risk Reduction and/or Opportunity Enablement

Job Size: Duration of task

Feature BV TC RR/OE Total CoDJob Size/

DurationWSJF

A 8 5 5 18 2 9

B 5 13 1 19 3 6.3

C 3 2 5 10 13 0.8

D 13 5 3 21 8 2.6

E 2 2 13 17 5 3.4

F 1 3 2 6 3 2

Relative Values(Fibonacci numbers)A

B

C

D

EF

Beat Fraefel

Successful business model of Scaledagile Inc.

Agile at Scale21

Certified SAFe® Government PractitionerApplying Lean-Agile practices in the public sector with SAFe®

Certified SAFe® DevOps PractitionerOptimizing your value stream

Certified SAFe® Program ConsultantImplementing the Scaled Agile Framework® for Lean Enterprises

Certified SAFe® AgilistDeveloping the Five Core Competencies of the Lean Enterprise

Certified SAFe® Release Train EngineerFacilitating Lean-Agile program execution

Certified SAFe® Product Owner / Product MgrDelivering value through effective Program Increment execution

Certified SAFe® Advanced Scrum MasterAdvancing Scrum Master servant leadership with SAFe®

Certified SAFe® Scrum MasterApplying the Scrum Master role within a SAFe® enterprise

Certified SAFe® PractitionerEstablishing team agility for Agile Release Trains

Certified SAFe® Agile Software EngineerEnabling technical agility for the Lean enterprise

Certified SAFe® for ArchitectsArchitecting for continuous value flow with SAFe®

SAFe® Lean Portfolio ManagementAligning strategy with execution

SAFe® Agile Product and Solution Mgmt.Using Design Thinking to create valuable products in the Lean Enterprise

Beat Fraefel

Comprehensive Resources for SAFe® on

www.scaledagileframework.com

Agile at Scale 22

Beat Fraefel

Spotify Model

Agile at Scale 23

Beat Fraefel

Spotify Engineering Culture

Agile at Scale 24

https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/

Beat Fraefel Agile at Scale 25

For more agile comics, visit

https://www.comicagile.net/