Why Scaling Agile Doesn't Work (and What to Do About It)

There are now several frameworks designed to address the demand for "big agile."

In this talk Jez will explain the flaws in such frameworks, why they so often fail to produce the desired effects, and what we should do instead. He will also address some common organizational obstacles to moving fast at scale: governance, budgeting, and the project paradigm - and discuss how to address them. Warning: this talk will include liberal use of real, statistically sound data.

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zYxWEZ0gYg

Transcript

1. @jezhumble
   #gotober | december 4 2015
   why scaling agile doesn’t work
   (and what to do about it)
   

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2. scrum-
   fall
   water-
   

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4. cost
   “Even in projects with very uncertain development
   costs, we haven't found that those costs have a
   significant information value for the investment
   decision… The single most important unknown is
   whether the project will be canceled. The next most
   important variable is utilization of the system,
   including how quickly the system rolls out and
   whether some people will use it at all.”
   Douglas Hubbard | http://www.cio.com/article/119059/The_IT_Measurement_Inversion
   

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5. batching up work
   “Black Swan Farming using Cost of Delay” | Joshua J. Arnold and Özlem Yüce | bit.ly/black-swan-farming
   

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6. create feedback loops to validate assumptions
   accept our “requirements” will be wrong
   focus on value, not cost
   enable an experimental approach to product dev
   make it economic to work in small batches
   what should we do
   

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7. impact mapping
   Gojko Adzic, Impact Mapping
   

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8. @jezhumble
   Jeff Gothelf “Better product definition with Lean UX and Design” http://bit.ly/TylT6A
   hypothesis-driven delivery
   We believe that
   [building this feature]
   [for these people]
   will achieve [this outcome].
   We will know we are successful when we see
   [this signal from the market].
   

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9. experiments
   Different types of user research, courtesy of Janice Fraser
   

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10. Jon Jenkins, “Velocity Culture, The Unmet Challenge in Ops” | http://bit.ly/1vJo1Ya
    

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11. do less
    “Evaluating well-designed and executed
    experiments that were designed to
    improve a key metric, only about 1/3 were
    successful at improving the key metric!”
    “Online Experimentation at Microsoft”, Kohavi et al http://stanford.io/130uW6X
    

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12. hp laserjet firmware division
    2008
    ~5% - innovation capacity
    15% - manual testing
    25% - product support
    25% - porting code
    20% - detailed planning
    10% - code integration
    Costs
    Full manual regression: 6 wks
    Builds / day: 1-2
    Commit to trunk: 1 week
    Cycle times
    

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13. deployment pipeline
    

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14. hp laserjet firmware team
    ~5% - innovation
    15% - manual testing
    25% - current product support
    25% - porting code
    20% - detailed planning
    10% - code integration
    2008
    ~40% - innovation
    5% - most testing automated
    10% - product support
    15% - one main branch
    5% - agile planning
    2% - continuous integration
    2011
    The remaining 23% on RHS is spent on managing automated tests.
    

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15. the economics
    2008 to 2011
    • overall development costs reduced by ~40%
    • programs under development increased by ~140%
    • development costs per program down 78%
    • resources now driving innovation increased by 8X
    A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development - Gruver, Young, Fulghum
    

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16. lightweight planning
    A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development - Gruver, Young, Fulghum
    

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17. capacity planning
    Leading the Transformation - Gruver, Mouser
    

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19. What obstacles are preventing you from reaching
    it? which one are you addressing now?
    What is the target condition? (The challenge)
    What is the actual condition now?
    When can we go and see what we learned from
    taking that step?
    What is your next step? (Start of PDCA cycle)
    improvement kata
    

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20. improvement kata
    A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development - Gruver, Young, Fulghum
    

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21. innovation culture
    “I think building this culture is the key to
    innovation. Creativity must flow from everywhere.
    Whether you are a summer intern or the CTO,
    any good idea must be able to seek an objective
    test, preferably a test that exposes the idea to
    real customers. Everyone must be able to
    experiment, learn, and iterate.”
    http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/04/early-amazon-shopping-cart.html
    

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22. create feedback loops to validate assumptions
    accept our “requirements” will be wrong
    focus on value, not cost
    enable an experimental approach to product dev
    make it economic to work in small batches
    conclusion
    

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23. thank you!
    © 2016-7 DevOps Research and Assessment LLC
    https://devops-research.com/
    To receive the following:
    • A copy of this presentation
    • A 100 page excerpt from Lean Enterprise
    • An excerpt from the DevOps Handbook
    • A 20m preview of my Continuous Delivery video workshop
    • Discount code for CD video + interviews with Eric Ries & more
    Just pick up your phone and send an email
    To: jezhumble@sendyourslides.com
    Subject: devops
    

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