SAFe: A Case Study Expanding agile up into the enterprise using the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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SAFe: A Case Study

Expanding agile up into the enterprise using the Scaled Agile Framework

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Agile Coach Project Manager Architect Developer

70% 90% 80% 65%

About Heath Murphy, PMP, MCSD

• I’m an agile enthusiast working for a pretty kick

ass consulting company, HMB

• I do a little bit of everything
• I live in Columbus, Ohio therefore that makes

me a huge Ohio State Buckeye fan. It’s a state law!

• I like Cats
• I Pumpkin Beer
• And yes…. I look very much like these guys:

What am I?

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Callouts

I’m not affiliated with Scaled Agile, Inc.

SAFe

Transformations take time and energy

It’s not easy!

Agile = Scrum (Scrum.org)

For you purists

I love this stuff!

Ask Questions, have fun

Before we Start

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Agile Baseline

A one slide over and discussion of what happens at scale

SAFe

What is it and why should I care?

Case Study

A deep dive analysis of how SAFe helped solve scale issues with an HMB client

Questions

Don’t wait. Ask any time!

Today’s Outline

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The Agile Slide

Sprint Planning Product Backlog Sprint Demo Sprint Retrospective Sprint

Sprint Backlog

Production Deployment Change Process Improvement

The Product Owner The Scrum Master The Development Team

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Project

Agile Team

Project 1 Project 2

Agile Team

Project 1 Project 2 Agile Team

Project 2 Project 3 Project 4

Agile Team

Project 2 Project 3 Project 4

Agile Team

Project 2

Agile Team

Project 2 Project 3 Project 4

When Agile Grows

Project & Team Dependencies at Scale

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“You’re doing agile and your doing it well. You’ve grown your team size to the point where the business can no longer keep up with a waterfall approach to portfolio

• management. Dependencies between teams

and projects cause delays and changing project priorities have unforeseen downstream effects. Enter SAFe, an open framework for applying agile patterns at enterprise scale.”

Enter Safe…

The elevator pitch

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About SAFe

The Scaled Agile Framework is an open set of guidelines designed to manage a large number of teams working in an enterprise agile environment. http://www.scaledagileframework.com/

Versions

• 1.0 released in 2011
• 4.0 is the current version
• 3 - level
• 4 - level

Certifications

Programs are available on their site to get certified

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SAFe

The Big Picture

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The Levels

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Plain ole’ vanilla agile! The heart of the ART (Agile Release Train) The PMO of agile

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The People

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The usual suspects System Architects, Product Managers, Business Owners Epic Owners, Sponsors, Enterprise Architects

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The Backlogs

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Team

Product & Sprint Backlogs

Program

Program & Release Backlogs

Portfolio

Portfolio Backlog Kanban

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The Cadence

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Program PI (Program Increment) & Releases Portfolio Kanban Review Cycles Team Sprints Continuous Delivery Release any time based on current market conditions

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The Quality

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QA

Inspect & Retrospect

Quality is present at all levels in many fashions

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Well, duh!

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Case Study

A SAFe implementation

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About the Client

A global leader in power and automation technologies

Canada Dev Teams Zurich (HQ) SMEs India Dev Teams India QA Teams Poland Dev Teams Westerville, OH Client Site

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About the Client

The story so far…

Business Man Make it work, get buy in. Idea Man Engineer with over 30 years of experience The Developer Turn it into a product

The three person team that started a global success

A “start-up” in a large company

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Scaling Problems

When more than 3 people are not enough

Cowboy Coding…

Three people led to one team which eventually led to 7 teams working across the globe

It only goes so far

Product managers jockeying for their projects There was no one accountable for the portfolio Release schedules were not coordinated which led to schedule collisions

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The “Littler Picture”

A SAFe implementation

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ART (Agile Release Train)

A set of agile teams working together to deliver program increments on a set cadence.

PI (Program Increment)

A group of feature epics that are planned and scheduled during a release planning

• meeting. A PI will often

span multiple team sprints.

Architecture Epic

Large, typically cross- cutting technology initiatives that are necessary to evolve portfolio solutions to support current and future business needs.

Business Epic

Large, typically cross- cutting customer-facing initiatives that encapsulate the new development necessary to realize certain business benefits.

Strategic Theme

Specific, itemized business objectives that connect portfolio vision to the evolving enterprise business strategy.

Terms & Definitions

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Ideas

The entry point into the process

01 02 03 04

Strategic Themes defined by upper management typically span multiple years All architecture & business requests must fit into a theme Ideas are incubated into VersionOne and periodically reviewed. Business owners and architects are responsible for epics being incubated.

Portfolio Incubation

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Analysis Review Canvas Backlog

Incubated ideas Ready for next review cycle Product Manager’s current

• priority. BA most likely assigned

Prioritized and ready to begin work

A Portfolio Epic begins life…

Requests (ideas) become Portfolio Epics and begin life on the planning board. This is a separate planning “room” in VersionOne.

Portfolio Planning

The Kanban board

In Progress

Currently being worked in a PI

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The Portfolio Planning Meeting REQUIRED

Monthly reoccurring meeting scheduled with product managers and architects to share information about their epics with upper management.

Funding Priority Readiness Review Status Updates

Portfolio Prioritization

Move across the Kanban board

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Swag & Priority More Detailed Workflow Feature Epics Cross Cutting

At the program level we called these feature epics Feature epics require more refinement All epics in the backlog must be prioritized and estimated Often times QA & Tech/Team leads are involved Business analysts work in conjunction with the epic owners and technical team to break down portfolio epics into program level epics. Epic owners are now the BAs and Architects.

Portfolio Epic Breakdown Program Epic Creation

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Top to bottom all members attend. Product manager and business owners discuss why feature epics are important. Architects discuss architectural runway. End goal is to plan

• ne or more PIs to reach a release.

All Members Attend

Another formalized meeting. If you don’t have a release planning meeting you’re not doing SAFe. It akin to skipping a sprint planning meeting!

REQUIRED Release Planning

All aboard the ART (Agile Release Train)

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Feature epics “on the train” are scheduled and maintained by the RTE (Release Train Conductor). VersionOne allowed a timeline view into the work. Keep in mind multiple teams are working from this same backlog.

Release Timeline

Visually monitoring the train’s progress

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Inspect

Release Review Meeting REQUIRED

The release review board meets on a scheduled cadence with the goal of reviewing the productivity of the ARTs to ensure the PI will meet the business goals. Feature epics are reanalyzed and the user stories that make up the epics are scheduled into sprints for the teams.

Release Review

Managing the ART (Agile Release Train)

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The same ole agile Working towards a PI

All teams perform sprints working from stories created from the feature

• epics. This may include shared services teams such as DBAs, QA,

architect or even documentation teams.

ART Ticket

The teams are responsible for getting their stories onto the ART. They are accountable.

Stabilize

Final sprint for all teams allows for final QA and stabilization tasks

The Teams

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Backlog Depth

Ensuring that the portfolio & program keep pace with teams

Epic Burnup

Portfolio epics creeping towards their approved budgets

Release Burndown

A quick gauge of how healthy the release is.

Visibility

Portfolio & feature epics must be visibility on the board to be in-scope

Team-level Agile

Velocity, capacity, burndown, estimate accuracy, effectiveness (stories started but not finished)

ART Capacity

Teams may fluctuate. VersionOne shows a loading bar on the timeline.

The Metrics

What should we be tracking?

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The Results

A continuous work in progress

Collaboration

Visibility and cadence led to new levels of collaboration

Processes in place

All together it took a little over 1 year to integrate SAFe processes.

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Remaining Questions?

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