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1 © 2008 - 2013 Scaled Agile, Inc. and Leffingwell, LLC. All rights reserved.
© 2008 - 2013 Scaled Agile, Inc. and Leffingwell, LLC.
Scaled Agile Framework ® is a trademark of Leffingwell, LLC.
Addressing Enterprise
Complexity with the
Scaled Agile Framework ®
Colin O’Neill
July 23, 2013
2 © 2008 - 2013 Scaled Agile, Inc. and Leffingwell, LLC. All rights reserved.
Speaker
President, APAC Operations, Scaled Agile, Inc.
SAFe Principal Contributor
Worked with some of the world’s largest companies
Including John Deere, Walmart, and Safeway
Lean|Agile Leadership and Agile Center of
Excellence enthusiast
Email: colin.oneill@scaledagile.com
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Agenda
World Complexities
About the Scaled Agile Framework
How the Framework Addresses Complexities
Business Results
Questions
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We Live in a Complex
World
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Keeping Pace
Our modern world runs on software. What doesn't
now, likely will soon.
We’ve had Moore’s Law for hardware, and Moore’s
Law+ for envisioning what software could do
But our prior development practices – waterfall, RAD,
iterative and incremental – haven’t kept pace
Agile shows the greatest promise, but was developed
for small team environments
We need a new approach – one that harnesses the
power of Agile and Lean – but applies to the needs of
the largest software enterprises
Our methods must keep pace with an increasingly complex world
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Aspects of Complexity
1. Too Many In-Flight Projects
2. Unaligned Organization
3. Thousands of Practitioners
4. Distributed Teams
5. Millions of Lines of Code
6. Chaotic Architecture and
Bloated Technology Stack
Adapted from http://commons.wikimedia.org
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About the Scaled Agile
Framework
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The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
The Scaled Agile Framework is a proven, publicly-facing framework
for applying Lean and Agile practices at enterprise scale
Synchronizes alignment,
collaboration and delivery
Well defined in books
and now on the web
Scales successfully to large
numbers of practitioners and
teams
Core values:
1. Code Quality
2. Program Execution
3. Alignment
4. Transparency
®
http://ScaledAgileFramework.com
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First, Some Thoughts on Agile Methods
Scrum
– Works great. Less filling. Ubiquitous.
– Scrumptious. Let’s use it.
Extreme Programming
– Really great code from really great coders
– Extremely useful. Let’s apply it
Kanban
– Clearest possible thinking on flow, demand
management and limiting WIP
– Very WIP Limiting. Let’s learn from it
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Roots of the Scaled Agile Framework
Lean Thinking Product
Development Flow Agile Development
Field experience at
enterprise scale
Iterative and
Incremental
Development
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Contributors
Principal
Contributors
Drew Jemilo
Alan Shalloway
Colin O’Neill
Community Enterprise
Adopters
Associate
Methodologist
Acknowledgements
Alex Yakyma
Creator and Chief
Methodologist
Dean Leffingwell
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Agile Teams
Empowered, self-organizing, self-managing teams with
developers, testers, and content authority
Teams deliver valuable, fully-tested software increments every
two weeks
Teams apply Scrum project management practices and XP
technical practices
Teams operate under program vision, system, architecture and
user experience guidance
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Scale to the Program Level
Common sprint lengths and normalized estimating
Face-to-face planning cadence provides development
collaboration, alignment, synchronization, and assessment
Self-organizing, self-managing team-of-agile-teams committed
to continuous value delivery
Continuously aligned to a common mission around enterprise
value streams
Deliver fully tested, system-level solutions every 8-12 weeks.
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Scale to the Portfolio
Centralized strategy, decentralized execution
Investment themes provide operating budgets for release trains
Business and architectural epic kanban systems provide visibility
and work-in-process limits for product development flow
Enterprise architecture is a first class citizen
Objective metrics support governance and kaizen
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What’s Behind the Framework?
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Lean Thinking Provides the Tools We Need
Respect for
People
Product
Development
Flow
Kaizen
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Product Development Flow
1. Take an economic view
2. Actively manage queues
3. Understand and exploit
variability
4. Reduce batch sizes
5. Apply WIP constraints
6. Control flow under uncertainty:
cadence and synchronization
7. Get feedback as fast as
possible
8. Decentralize control Reinertsen, Don. Principles of Product Development Flow
Respect for
People
Product
Development
Flow
Kaizen
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Complexity: Aspect #1 –
Too Many In-Flight
Projects
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The Portfolio Kanban System
The Portfolio Kanban System manages the
flow of Epics with visibility and WIP limits
Makes the strategic business initiative backlog fully
visible
Brings structure to the analysis and decision
making
Provides WIP limits to ensure the teams analyze
responsibly, and do not create unrealistic
expectations
Helps drive collaboration amongst the key
stakeholders in the business, architecture and
development teams
Provides a quantitative, transparent basis for
economic decision-making for the most important
business decisions
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The Agile Release Train
The Agile Release Train delivers solutions
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The Agile Release Train
A virtual organization of 5 – 12 teams (50-100 individuals) that
plans, commits, and executes together on a common cadence
Aligned to a common mission via a single program backlog
Operates under architectural and UX guidance
Produces valuable and evaluate-able system-level Potentially
Shippable Increments (PSI) every 8-12 weeks
The ART is a long-lived, self-organizing team of agile teams
that delivers solutions
Define new functionality
Implement Acceptance
Test Deploy
Repeat until further notice. Project chartering not required.
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Complexity: Aspect #2 –
Unaligned Organization
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Alignment
Alignment, from Portfolio to Program to Team, is built into the framework
Clear content authority
Face-to-face planning
Aligned Team, Program
and Business Owner
objectives
Cross-team and cross-
program coordination
Architecture and UX
guidance
Match demand to
throughput
Alig
nm
ent
Business Owners
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Release Planning
Two days every 8-12 weeks
Everyone attends in person if at all possible
Product Management owns feature priorities
Development team owns story planning and high-level estimates
Architects, UX folks work as intermediaries for governance,
interfaces and dependencies
Result: A committed set of program objectives for the next PSI
Cadence-based PSI/Release Planning meetings are the “pacemaker”
of the agile enterprise
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Complexity: Aspect #3 –
Thousands
of Practitioners
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How Big Can Agile Release Trains Be?
Effective Agile Release Trains typically consist of 50 - 125 people
Dunbar’s number “…a suggested cognitive limit to
the number of people with whom one can maintain
stable social relationships”*
Empirical evidence. Beyond 125, logistics and inter-
team dependencies are more difficult. Alignment is
harder to achieve.
Queue size and WIP. Larger numbers of teams create
more dependencies (per team), longer delay queues,
and more work in process
* – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
Dunbar’s number – a range of 100-230
people Optimum ART size is based on:
BO
Internal
queue
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Self-organized ARTs in the Portfolio
Kanban
Pro
gram
Bac
klog
P
rogr
am B
ackl
og
Pro
gram
Bac
klog
Themes Drive Release Train Operating
Budgets
Por
tfolio
Bac
klog
Strategy
Investment Themes
Business Epics
Architectural Epics
………………… Portfolio Vision ………………...
Agile Programs
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Complexity: Aspect #4 –
Distributed Teams
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Distributed development
Joint ceremonies
– Backlog grooming
– Release planning
– System demo
– Inspect & Adapt
Other practices
– Local content authority
– Collective ownership
– Integration and branching approaches
SAFe evolved in distributed environments where program teams can
be on different continents
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Distributed PSI Planning
Used by permission of Infogain Corporation
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Complexity: Aspect #5 –
Millions of Lines of Code
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Code Quality
You can’t scale crappy code
Automated Testing
Continuous Integration
Test-First
Refactoring
Pair Work
Collective Ownership
Code Quality Provides:
Higher quality products and
services, customer
satisfaction
Predictability and integrity of
software development
Development scalability
Higher development velocity,
system performance and
business agility
Ability to innovate Agile
Architecture
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Program Composition
Feature orientation fosters holistic view of the codebase
Faster cycle time prevents knowledge depreciation
Fast feedback allows to capture defects with minimum
damage
SAFe recommends feature-oriented teams for the critical mass of the
program
Feature team
Component team
Feature team
Feature team
Feature team
Feature team
Feature team
Component team
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Complexity: Aspect #6 –
Chaotic Architecture and
Bloated Tech Stack
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Intentional Architecture and Emergent Design
Intentional Architecture and Emergent Design enable programs to
effectively create and maintain large-scale solutions
Level of
abstr
action
High
Low
Teams
Intentional
Architecture
Emergent
Design
Now
System
Architect
The Principle of Early Contact: Make early and
meaningful contact with the problem. -- Reinertsen
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Design Simplicity
Design simplicity enables fast response to changing requirements
Welcome changing requirements, even late
in development. Agile processes harness
change for the customer's competitive
advantage. -- Principle 2 of Agile Manifesto
Design simplicity includes:
Using a simple common language to describe the system
Keeping the solution model as close to the problem domain as possible
Making object / component interfaces express the intent
Following good old design principles: Open-Closed, Single Responsibility, etc.
Continuously refactoring to support all of the above
“What’s the simplest thing that can possibly work?”
--Ward Cunningham
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Business Results
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Success Stories
http://scaledagileframework.com/case-studies/
SAFe Enterprises
• John Deere
• Nokia
• BMC Software
• Nordstrom
• Visa
• TradeStation
Technologies
• Tripwire
• Mitchell International
• Discount Tire
• Nokia Siemens
Networks
• SEI Global Services
• ValPak
•
...and more
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Business Results
Field Issue resolution time: down 42%
Warranty Expense: down 50%
Time to production: down 20%
Time to market: 20% faster
Employee engagement: Up 9.8%
More responsive to market changes
and customer demands
Development teams more engaged,
empowered
Productivity up 20-50%
Significantly improved Product
Management-Development teamwork
Higher returns, reduced investments in
unfinished or unshipped work
John Deere ISG
Source: Chad Holdorf, John Deere, Intelligent Systems Group.
Dallas, Texas Presentation, Dec 2011
Source: QSM Associates Press Release, Sep, 2007
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Business Results
Productivity has increased by at least
20-25%
Time to market and level of quality has
increased dramatically
Nearly zero defects after each tire store
system release
“No additional headcount and we're
taking on more than we ever have”
March 12, 2012 News Release
“TradeStation Receives Highest Rating In
Barron’s Magazine’s Annual Ranking of
Online Brokerage Firms”
Best Trading Experience and
Technology
Higher star-rating than 23 other
offerings leading brokers, including
TDAmeritrade, Charles Schwab,
Fidelity, E*TRADE…
Source: Chris Chapman, Director of Product Development,
Discount Tire
Source: Keith Black, CTO and VP, Product Development,
TradeStation Technologies
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SAFe Delivers Business Results
Agile teams
average 37-50%
faster to market
− QSM research
Significant
increase in
employee
engagement
- John Deere
Our agile
programs
introduced 50%
less defects into
production
− Confidential
We experienced a
20-50% increase
in productivity
− BMC Case Study
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