Challenges & Successes of Agile Implementation Webinar with BlackLine - XBOSoft

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Challenges and Successes in Agile Implementation

Top Agile Challenges, How To Overcome Them, and the Fruits You’ll Gain From Your Labor

with Greg Burns and Ron Ben Yosef, BlackLine

#XBOSoftWebinar

@xbosoft

XBOSoft Dedicated to software quality improvement

Founded in 2006

We speed products to market with our expert:

• Software QA consulting

• Software testing

Global team with offices in San Francisco, Beijing and Amsterdam

“Thorough, accurate and fast”

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House Rules Participants other than the speakers are muted

Questions via the GoToWebinar control on the right side of your screen or through Twitter @XBOSoft

Questions may be asked throughout the webinar - we’ll try to answer them at the end

You will receive info on recording after the webinar


Event hashtag: #XBOSoftwebinar

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Meet Our Speakers

Philip Lew CEO and Founder, XBOSoft • Relevant specialties and

passions o Software quality process,

evaluation, measurement and improvement

o Software quality in use / UX design

o Mobile User Experience and usability

o Cycling and travel


Karla Smith Marketing Manager, XBOSoft • Emails you about our

industry hot topic webinars

• Invites you to download our latest trends in software testing white papers

XBOSoft Team

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Guest Presenter Greg Burns


• Greg is Director of Software Development,

BlackLine • Joined the company as its third employee in

2001

• Starting as a Developer, discovered his passion for leadership and the cultivation of a culture of empowerment and innovation

• Has managed development of BlackLine’s SaaS application and overseen organization’s massive growth, including scaling the technology, organization and processes across multiple international teams

• Travels the world playing music and photographing the journey

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Guest Presenter Ron Ben Yosef

• Ron is a Certified Agile Coach and Senior Scrum

Master for Blackline • Has worked in the information technology industry

for over a decade in various roles including Quality Assurance Engineer, Project Manager and Program Manager.

• For the last five years, has helped agile teams to find and excel with the best agile methodology for their needs. Coaches, mentors and teaches Lean/Agile thinking, methods and tools to organizations, teams and individuals.

• Is certified as PMP (Project Management Professional), Certified Agile Team Facilitator and Certified Agile Coach (IC Agile).

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Why We’re Here

• Agile implementation is not always so smooth and many organizations struggle especially when scaling

• XBOSoft, working with BlackLine for over 8 years as their QA partner, has been part of an incredibly successful agile implementation

• Invited BlackLine to share its success and bumps along the way


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Agenda


• Typical Agile Implementation Problems • How things were at BlackLine prior to agile • Main drivers for BlackLine implementing agile • Agile FAQS

– Fireside chat dialogue covering commonly asked questions

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Typical Agile Implementation Problems


• Cultural and a mindset shift • Getting everyone involved, understanding

what agile is • Definition of Done and Success criteria • Not just doing waterfall faster in shorter

iterations • Where to fit in various testing types amongst

continuous integration • Misguided expectations

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Prior to Agile


Describe your process and the state of your team before you adopted agile • No formal process • Small team, relatively flat structure • Very close to the clients • Moved fast, documented a little and talked

constantly

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Why Implement Agile


What were your main drivers for adopting agile? • Respond to client needs and maintain close

relationships at scale • Visibility and transparency into SDLC across multiple

teams • Accountability and ownership from the Development

teams • Building a company roadmap across multiple teams • Build in a process that resonates with our philosophy

of constant improvement

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BLACKLINE USES SCRUM. DID YOU CONSIDER ANY OTHER AGILE METHODOLOGIES?

Agile FAQ1


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Scrum Lifecycle


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WHAT WERE THE MAIN CHALLENGES YOU ENCOUNTERED FROM THE FOLLOWING PERSPECTIVES: ORGANIZATIONAL, PEOPLE, PROCESS AND TECHNOLOGY? HOW DID YOU RESOLVE THOSE, TACTICALLY?

Agile FAQ2


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Restructure

Functional teams Cross

functional team


FE BE

QA DB

UX

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Main Implementation Challenges Organizational


• Getting buy-in and understanding • Changing roles and responsibilities • Scaling up for larger teams • Common understanding and language • Creating realistic expectations • Defining scope (MVP) and acceptance criteria

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Agile Transformation

Organizational Transformation

Agile practices adoption

People and cultural

transformation


• Restructure the organization and create agile teams

• Establish policies and SDLC

• Teach people to work to collaborate with their new roles and responsibilities

• Train teams to work with agile

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Main Implementation Challenges Process


• Problems in iteration planning • Completing work within the sprint • Unplanned work in the sprint • Understanding and handling-planning for

technical debt • Measuring the process • Estimating • Inconsistency across teams

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Practices adoption

People and cultural

transformation


• Identify a team for a POC

• Identify SM and Product owner

• Break projects into Epics, User Stories and form backlogs

• Set Sprints, Daily Stand-up, reviews and retrospectives

• Establish a planning and a release cadence

• Meet commitments regularly

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Main Implementation Challenges People


• Adoption and buy in • Training • Cultural changes and adaption • Team growth and recruitment • Understanding the role and importance of the

PO • Working with offshore and hybrid teams

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Adopt Practices

People and cultural

transformation


• Re-establish the meaning of a team

• Help the team members to handle some unknown, estimate and to inspect and adapt

• Create collaboration among and across teams

• Empower individuals • Help engineering

managers understand their role in agile

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Main Implementation Challenges Technologies


• Getting team to work on sprint scope and nothing but the sprint – tickets prioritized by PO

• Tooling to support agile • Tooling to support frequent deployments • Tooling for communication

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IN RETROSPECT, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY?

Agile FAQ3


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What Would You Have Done Differently?


• Agile training • Designate one process / Agile expert to own

the process and coach others • Create an agile transition plan to capture all

development activities • Validate we have the stakeholders buy-in for

using agile • Make sure other departments transition to

agile at the same time

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WHERE ARE YOU AT IN THE PROCESS TODAY?

Agile FAQ4


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Current Agile Progress


• Adopted agile across all of our development teams but continue to improve the process all the time

• Company buy-in for essential dedicated roles • Re-defining business verticals after major

recruitment effort • Integrated testing into each agile team, and

continuous testing

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Scaling Challenges Ahead


• Defining consistency across teams • Another round of training given number of new hires and

teams • Ensuring that staff understands expectations around

roles, and artifacts related to the "common vocabulary", i.e. MVP and associated documentation, tickets

• Training, training, training (internal, external, cross-team, etc.)

• Embedding service groups (DevOps, DB, UX, etc. ) into the agile teams (cross-functional teams)

• Working to get to more frequent releases to production

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SEEMS THAT YOU HAVE SOME SORT OF AGILE HYBRID WHICH MOST ORGANIZATIONS DO. THAT’S THE SPIRIT OF AGILE. IN CLOSING, WHAT TIDBITS OF ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR ORGANIZATIONS GOING DOWN THE AGILE PATH.

Agile FAQ5


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Q+A

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Challenges & Successes of Agile Implementation Webinar with BlackLine - XBOSoft

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