Two stories of self-designing feature teams and learnings from that experience. The autonomy of teams to form and re-form themselves to build teams, that manage themselves to deliver value to customers frequently can be a real boost of motivation and performance.

1. KEGON AG 2014 1
Self-designing Feature Teams
Agile Lean Europe (ALE)
Krokow, 21.08.2014
Josef.Scherer@KEGON.de

2. KEGON AG 2014 2
 Agile Management Consultant
 Solution Focused Coach
 25 years of experience in software development
 7 years of experience with Large Scale Scrum
 3 Enterprise Agile Transitions (bwin, ADAG, Telekom P&I)
 Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Program Consultant and Trainer
 07.2012-03.2014 Senior Agile Coach @BMW (via Valtech GmbH)
Josef Scherer

3. KEGON AG 2014 3
 Training and Consulting for Agile@Enterprise
 Leading SAFe consulting company in Germany (5 SPCs, 5 SAs)
 Scaled Agile Inc. Partner
 Customers using SAFe
KEGON AG

4.  What are self-designing teams?
 Principles of organizational design in Large Scale Scrum
 Stories of self-designing teams @ BAML and BMW
 Why do it?
 How to do it?
 Role of management?
 Role of facillitators?
 How does it feel like for a team member?
 Learnings from these stories
Two Stories about Forming Teams in
Large Scale Scrum

5. Large Scale Scrum as
Organizational Design Framework
KEGON AG 2014 5

6. Organizational Principles
behind the Agile Manifesto
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.
http://agilemanifesto.org/iso/de/principles.html

7. Motivated Individuals
Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose
7

8. 4 Levels of Team Autonomy
Self-designing Teams
KEGON AG 2014 8

9.  Scaling Scrum starts with understanding and being able to
adopt standard real one-team Scrum with
 Direct collaboration between business & development
 Customer focused Feature Teams
 Self-managing cross-functional Teams
 Start a large-scale agile Scrum adoption by ensuring
leadership understands the organizational implications.
 Real agile development with Scrum implies a deep change
to become an agile organization; it is not a practice,
it is an organizational design framework.
Large Scale Scrum as
Organizational Design Framework
http://www.crosstalkonline.org/storage/issue-archives/2013/201305/201305-larman.pdf

10. Direct collaboration between PM and R&D
„Contract Game“ PM & R&D Product Manager as PO
Product
Management
R&Dstart end
(release)
content freeze
(release contract agreed)
The Milestone point
is arbitrary
more,
more,
more!
less,
less,
less!
1 2
The Contract
www.craiglarman.com
www.odd-e.com
Copyright © 2010
C.Larman & B. Vodde
All rights reserved.

11. Customer focused Feature Teams
Component Design Fokus
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
Item 4
...
…
system
comp
C
Team
comp
A
Work from multiple teams is required
to finish a customer-centric feature.
Product
Owner
comp
B
Team
comp
A
Team
comp
B
comp
C
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
Item 4
...
…
Team
Wu
Product
Owner
Team
Shu
Team
Wei
system
comp
A
comp
B
comp
C
Every team completes customer-
centric items. The dependencies
Component teams Feature teams
www.craiglarman.com
www.odd-e.com
Copyright © 2010
C.Larman & B. Vodde
All rights reserved.
Customer Feature Fokus
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
Item 4
...
…
system
comp
C
Team
comp
A
Work from multiple teams is required
to finish a customer-centric feature.
Product
Owner
comp
B
Team
comp
A
Team
comp
B
comp
C
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
Item 4
...
…
Team
Wu
Product
Owner
Team
Shu
Team
Wei
system
comp
A
comp
B
comp
C
Every team completes customer-
centric items. The dependencies
Component teams Feature teams
www.craiglarman.com
www.odd-e.com
Copyright © 2010
C.Larman & B. Vodde
All rights reserved.

12. Self-managing, cross-functional Teams
R&D Departments Cross-functional Teams
Lead
Designer
Designer
Designer
Lead
Arch.
Architekt
Architekt
Lead
Dev
Developer
Developer
Developer
Developer
Developer
Developer
Test
Lead
Tester
Tester
Tester

13. Craig Larman, Ahmad Fahmy
Self-designing Teams @ BAML
KEGON AG 2014 13
http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/2013-april/how-to-form-teams-in-large-scale-scrum-a-story-of

14.  Traditional program @BAML Bank of America‘s Merrill Lynch
 42 people, 35 „team“ members
 Business-analysis group
 3 component groups, „private“ code ownership
 Test group
 7 week integration testing and release phase
Background

15.  increase customer value,
 reduce waste and lead time
 by forming „real“ Scrum Feature Teams
 co-located, self-designing Teams
 cross-functional, cross-component teams to reduce handoffs
and dependencies
 team size ~7 team members (excluding PO & SM)
 able to deliver any item from the backlog and
 deliver completely „done“ end-to-end functionality
Goal

16.  Management: introduction and background: 20 minutes
 Ideal team definition: 20 mins.
 Management leaves
 Cycle 1: 25 mins., Review: 10 mins.
 Cycle 2: 25 mins., Break: 20 mins., Review: 10 mins.
 Cycle 3: 25 mins., Review: 10 mins.
 Choose ScrumMasters & Team names: 15 mins.
 Retrospective: "Plus-delta" feedback: 5 mins.
 Conclusion and thanks: 5 mins.
Workshop Schedule

17. Plus-Delta
Plus
 process, facilitation, and
timekeeping (11)
 creation of well-balanced
team (8)
 sense of empowerment
(7)
 sense of team spirit (3)
Delta
 Inadequate room choice
(6)
 More facilitation required
to break deadlocks (5)
 Pressure to join a team
you're not happy with (3)
 More information ahead
of the meeting (3)
 Reluctance of team
members to move out of
the initial teams (3)

18. Mark Bregenzer
Self-designing Teams @ BMW
KEGON AG 2014 18
http://www.agileworld.de/content/self-designing-teams-bmw

19.  5 component teams incl.
 1 IT PO,
 2 Business Analysts (POS) and
 6-7 Developers, one as SM
 4 “cross cutting” teams
 2 PMs as
 Chief PO and
 Chief Architect
 1 Agile Management Coach,
4 Agile Team Coaches
Background
© valtech gmbh

20.  Backlog items cannot be pulled by all teams due to know
how constraints ->
Redesign teams s.t. any team can pull any item
 Routine work led to decreased motivation ->
drive up motivation through increased autonomy and
purpose
 Social conflicts between team members ->
let teams reform themselves
 „Selfish“ teams instead of „one team“ spirit
 Reduce number of „cross cutting“ teams and include
members in feature teams.
Challenges, Goals

21.  About 80 participants
including management
 Management explained
project vision and workhop
target and left.
 Management came back at
the end for the team
presentations and closing.
Workshop Schedule

22. Skill Cards
© valtech gmbh

23. Team Org Chart

24. 1st Iteration
4 new teams formed except one
team x which remained almost
unchanged
2nd Iteration
Some members left team x but
other teams tried to keep their
members.
Team x was incomplete and the
process stagnated.
3rd Iteration
After the break someone
voluntered to join team x.
Iterations

25. Choose Team Names, Rooms, SMs …
Self-Designing Teams @BMWKEGON AG 2014 25

26.  The opening practices helped to warm up and get used to
move around the room.
 Stagnation at iteration 2 seems normal. Have a break and
trust the people to get the job done.
 One facilitator for each team helps to speed up inspection &
adaption of team composition.
 A lot of positive energy from the workshop.
 Increased trust of management in teams ability to self-
organize.
 Know how bottlenecks don‘t disappear, if you don‘t invest in
mentoring, coaching, pairing etc.
 Social conflicts might recur and must be addressed.
Key Learnings

27. KEGON AG 2014 27
 Train all participants in Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) and let
them figure out, how to form feature teams in 2 hours.
 Vote Scrum Masters and let them facilitate the team
forming event (EduScrum)
 Let Product Owners pitch their product vision and ask them,
what skills they need to develop the product (Lean Startup)
 Have people with different work preferences and sufficient
linking skills in the same team (Team Management System)
 What would work for your organization and environment?
Some Alternative Approaches