This document discusses strategies for staying agile as an organization grows and adds more teams to product development. It advocates adopting an operating model of autonomous, co-located, cross-functional product teams rather than separating teams by component or function. Case studies are presented of organizations that struggled when they did not adopt this full-product team approach. Advice is given to leverage people effectively, continuously improve technical practices, and avoid adding people and complexity when not needed. The focus is on how smaller organizations can sustain agility as they grow rather than transforming very large organizations.

1. Staying agile
Multi-team product development, the modern way

2. /me
Web guy since 1999
Agile #aHa in 2005
e-* organizations
1 to 50 teams scale “expert”

3. “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants” - I. Newton
Craig Larman - the purist Henrik Kniberg - the pragmatist Sriram Narayan - the herudit

4. This is NOTabout “i’m
in a big org, with
hundreds of engineers,
how can we make it more
agile?”
This is ISabout: “i’m
in a small,cool, nimble
org and we are growing,
how can we stay agile?”

5. Why do companies hire more “IT” people?
● 1 minute - All: think individually. Find 2 or 3 reasons “why”
● 2 minutes - All: share your answers with the person next to
you
● 3 minutes - a few of you: share your answers back with us

6. “Hire only when
it hurts”
AND
“Hire slowly”

7. I know small “tech teams” that sustain globally successful businesses ...
… and I happened to lead one, too :-)
(btw, what a coincidence... 3 xp shops!)

8. 1950s, first large scale software intensive product development, S.A.G.E. - shipped over
budget and partly outdated.
A S.a.G.E. director was asked: “if you had to do this again, what would you do
differently?”
“FIND THE TEN BEST PEOPLE AND WRITE ThE ENTIRE THING
THEMSELVES”
(horowitz 1975, quoted in larman, 2010)

9. Still companies add people, instead of LEVERAGING on ...
- Product-wise:
- Early validation of ideas and solutions (Lean UX)
- Impact mapping (vs backlog as a laundry list)
- Tech-wise:
- Slow down to go faster
- Pay back any debt soon
- Use state of the art engineering practices
- People-wise:
- Hire great people
- Give them the best environment

10. Small teams, kind of given
How to organize work
across teams: big
improvement opportunity!
:-)

11. Case study I - the check box odyssey
CasestudyII-theluxurychannelEpic

12. #walkofshame

13. You can learn from our
mistakes...
- Component teams (FE vs BE, internal vs internal
systems,...)
- Separate QA team in-house and off-shore
- The Bug fixing team
- The Ops team
- ...

14. Autonomous
co-located
Cross-functional
multi-learning
self-organizing
product team

15. Autonomous
co-located
Cross-functional
multi-learning
self-organizing
product teams

16. Autonomous
co-located
Cross-functional
multi-learning
self-organizing
feature teams

17. #scaling
"Scaling Agile is good
business for scaling
vendors. It’s not
necessarily good advice for
you”
Ron Jeffries

18. “Agile teams coordinate
using tests”

19. Kniberg

20. AGAIN: help a 20 teams
company re-design its
operating model is a
fascinating topic and not
our focus (not tonight :)

21. Autonomous product teams, fully cross-functional
(cross-departement)
Narayan

22. “LESS IS SCRUM APPLIED TO MANY TEAMS WORKING TOGETHER ON ONE PRODUCT”

23. A process / a methodology which is …
“Lightweight & disciplined”
“Unobtrusive”
“Barely sufficient”

24. ?
(almost done. Questions, so far?)

25. pro-Tip I: “You can’t use the
things written on the right to fix
the things written on the left”

26. pro-Tip II:
Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose
… for your team(s), too

27. Pro-tip III:
“Continuous attention to
Technical excellence and good
design enhances agility”

28. thanks!
carlo.beschi at gmail.com
slideshare.com/cbeschi
Happy Agile Coach at ASOS
Glad to speak more about:
“scaling”, “coaching”,
“transforming”, ...
Ping me :-)

29. Assets
http://blog.crisp.se/wp-cont
ent/uploads/2015/11/Real-lif
e-agile-scaling.pdf
http://www.slideshare.net/Jo
nTerry2/from-chaos-to-confid
ence-leankits-pd-operating-m
odel
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/B
ooks/Rework-Jason-Fried/8324
671226
[in italian]
https://vimeo.com/113090009
https://pragprog.com/book/rj
nsd/the-nature-of-software-d
evelopment
https://vimeo.com/30419045
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/c
ka/Large-Scale-Scrum-More-Le
ss-Addison-Wesley-Signature-
Cohn/0321985710
http://less.works
http://www.informit.com/stor
e/agile-it-organization-desi
gn-for-digital-transformatio
n-9780133903355
http://agilemanifesto.org/pr
inciples.html