I am interested to hear about the success stories and lessons learned from adopting the Agile - Scrum model for large IT enterprise dev projects. Any best practices, tips/tricks, tools, and any other useful info you can share?
Thank you so much in advance for sharing your thoughts! Saving Changes...
Scrum as per the Scrum Guide is not designed for large, enterprise or projects but is rather for complex products which can be delivered by a single team.
As such, if you are looking for methods for handling such scaled situations you would have to look at DAD, SAFe, LeSS, Scrum @ Scale, Nexus or others.
I would suggest that scaling agile is orders of magnitude more complicated than "small scale" agile and requires top-down leadership commitment to the transformation along with a bottom up desire for exploring better ways to deliver value.
A good place to start learning more about this is the DA site.
Context counts, so don't seek best practices, just the wisdom to understand the options available to a team which might fit the context of a given project.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Drew CraigSr. Agile & Product Coach| VanguardPhiladelphia, Pa, United States
Kiron is spot on. I'm not sure what else I can add to it. Definitely agree with the last sentence especially. GL! Saving Changes...
Agree also with Kiron. In addition: In large IT enterprise projects you normally have different management layers: Directing, Managing, Delivering. The Delivering Layer can be subject to an agile delivering framework, such as Nexus. Prince2 Agile is from my point of view a very good process framework to get different views together. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
I disagree with @Kiron here. I am using Scrum for large projects from long time ago. In fact, I took a one week workshop with Jeff Sutherland two years ago when he published a new book and along the workshop we use a real project case which was the whole creation of a fighter plane.So, the first thing to understand is: 1-Agile and Scrum are not synonims. You can use Agile approch with any type of method based on any type of project life cycle. 2-Scrum is a framework so the power of Scrum is you can fill it up with tools/techniques that best fit for your current situation. There is no line or statement in Scrum that said that you have to use user stories, storie points, kanban boards, or things like that. In my case, to state requirements for example, I have used from tradional methods that belongs to Yourdon to Use Cases that belongs to Jacobson. 3-Critical: clear understanding about what Scrum is. THE MAIN THING. if you introduce something to do something in your environment the whole environment will be impacted. So, if you think that using Scrum is a matter of the software group only you are failing your first step then you are going to the abyss.
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1 reply by Kiron Bondale
Dec 08, 2019 9:20 AM
Kiron Bondale
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Sergio -
The moment you modify Scrum beyond what is written in the Scrum Guide you are not practicing Scrum anymore.
I'm not saying that's wrong, but the reality is that very few practitioners and teams follow Scrum exactly as per the Guide.
For example, Scrum makes NO allowance for forming a team, defining a vision, coming up with a solution approach and so on. That is because it is a product management framework which assumes those things already exist. For projects, we have to set those up. That has caused some teams to invent Sprint 0 or other workarounds.
I disagree with @Kiron here. I am using Scrum for large projects from long time ago. In fact, I took a one week workshop with Jeff Sutherland two years ago when he published a new book and along the workshop we use a real project case which was the whole creation of a fighter plane.So, the first thing to understand is: 1-Agile and Scrum are not synonims. You can use Agile approch with any type of method based on any type of project life cycle. 2-Scrum is a framework so the power of Scrum is you can fill it up with tools/techniques that best fit for your current situation. There is no line or statement in Scrum that said that you have to use user stories, storie points, kanban boards, or things like that. In my case, to state requirements for example, I have used from tradional methods that belongs to Yourdon to Use Cases that belongs to Jacobson. 3-Critical: clear understanding about what Scrum is. THE MAIN THING. if you introduce something to do something in your environment the whole environment will be impacted. So, if you think that using Scrum is a matter of the software group only you are failing your first step then you are going to the abyss.
Sergio -
The moment you modify Scrum beyond what is written in the Scrum Guide you are not practicing Scrum anymore.
I'm not saying that's wrong, but the reality is that very few practitioners and teams follow Scrum exactly as per the Guide.
For example, Scrum makes NO allowance for forming a team, defining a vision, coming up with a solution approach and so on. That is because it is a product management framework which assumes those things already exist. For projects, we have to set those up. That has caused some teams to invent Sprint 0 or other workarounds.
Kiron
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1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Dec 09, 2019 4:28 AM
Sergio Luis Conte
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I agree with you. In fact, I always say the same about if you do not follow the Scrum Guide then you are not using Scrum. As you mention is not good or bad. But inside the Scrum guide there is no line that said "is not for large projects". That´s my point. About forming a team, you always have to forming a team. In the case of Scrum, with the roles and abilities stated in the Scrum Guide. And that´s must be done before using a process or method and it is the same no matter the method or process you use.
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Dec 08, 2019 9:20 AM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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Sergio -
The moment you modify Scrum beyond what is written in the Scrum Guide you are not practicing Scrum anymore.
I'm not saying that's wrong, but the reality is that very few practitioners and teams follow Scrum exactly as per the Guide.
For example, Scrum makes NO allowance for forming a team, defining a vision, coming up with a solution approach and so on. That is because it is a product management framework which assumes those things already exist. For projects, we have to set those up. That has caused some teams to invent Sprint 0 or other workarounds.
Kiron
I agree with you. In fact, I always say the same about if you do not follow the Scrum Guide then you are not using Scrum. As you mention is not good or bad. But inside the Scrum guide there is no line that said "is not for large projects". That´s my point. About forming a team, you always have to forming a team. In the case of Scrum, with the roles and abilities stated in the Scrum Guide. And that´s must be done before using a process or method and it is the same no matter the method or process you use. Saving Changes...
I would like to know more about applying agile in larger projects since the term has been bantered about within the federal government recently. I personally do think it can apply based on our present organizational structures and governance processes; however I would like to hear more. Reading up on this, I can say back when I worked for a small company in industry, we ran "projects" that were really product development related, with very small integrated teams including shop personnel, where our turn around from concept to delivery was astonishingly fast. So much so the company rapidly took market share from much larger but slower to react competitors. I again, would really like to hear about such success stories in either large companies or government.
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2 replies by Kiron Bondale and Sergio Luis Conte
Dec 09, 2019 3:48 PM
Sergio Luis Conte
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The point is: you can apply Agile to any type of project including it waterfall based project. Agile is not about to use a life cycle Agile is not about to manage a project. Agile is like Lean while is not the same. The problem is the missunderstanding outside there. Agile was created in 1990 pushed by manufacturing whan after a prospective about how the world will be in 2015-2030 the result was that Lean was not enough to face the challenges of that world.
Dec 09, 2019 4:50 PM
Kiron Bondale
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Steve -
Take a look at DA's program lifecycle - that's effectively agile applied to a large project context with multiple teams.
Kiron
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Dec 09, 2019 3:38 PM
Replying to Steve Ratkaj
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I would like to know more about applying agile in larger projects since the term has been bantered about within the federal government recently. I personally do think it can apply based on our present organizational structures and governance processes; however I would like to hear more. Reading up on this, I can say back when I worked for a small company in industry, we ran "projects" that were really product development related, with very small integrated teams including shop personnel, where our turn around from concept to delivery was astonishingly fast. So much so the company rapidly took market share from much larger but slower to react competitors. I again, would really like to hear about such success stories in either large companies or government.
The point is: you can apply Agile to any type of project including it waterfall based project. Agile is not about to use a life cycle Agile is not about to manage a project. Agile is like Lean while is not the same. The problem is the missunderstanding outside there. Agile was created in 1990 pushed by manufacturing whan after a prospective about how the world will be in 2015-2030 the result was that Lean was not enough to face the challenges of that world. Saving Changes...
I would like to know more about applying agile in larger projects since the term has been bantered about within the federal government recently. I personally do think it can apply based on our present organizational structures and governance processes; however I would like to hear more. Reading up on this, I can say back when I worked for a small company in industry, we ran "projects" that were really product development related, with very small integrated teams including shop personnel, where our turn around from concept to delivery was astonishingly fast. So much so the company rapidly took market share from much larger but slower to react competitors. I again, would really like to hear about such success stories in either large companies or government.
Steve -
Take a look at DA's program lifecycle - that's effectively agile applied to a large project context with multiple teams.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Don't underestimate the effort to reconcile your agile approach for the project with the predictive preference of senior managers. Try answering the question "when will you be done" and you'll understand the difficulties. Saving Changes...
