Ways to Scale Agile Practices to Enterprises

APM. Agile Project Management is one of the widely known and popular data management techniques which require a set of instruction, some rules to follow and a whole bunch of knowledge of the key elements which eventually help you to grow. And before you get to any conclusion, you need to understand that Agile Project Management is not an approach for every single project. It’s important for the projects in which the user may not know what they want. The simplest example is an E-commerce Website, like Amazon or Ali Baba.

But why do we need Agile? As studies show, 71% of organizations report using agile approaches for their projects. And it is also projected the statistics that agile projects are 28% more successful than traditional daily projects. It shows that your project may need an APM approach.

And when this project management skill is practiced at an organizational level, it is coined as Scaling — scaling Agile means that there are numerous of Agile Teams working in numerous business unit, leaving no stone unturned in all business parts. And thus, for Scaling Agile, you will be going to need a go-to-guide, which can help you stay in business for a better time. So, here are the 5 Remarkable Techniques for Scaling Agile Practices to Enterprise Settings.

1. Continuous Delivery of Product.

If you want to play big, then you have to make certain amends for it. And the first thing that you’re going to need is a 2-way communication between the user experiencing your services and the customer support process. And for that, a Continuous Delivery strategy is a must.

Now, Continuous Delivery is a development strategy for all the software firms that deals with the optimization of your delivery process to get the best quality product into the hands of the customers as soon as possible.

Releasing a prototype or a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) helps you get the recognition in the market. The early reviews and the usage patterns from the user create a visual inspection for your product. The baseline of s MVP is that it gives its users enough features to solve a specific business problem and reduce their time of work. By this, only you attain an idea of how heavy you want the production and the areas that you cover.

2. Formation of A Culture.

As we discussed the Backlog, the construction of a collaborative culture is a must. An understanding between the Developers, QA Testers, and Analysts ensure the productivity in the organization. And this only ensures better returns. It involves a product owner who can be a business analyst also, a developer, and a QA tester. All of these three get together to review the requirements, tests, and the dependencies of a feature or a request present on the backlog.

Many companies who practice Scaling Agile have a set of principles that they follow. These rules are common on all the levels of the Scaling, and everyone is bound within them. The major rules are Eliminating the Waste, Build Quality Products, Create Knowledge, Deliver as soon as possible and Respect People. Keep the environment healthy. Don’t rush everything into one place.

You should also set up daily stand-ups. Standups are a 15-minute meeting session in the morning shift just before the final meeting can help you bring everybody on board. These ensure the provision of having a quick overview of what the people worked upon the day before and what they planned to work on today. And if anyone has any doubts or need some clearance over their issues, it can be posted on the table so that everyone could tackle it and find a solution.

3. Production of A Single Product Backlog.

You must be wondering what’s backlog doing here? Well, an agile product backlog is a set of proposed work that is to be finished before the release of the product. And for the proper functioning of Scaling agile, the 2nd degree head such as the product manager or the owner must maintain a single project-wide backlog for all the teams that work under them. This enhances the proper and immediate attention to the high-priority tasks. And no, you shouldn’t have each agile team having its backlog. It creates a non-balance product.

The main advantage of this step is that it ensures any contributor to keep a tab and check tasks at any time from the top of their backlog. They can also pull it into their current to-do list. These contributors can range from individuals, teams, or outsourcing firms. Several prioritized tasks getting the first addressing means more quality. The simple example of the product backlog is if an immediate fixation is required in the product for a customer, then it will be placed at the top of the backlog, and it will receive immediate attention. And the user may not have to wait for the next software renewal.

4. Frameworks Are in Need.

In Agile scaling, frameworks are one of the most important aspects. The main usage of having a framework is that it makes the most sense of your entire organization. Now, there are three significant frameworks for scaling agile software development, which are designed for large enterprises that have the correct result.

These are-

1. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

2. Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

3. Large Scale Scrum (LeSS).

All these approaches demand a radical rethinking of a company’s hierarchical organization. This may result in a hard sell for a larger amount. And that is why it is practiced in traditional organizations with many layers and specializations to overcome the fear of failure of the product. Now let’s look at a brief account of all the three.

A. When group processes at the team, program, and portfolio level are required, then the SAFe Framework is used. Normal SAFe Teams consist of 5-9 people who work in two-week scrums using “Extreme Programming” methods, pulling the work from the “Program Backlog,” which we earlier discussed. And this team is synchronized with the other 5-10 teams and works at the same pace. Then the Portfolio level, which is the highest in the SAFe Framework, defines ways that agile leaders and executives can use lean processes to identify and prioritize features of the product.

B. Then comes the Disciplined Agile Delivery Framework. The DAD framework is proposed in a manner to work across 3-project phases: Inception, Construction, and Transition. The main advantage of the DAD framework is that it gives guidance in the areas of architecture and design. The DevOps practices and strategies built into the framework explicitly increases the product’s deployment at transition.

C. The Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) expands on the basic Scrum Framework team by organizing several feature teams under a single PO (Product Owner). It is based on two setups, Framework 1 and Framework 2. Framework 1 contains 7 Scrum Teams with seven members each and is designed for smaller companies. Framework 2 contains a thousand people on one product. Unlike SAFe and DAD, LeSS is a more flexible and non-proscriptive agile scaling framework.

5. Training and Certification.

There are plentiful of training courses and certifications to give you an extra hand to get up to speed on a particular framework. The organizations that have adopted a specific Scaling agile framework have a variety of courses to choose from. Two-day courses for managers and executives, courses for developers and testers, and an in-depth SAFe Program Consultant Trainer program are some of the most occupied courses that you can take up.

Every listed course above needs some basic knowledge requirements for Scrum. This basic knowledge can be gained by a “Certified ScrumMaster” or a “Professional ScrumMaster” course. Practicing Scrum by hands-on is prioritized to the top shelf.

The above article depends upon the 5 practices that you can choose for your organization. Scaling Agile with other lean and agile methodologies means that you give a boost to your product or your software, which will reach the outer world more accurately and timely. That is why it is correctly stated, the more experience your organization has with Scrum, the smaller your journey is to scalable agile.

We hope you enjoyed this promoted piece as much as we did!