Scaling Agile Using Lean & Kanban

Adopting Lean & Agile Benefits and Why Business effects!

Values and Principles Govern the wanted effects Creates context and alignment

Practices, how to do it Processes, Organization, Methods and Tools

Try out, reflect adapt and evolve Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Adopting Lean & Agile Working solutions (no defects)

Satisfied Customers (ROI) Reducing costs, Innovative and (productivity) motivated people

TTM

Incremental development Working software, deliveries frequently! Build quality in!

Customer collaboration

Create flow, (pull and Limit WIP) Individuals and Interaction

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Respond to changes Kaizen

XP

Scrum

UX

Cucumber Kanban SAFe Agile Architecturing Organization and responsibilities TFS Jenkins

ATDD/TDD Jira

Refactoring

Create feedback loops

Empower people

Continuous Integration & Deployment

Transparency

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Adopting and Scaling Agile • There is no magic cookbook recipe about how to do get it right! • Adopting and scaling Agile/Lean is an empirical adaptive trial and error exercise – Based on your organization culture and context – Starting from where you stand today – You need to find out how you should adopt methods, tools and practices in order to get the best results – Reflect and improve step by step, relentlessly

• This presentation illustrates some concepts and ideas Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Smaller organization Features of interest

A cross-functional and self-organizing Agile Team

Feature Feature Feature

Feature

workflow (value stream)

Feature Working product increment

The workflow (value stream), required skills and product knowledge, can be captured by one single team

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Bigger organization building complex product(s) Features of interest Feature

?

Feature Feature Feature Feature Working product increment Feature

How can we avoid sub-optimization and create alignment in order to get positive business effects on a higher level?  One single team cannot span all required skills and capture the complete end-to-end flow over the whole product structure …! Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Scaling, challenges • Align Business and Agile Development Teams ‒ Align strategies and plans ‒ Same focus and common responsibility

• Planning & Release Management ‒ Elicit and manage requirement ‒ Policies for prioritizing and eliminating risks ‒ Forecasting deliveries and manage releases

• Get User/Customer in the loop ‒ Understand the concept of value ‒ Validate results and get feedback ‒ User experience Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Scaling, challenges • Architecture governance ‒ Maintain integrity in the solutions/system(s)

• Automated Testing, Configuration Management (CM), Continuous Integration & Deployment ‒ Speed up the workflow, fast feedback, build in quality

• Continuous Improvements ‒ Reflect, learn and improve – on all levels!

• Create understanding and motivation ‒ Involve the teams, do not top-manage! Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

“People don't resist change. They resist being changed.” - Peter M. Senge 8

Management Build a Lean/Agile culture! • Leadership / management – – – –

Coaching/servant leadership Delegate responsibility and power Build trust, motivation and empower people Listen and support

• Provide infrastructure and tools • Encourage Continuous Improvements on all levels • Aligning supporting routines with Agile – HR, Budgeting, Reporting, Procurement, Administration, …

• Organization structures? Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Avoid building “Agile Islands”!

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Avoid “internal Backlogs”! PO PO PO PO Backlog Backlog Backlog

PO

PO Backlog

PO

Backlog

PO

Backlog

Backlog

PO

Backlog

PO

Backlog Backlog

Many parallel projects and internal Backlogs accumulates WIP! Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Too much WIP nurture waste • • • • • •

Creates complexity and overhead Long lead-times and usually poor throughput Unclear priorities and diverged focus (overall perspective) Hard to plan and coordinate releases Hard to respond to changes (work locked in production) Accumulated costs and risks (work locked in production without any ROI)

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Lean and Kanban as a tools for Scaling

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Capture value and the end-to-end perspective! 1. Identify your valuable end-result(s) -

External Customer/User perspective E.g. a longer living Product or Service

workflow (end-to-end) 2. Identify the Customers, Users and Stakeholders that all may have interest in the Product/Service 3. Map out the workflow (process) to develop and deliver the Product/Service Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

End-to-end perspective

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“Delivery Program” compare to an Agile Release Train in SAFe

workflow (end-to-end)

Work Items

• • • • •

Working Product Increment

Form a “Delivery Program” of agile teams, business representatives and stakeholders that span the end-to-end workflow The agile teams together capture the skills and the knowledge needed to create a working increment of the end-result The agile teams collaborate to analyze work, develop and integrate the sub-parts needed and deliver/deploy the working end-result The agile teams and management collaboratively reflect, analyze and improves the workflow and the Delivery Program (Kaizen) Empowered by the organization

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Work Item breakdown structure, example Work Item Is a …

Epic

N

Feature

N

N

Story

Task

or N

Release

Portfolio Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

N

“small” features only

A marketable set of Features that are to be released together

Workflow(s)

Team(s) 16

Development Program and Work Items Customer

Development Program (a group of Agile Development Teams)

Epic Epic

Program Owner

Customer

Feature

workflow (end-to-end)

Epic

Epic

Feature Feature Feature

Feature

Feature

Working Product Increment

Input Queue Epic Epic

Epic

Customer

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• •

Keep options of Work Items from different Requestors outside the actual workflow, as a queue of uncommitted work (Program Backlog) Can introduce a ”Program Owner” function that manages priorities, risks and business policies of incoming work

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The Development Program as a Kanban system An efficient end-to-end flow of incremental deliveries

Epic Feature Feature Feature Feature

Input Queue

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a Kanban system ...?

Working Product Increment

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Kanban core practices •

Visualize the workflow and the Work Items ‒ Create a common understanding of work and workflow

•

Establish pull and limit WIP (Work In Progress) ‒ Key principles to create flow

•

Mange the flow of work ‒ Monitor status, coordinate work and level out workload ‒ Identify and react on problems (impediments) ‒ Gather data and measurements

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Kanban core practices •

Make process policies explicit ‒ Shared understanding of how the process works ‒ For example: Start/Ready policies for workflow activities

•

Implement feedback loops ‒ For example: Customer/User and Stakeholders in the loop ‒ Make use of measures, metrics and indicators

•

Reflect and improve collaboratively, stepwise ‒ Analyze and identify problem areas, decide on measures and implement, evaluate effects – repeat!

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The Kanban approach • Start with what you do today – Kanban can be overlaid atop of an existing process/system – The Kanban method does not prescribe any specific roles or process steps

• Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change – Encourage smaller continuous incremental and evolutionary changes to the process/system – The organization must agree that continuous, incremental and evolutionary change is the way to make system improvements - and make them stick!

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The Kanban approach • Respect today’s process, roles and responsibilities – Recognize elements that work and are worth preserving – Avoid creating resistance and fear in the change pursue

• Ensure coaching/leadership at all levels – Individual contributors as well as senior management – Everyone needs to be fostering a mindset of continual improvement (Kaizen)

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Why Kanban? The J-curve effect, costs and risks of change performance Tomorrow

The Kanban Method Analyze current situation, introduce smaller changes and evaluate results – Done step by step! payback

Today costs

Big-bang change! ”Install” a new process , new roles, new routines and new ways of working Greater risks and longer pay-back time

time

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Why Kanban? Time-boxing vs. WIP limits Sprint Backlog pull

increase Amount of work

Pull a “batch” of Work Items from the Product Backlog

Scrum

(improve Velocity)

Sprint length (fixed)

Pull Work Items on demand when WIP limits and polices allow

pull

Kanban

Amount of work is limited/fixed (WIP Limits)

shorten Lead-time (and improve Throughput)

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Program workflow, example Input queue Feature Feature

Analyze [1]

Waiting for Dev. [2]

Develop [2] Plan

Feature Story

Implement

Integrate

Waiting for UAT [2]

UAT [1]

Waiting for Release

Released

Feature Feature

Feature

Story Story

Story Story Story Story

Story

Story

Story

Feature

Story Story Story

Feature Story Story Story

Story Story

Feature Feature Feature Story Story

workflow (end-to-end) The Kanban principles and the program workflow creates alignment and context for the agile teams ‒ A “master” workflow based on pull, WIP limits, common polices, etc. Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Common process policies Input queue Feature

Analyze [1]

Waiting for Dev. [2]

Develop [2] Plan

Implement

Feature Story

Feature

Integrate

Waiting for UAT [2]

UAT [1]

Waiting for Release

Released

Feature Feature

Story Story Story

Story

Story Story Story Story

Story

Story

Story

Feature

Feature

Feature

Story

Story Story Story

Story Story

Feature Feature Feature Story Story

Analyze policy   

UAT policy

Develop policy   

  

Release policy   

Create a common understanding of how the process (shall) work ‒ Can be used for coaching and to stimulate changes Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Coach the Agile Teams • Create understanding of the whole picture ‒ Involve business representatives, stakeholders and the teams ‒ Map out the process and the workflow, identifying constraints and state process policies

• The Development Program workflow is the master process – Governs the work for the agile teams – Coach the teams to collaborate, level out workload, avoid handovers & building queues, manage work towards releases

• Adopt good practices that serve the overall process – Use of ideas from Scrum, XP, ATDD, UX, Kanban (team level) – Try and find out what works (empirical approach)

• Improve the process stepwise and optimize the flow Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Team Board, example • Each Agile Team may have a private Team Board (team perspective) • The Team Board visualizes a sub-set of the overall workflow, and possible team specific Work Items

Planned

Ongoing

Defects (main flow)

Done Defect Defect

Defect

Development Team

Develop (main flow) Story

Story

Task Task

Task

Task Task

Task

Analyze (main flow)

Task

Task

Task

Other stuff Task Task

Improvements Task

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Task

Task

Task

Task Task

Task

Task

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Synchronization cadence, example May introduce a cadence to takt work! Can be used for integrate sub-deliveries, fork or join work, etc.

A Feature Waiting for Development …

Feature 1

Story 1.1 (Team A)

Team A

Story 1.2 (Team B)

Team B

Story 1.3 (Team C)

Team C

The team aims for synchronized deliveries for starting Acceptance Testing

time today

Start Acceptance Testing Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Cadence for Planning and for Release Management, example Planning cadence

Release cadence

(e.g. each week)

(e.g. each month)

Development Program Epic Feature Feature

Epic

Input queue

Waiting for Release

Epic Feature

Released

?

• Can introduce a cadence for planning/preparing incoming work • Can introduce cadence for managing releases • Planning and Release cadences can be decoupled from each other, and from other cadences used in the Kanban system Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Evolve from silos into flow oriented teams

workflow (end-to-end)

Input Queue

Working Product Increment

• Kanban is decoupled from how the resources are organized • Can start from today’s situation and resource arrangements (waterfall/silos) • ... stimulate improvements and stepwise evolve into a flow oriented organization with cross-functional Feature Teams Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Evolve stepwise, example of challenges What change gives a wanted effect? • Build awareness and analyze the current situation • Identify actual problems, make use of data and metrics • Introduce changes and evaluate …

Today’s situation, meaning? (baseline of metrics) …

Build awareness of the common workflow and the wanted end-result!

Align business and IT

…

…

Get User in loop, feedback, UX

Common responsibility, see to the whole?!

…

Create flow, analyze workflow, find “bottlenecks” and remove waste … How to coordinate and synchronize work Team and recourse arrangements? Speed up flow by automated testing and continuous integration

…

Release management, Continuous Deployment and Deliveries Flow-oriented teams (Feature Teams)? Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Scaling up with multiple workflows

Epic

Feature

Feature Feature

Feature

Epic Epic Epic

Epic

Feature Feature Feature

Epic

Feature

Portfolio Epic Feature Feature

Feature Feature

Feature

Multiple Development Programs (end-to-end workflows) Copyright Agesis AB www.agesis.se

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Some reference material • Lean Kanban University (David J. Anderson) – http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com

• The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) – http://scaledagileframework.com

• Scaling Lean & Agile Development – Craig Larman, Bas Vodde

• Succeeding with Agile – Mike Cohn

• Management 3.0 – Jurgen Appelo