ATUL SHARMA (PMI-ACP, CSP, CSM)

Program Manager, NIIT Technologies

atul.1.sharma@niit-tech.com

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Case Study – Distributed Scaled Agile Development Success & Leanings

Project Context

• Product development in Travel & Transport domain

• Multi year development program with over $100 Million development budget

• Team size of 400+ (Development Team)

• Distributed teams in 3 locations (India, U.K)

• Customized Scaled Agile Development Framework

• Implementation completed in multiple countries

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Teams & Roles

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• Product Roadmap Planning

• Release/Stage Planning

• High Level Design

• Engage with Teams not Manage

• Product Backlog Grooming

Cross Functional Teams (CFT)

Managers, SMEs, Architects, Business Analysts, Build & Deployment Team

• Product Backlog Grooming

• Supporting Scrum Teams

• Shield from management issues

• Roles aligned to functional domain

• Scrum of Scrum

Core Team

Program Manager, Chief Scrum Master, Proxy PO, QA Manager, Configuration,

Integration

• 1 Scrum Master for two teams

• Development and Testing

• Participate in Sprint Ceremonies

• Participate in Scrum of Scrum (One rep from each team)

• Produce Increment

Scrum Teams

Lean & Scrum

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Visioning & Product Roadmap

Staffing & Program

Governance

Release & Stage Planning

Product Backlog

Develop & Test

Build & Deploy

Lean Scrum

CFT & Core Team Scrum Teams

User Acceptance

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KEY SUCCESS FACTORS

Communication & Transparency

Focus on verbal communication

Focus on trust/relationship building with client and teams

Transparency maintained through various communication channels

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• Team – Sprint Planning, Daily Stand up – Sprint Review and Retrospective –

WebEx/Video Conference – Team Board & JIRA Board

• Core/CFT – Release/Stage Planning – Daily Scrum of Scrum, SOS Board – Story Grooming – Group Retrospective

• Management – Bimonthly Steering Committee

meeting – Monthly Senior Management meeting

Metrics

• Sprint Level – Story Burn-Down – Automated Coding standards check

report (Sonar, Klocworks, Check-style) – Unit Test Coverage and results – Functional Testing report – Build Failure & Deployment issues

report

• Release/Stage Level – Feature Burn-Down – Defect Report (Open/Close) – Cumulative Velocity Bar chart – Quality Compliance Dashboard (Unit

Tests, Sonar, Blackduck, Functional Testing)

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Automation

• Code compliance – Sonar/Klocwork – Check-style – Blackduck

• Testing – Unit level (Junit) – Functional & Regression (QTP &

Selenium) – Non Functional – LoadRunner,

WebInspect

• Continuous Integration – Jenkins – Automated Build and Deployment – Daily and On Demand build

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Tools & Standardization

• Reference Story Points • Definition of Ready • Definition of Done • Well defined Acceptance

Criteria • JIRA Agile, Wiki • JIRA integration with SVN for

traceability • Jenkins (CI Platform) • Junit, Sonar, Klocworks,

Checkstyle, Blackduck • QTP, Selenium, WebInspect,

Load runner

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Inspect & Adapt

Sprint Retrospective

Group Retrospective

Release Retrospective

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Understand and respect different point of views

Inquiry rather than advocacy

Conversation rather than argument

Set the Stage Gather Data Generate Insights

Decide what to do

Close Retrospective

More Factors …

• T&M Contract with defined quality standards

• Empowered Teams • Customer is part of development • Reword and Recognition at various

platforms • Team Celebrations at various occasions • Team Engagement rather Management • Risk Management through various

communication channels • Service Uplifting culture • Organization maturity on Agile

(Recruitment, Training, Coaching, Agile Tools etc.)

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KEY LEARNING

Key Learning • Backlog readiness

– Difficulty for CFT to consistently provide sufficient volume of stories and design

– CFT size increased and focus on timely backlog readiness

• Rework – More rework than anticipated during initial stages

– Inspect and Adapt approach helped in controlling

– Definition of Ready streamlined (Changing Requirements)

• Dependency Management – Dependency across modules being developed in parallel

caused delays and rework

– Delay and unavailability of external components

– Recognized and given special focus through early detection during story grooming

– Established Dependency management team to manage dependency across teams/vendors

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Thank You.