Growing pains scaling agile in service delivery LAST Conf 2014

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Growing Pains Scaling Agile to Achieve Greater Capability in Service Delivery By Mia Horrigan Managing Director Zen Ex Machina www.zenexmachina.com http://zenexmachina.wordpress.com @miahorri

description

The team I was working with had a “great problem” – more work than we could deliver. However this success brought mixed blessings as the strain of growing so quickly was starting to show. We had a backlog of work, process issues, resourcing and quality issues and a lot of knowledge residing with one or two of the original start-up team who were now single points of failure. The innovative, "can do" attitude of the start-up company was still there but we were having growing pains. We knew that what we were experiencing in our market (Australia) would eventually be seen in our USA market if we didn’t find a solution to our growing pains. We looked to Lean and Agile as a multidisciplinary approach to achieving an effective product strategy, development and delivery capability that could be scaled to the whole organization.

Transcript of Growing pains scaling agile in service delivery LAST Conf 2014

Page 1: Growing pains  scaling agile in service delivery  LAST Conf 2014

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Growing PainsScaling Agile to Achieve Greater Capability in Service Delivery

By Mia HorriganManaging Director Zen Ex Machina

http://zenexmachina.wordpress.com

@miahorri

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Growing Pains

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Start Up Growing Pains

• More work than team could deliver• Process, resourcing and quality issues• Knowledge residing within a few individuals - Single

points of failure• 30 offices in AU, NZ, EU and rapidly expanding in USA• Grown from 20 to 200 to 1000 within 7 years • 48% of staff joined in last 12 months

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DecayStart- Up

How Business Grow

Youth

Growing Pains

2nd Youth

Maturity

TurnoverProfit

Moment of Truth:Cusp of the comfort zone

Years in Business

Topl

ine

Reve

nue/

Profi

t

Healthy Business Curve

The Slow Death

Crash & Burn

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Key Issues

• Project overruns• Decreasing margin• Lots of non-billable work being done• No product or service delivery roadmap • Projects managed in isolation• Lots of new starters, difficult to on-board• Poor quality• Low level of maturity

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Needed to be here

Level 1 - InitialProcesses unpredictable, poorly controlled and reactive

Level 2 - ManagedProcesses characterised for projects and is often

reactive

Level 3 - DefinedProcesses characterised for the

organisation and is proactive (projects tailor their processes from organisation's

standards)

Level 4 – Quantitatively Managed

Processes measured and controlled

Level 5 – Optimising

Focus on process improvement

Capability Maturity Model (CMMI)

We were here

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Capability Uplift Strategy –Lean Start-up

Aim Objective HowImprove resource and capacity planning processes

Scrum masters involved in assisting resource and capacity planning for the Sprints

Increased accuracy of estimations of work effort Capability planning occurs Planning is established on a continuous cycle

Engage Executive, Directors Product teams Team, PMO and Delivery team strategic planning

SM Coaching Clinics with scenario-based training SM and POs mentoring one-on-one Buy-in from SMs

Implement and enhance (Agile/Scrum) project delivery

Sprint cycle goals for projects achieved Continuous planning embedded into Sprint cycles Reporting as part of the project cycle Achieve level 2 CMMI® maturity rating within 3

months

Support from CIO and Director for the Agile Framework

Peer review by Business / Global PMO of key artifacts.

Engagement of the business during planning and review stages of projects

Up-skill and train Scrum Masters as owners of the process

Ensure Scrum Masters are moving towards conscious competence

Achieve CMMI® level 3 maturity rating within 3- 6 months

Engage Scrum Coach Wkly Coaching Clinics /Lean coffees

Backlog of Coaching Clinic topics that represent value to SMs and align to the strategy and guiding principles

Conduct Coaching Clinics and one-on-one sessions with Scrum Coach

Implement and enhance governance processes

Improved transparency Resources allocated appropriately across projects PRINCE2 aligned Successful project management recognized as more

than just “on time” and “on budget”

Implement RACI from projects to Program Continue backlog refinement meetings of

Applications Development Forums and Project Board to rank projects

Identify standards for tolerances and baseline

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5 Areas of Improvement (Lean Principles)

• Process issues – Lack of governance, and understanding of processes, roles & responsibilities

• Waste due to functional silos – Upstream operated independently of downstream

• Waste in resourcing model – Cherry picking and body shopping

• Quality issues – Milestone driven timeframes not realistic, no testing time, non billable rework 24%

• Lack of “big picture” thinking – No program view of delivery, or interdependencies, limited collaboration

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Approach

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Unconsciously competent

3 months

Consciously competent

2 months

Conscious competence and agile adoption

Consciously incompetent

1 month

Aim: Learn what the rules are

Aim: Learn how the rules apply

Aim: Learn why the rules apply

Outcome: Awareness of

change required to produce

repeatable outcomes

Outcome: learned behaviours with

repeatable outcomes

Outcome: Empowered to

change the rules and know the

consequence

You know that you don’t know and it

bothers you

You know that you do know something but it

takes effort

You know how to do something and it is

second nature

You know how to do something and it is

second nature

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Team Issues

It’s wasn’t easy, there was lots of resistance

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WIIFM- “What’s In It For Me ?”

Organisation• Based on business’s

Priorities• High visibility on project

progress• Ensure effective use of

resources • Help with the change and

adoption• Product Roadmap and

upgrade path articulated

Service Delivery • Happy client area• Certainty around resources• Collaboration and

multidisciplinary approach• Better quality through

Build/Test process • Ability to manage projects

within a program framework

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Scaling to Program Level

• Implemented Scrum and Scrum of Scrums as framework to assist organisation to scale its agile capability

• Program approach to manage competing schedules and priorities

• Program governance ranked order of product backlog and release train order

• Team left to focus on what was of value to client

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Governance

• Decision points at all levels• RACI to manage scope and requirements

Portfolio

Program

Project

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Restructure of Service Delivery

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User vs. Product Focused

Intelligent Integrations Smarter Hospitals (EMR)

• Rhapsody• PCEHR• SMD• Integration Engine

Products/Solution

• Clinical portal• HIS• Meds Mgmt• Orders• Clinical

Documentation• SMT• ED Whiteboard• Mobile• IAM (Caradigm)

Healthier Populations(EHR)

• BIS• OHBI• Healthcare

Pathways• Mobile• Patient Portal• Ereferrals• EMPI (Nextgate)

Orion product View

Customer View

Product View

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Cultural Change

• Moving to Scrum was a cultural change• Needed executive leadership approval and support –

took time• Lot of resistance from senior members of team as new

structure took away function role based power• Managers blocked the processes• PMs lacked big picture thinking negatively impacted

program• Had to make some tough decisions• Had an unhappy client who was a global reference site

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Made it Visual

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Billable Utilisation Paradox

• Revenue based on timesheets and % complete against budget and estimate to complete

• But most projects were fixed costs so longer delivery eroded billable rate

• Scrum Utilisation >95% but project health issues meant billable utilisation was 60%

• Gaming of the system • Changed to communicating sprint goals, progress and

value delivered• WIP limits helped to ensure team had focus on value

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Limitations and Problems with Scaling

• Methodology concerns of scaling from project to portfolio and regions

• Started midway through fixed priced projects• Confusion and in-fighting over scarce resource• Multiple PMs contributing to common backlog

but only one product owner (skewed)

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One Product Backlog

Prod

uct B

ackl

og

a

a

c

b

d

c

• Develop Product Backlog items to 20/20/60 levels of granularity

• Create Definition of Done• Create sufficient specificity and clarity

in Product Backlog to commence first Sprint

Planning & Design ExecutingInitiating

• Develop Program Backlog (Epics)• Develop Epics acceptance criteria• Rank new Epics in Program Backlog• Brief Product Owner• Brief Teams• Undertake estimations of Epics• Agree deployment milestones

a

a

c

Sprint Backlog

Sprint Planning

4-weekSprint

Production ReadyIncrement

• Analysis • Design• Development• Testing• Daily Scrum• Remove impediments• Team-based work

• Capacity planning• Capability planning• Succession planning

• Create goal for items to be completed by the end of the Sprint

• Create tasks

• Release into Test• Demo with the Client• Lessons learned for

the Team for next Sprint

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Communicated Sprint Goals to Clients

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Successfully Scaling the Program

• Scrum of Scrums• One product owner with Program Director as

master Scrum Master• Pairing of knowledge resources with new starters• Re-use of framework and program roadmap

across regions and client sites • Communities of Practice shared lessons learnt

across regions at global PMO level

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Outcomes

• Improved delivery capability• Product co-development partnership with Sprints• Decrease risk of failure to deliver on time• Working collaboratively with stakeholders• Robust governance and accountability• Iterative rather than “hero” efforts• Sharing skills and knowledge• Scaled from project to program to portfolio• Adopted learning to global PMO• Lean delivery – identified and decreased waste

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Good Management Practice