Scrum from an Organization Perspective

Damian P. EvansVP, Product Development, Qpass – Amdocs Digital Commerce Division

9 Aug 2007

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Scrum provides no organizational guidance, but its impact on

organizations can be far reaching.

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INTRODUCTION

SCRUM ADOPTION

ORGANIZATIONAL IMPACTS

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About Qpass

• US leader in mobile commerce• Started in 1997• Independent division (for now) of Amdocs

acquired in May 2006• Approximately 400 people worldwide (Amdocs =

17 000+)• Sell to Network Operators who need to efficiently

manage their digital commerce– products (license + maint/support), – systems integration projects, – managed application services

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Characteristics of Qpass Product Development (“PD”)

• Great people• Humor, mostly snide/self-effacing• Mostly consensus-oriented• Not a yeller-screamer culture• Not very political• Somewhat risk averse• Some tendency to overanalyze• Process-belief (both good and bad)• Excellent relationship with Product Management

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Current Status of Scrum at Qpass

Qpass Product Development only• 12 teams• 3 continents• 100 people• 5 products, with release collaboration req’d…all doing Scrum

Other parts of Amdocs and Qpass very interested, experimenting

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INTRODUCTION

SCRUM ADOPTION

ORGANIZATIONAL IMPACTS

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Functional Organization: 2005

VP, PD

Director, QADirector, EngDirector, ArchPGM

Architects

Eng Mgrs Test Mgrs

Engineers Testers

Program Managers

SpecsSchedule Alignment

Dev sched Test sched

Design, Code Test

Mgr, Perf & Platform

Perf Eng

Test, Tune

Test schedArch sched

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PD Management Involvement Pre-Scrum

Vision, Strategy$$ allocation (LOB level)KPIObjectives Resource acquisition / creation

Business ownership / ROI$$ allocation (Product / Project level)Value identification and communicationValue delivery

Software process definitionTechnology standardsVendor managementIP management

Value creationVisibilityResource utilizationImpediment removalRisk management

Role of people PD mgmt

Role of bulk of PD staff

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Our Process Evolution

Daily Builds

SCM

19981998 20002000 20022002 20042004 20052005 20062006 20072007

Automated Unit Tests

WaterfallRUP Attempt

PMI Flair-upScrum!Scrum!

Component-oriented teams

UML

Architects as

demigods

Feature-oriented teams

Component-oriented teams

Testing Org

Testing Org

Gone

Architects as team

members

Continuous Integration

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RUP Phases and Qpass: 2005Inception Elaboration Construction Transition

Projects numerous per year, up to 6 in parallel

• Problem definition and conceptualization, business case

• Initial estimation (“ROM”)

• Specification, implementation, and planning sufficient for a date commitment

• Remaining specification work

• Software implementation

• Testing

• Integration with a release

Releases

2 to 3 per year

• Sustaining Engineering Bug Fix Plan

• Minor Change Request Identification

• Target Milestone Dates

• Clarifying Requirements for bug fix

• Minor Change Request Specification

• Bug Fixing and Testing

• Minor Change Request Coding and Testing

• Integration of Projects

• Performance Benchmarking and Tuning of Release as a whole

• Final Documentation and Packaging

• Train-the-trainer• Support for First

Implementation

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Problem Identification: July 2005

• Too much time spent in planning

• No code written in early phases

• Tester-developer schedule alignment (but not teamwork) tough

• Risk deferral / weak definition of done

• Incessant debate about the “right way” to do iterative development

Find a coach

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Scrum Roll-out Approach

• Experimentation

• Pilot

• Roll-out

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Experimentation

• Found a coach (Danube)

• Used SDET team as guinea pigs of process (and of coach )

• Shared results

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Pilot

• Retained coach• OpenMarket team (a new product) volunteered

to pilot– Found all sorts of issues – management counter-

incentives the biggest

• PartnerCenter team (a feature on flagship product) observed OM, picked up baton– Found and corrected more issues – crappy SCM,

poor PO prioritization, ridiculous focus on design perfection

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Rollout

• Retained coach• Took census of those doing Scrum – proceeded based

on result• Organized engineering leadership team as “nearly-a-

Scrum Team”– VP as Product Owner; Scrum zealot as Scrum Master– Backlog drawn from Scrum Adoption Playbook– Major areas: training/learning, (minimal) process docs on wiki,

communication, cross-team collaboration, PM alignment– Large CSM training, 4 hr training for non-CSMs– Converted teams based on readiness vs. project cycle

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Obstacle #1: Management Risk Aversion

• All Scrum teams fail for the first few sprints, but management has a need for predictability to meet commitments to the market.

• Listen to your coach.• Trust your people.• Remember that you get paid the big bucks to

take risks/arrows for your people.

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Obstacle #2: Architect morale

• Architects felt threatened by changing definition of job.

• Architects join teams – tremendous resource for overall design and requirements

• Lead architect buy-in to help sell

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Obstacle #3: Process alignment with customers

• R&D, not bespoke, but PM communicated dates to customers at RUP lifecycle milestones

• Create a conceptual mapping for RUP milestones to Scrum (not easy but possible, at least for this purpose)

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Obstacle #4: Chain of Command

• Scrum Master vs. Engineering Manager

• Engineering Manager is first point of escalation, works with Product Managers to stay in front backlog-wise

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Obstacle #5: Compatibility

• Some people aren’t compatible, either from a skills perspective or a personality one

• Give people time and training to adjust… but move them out if they cannot adapt

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Obstacle #6: Maintenance

• Team focus key to success with Scrum, but teams impeded by support burden

• Create separate maintenance organization

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Lucky Factor #1: Great people

• Qpass has always hired great engineers, testers, architects who care

• Would’ve been very tough to fight horrific project management and horrific engineering simultaneously

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Lucky Factor #2: Executive Empowerment

• President not an engineer, trusts VP to do what’s right

• VPs can use their power for good, not just evil, when their boss focuses on the ends, not the means

• Lack of VP support would’ve been a killer

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Lucky Factor #3: Great Relationships with PM

• Product Managers take an “us” perspective instead of a “them” perspective, understood the things we were trying to solve

• Getting this relationship healthy should be first order of business in a Scrum rollout

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Lucky Factor #4: Director of QA was staunch advocate

• Jeff Heinen acted as thought leader, instead of obstacle – actually cares about quality of software, not a central quality control process

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Lucky Factor #5: I have no ego

• “Every time you point your finger, three point back at you!”

– Sister Angelica, Holy Cross Elementary School, Dover, DE

• Managers and executives: be prepared that you are the source of many root causes of problems

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If I could do something different

• More engineer, tester, architect training on Scrum

• Keep Agile forum alive

• Metrics would come in handy right now in talking to our new parent company

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INTRODUCTION

SCRUM ADOPTION

ORGANIZATIONAL IMPACTS

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PD Management Involvement Post-Scrum

Vision, Strategy$$ allocation (LOB level)KPIObjectives Resource acquisition / creation

Business ownership / ROI$$ allocation (Product / Project level)Value identification and communicationValue delivery

Software process definitionTechnology standardsVendor managementIP management

Value creationVisibilityResource utilizationImpediment removalRisk management

Role of people nominally in PD exec mgmt

Role of bulk of PD staff

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Hybrid Organization

VP, PD

Directors, Dev (3)

Director, ArchPGM

Architects

Tech Pubs

Engineers

WritersScrum Masters

Tech Standards

Budget / Admin

Manage, Design, Code, Test, Write

Testers

Mgr, Perf & Platform

Perf Eng

Manage, Test, Tune

Eng Ownership of Products

Doc Standards

(2 fewer eng mgr;1 fewer director)

(centralize functionally for skill concentration/ refinement)

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Role of PD Management

• VP kind of like the Federal Reserve –“intervene under market failure”

• Long-range planning and budgeting• Vision, Strategy• Director: partner to PM, advise on backlog, first

point of escalation, uphold defn of done• Separated “HR hierarchy” from “Project

hierarchy” except at most senior levels– Role of direct reporting hierarchy is “mentor”

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Tech Writers

• Works well when dedicated writer on team

• Writers much more engaged – must be able to “dig in” to software and “write final copy” instead of “edit docs from dev”

• Attempt to share amongst teams due to staffing shortfall – very hard

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Global Development

• To the extent possible, avoided “globally distributed teams”– Sometimes required for domain knowledge

• All teams equally empowered

• Must do time-shift for periodic coordination

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Other Thoughts, Opinions

• Is it ok if the Scrum Master is in the chain of command of the team?– Yes, but it depends a lot on the attributes of the

individuals– Requires sensitivity to “command and control” issues

• Could a functional org chart work under Scrum?– Yes, when barriers to cross-functional self-

management are sufficiently broken down. • E.g., functional org must stay out of way of project delivery;

first loyalty must be to team creating value instead of org chart.

– Requires talented Scrum Masters.

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Other Thoughts, Opinions

• Does Scrum of Scrums actually work?– We’ve had better success with “Scrum swaps”

and sometimes “Personnel swaps” – 99% of collaboration is 1 team:1 team

– Scrum Masters themselves add value with coordination

• Shared team for shared components?– Could work– Qpass wanted to err on the side of YAGNI for

starters

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Scrum provides no organizational guidance,* but its impact on

organizations can be far reaching.

*and it shouldn’t… Too much org variationLet Scrum be for projects