Week 4 Applying Agile in The Organization

value driven

"value-driven delivery" means you and your team are focused on delivering a product of high value. Build the right thing, build the thing right, and run it right. Remember, Agile and Scrum evolved out of the software industry. -First and foremost, to deliver value, you have to build the right thing. -Next, you must build the thing right. That's lingo for ensuring that your team only builds the requested or approved features. Working on features that aren't necessary can lead to complexities in the product that don't add any value to the users. -you have to make sure that you're running it right. To run it right means that your team has thought through how the user will interact with the product once it's been delivered. Make sure your team thinks through some of the operational tasks that will need to be addressed after the product has left the door.

Scrum of Scrums (SoS)

- important technique in scaling Scrum to large project teams. - allow clusters of teams to discuss their work, focusing especially on areas of overlap and integration. - Imagine a perfectly balanced project comprising seven teams each with seven team members. Each of the seven teams would conduct (simultaneously or sequentially) its own daily scrum meeting. Each team would then designate one person to also attend a scrum of scrums meeting. The decision of who to send should belong to the team. Usually the person chosen should be a technical contributor on the team—a programmer, tester, database administrator, designer, and so on—rather than a product owner or Scrum Master. Scrum of Scrums involves the following elements: -A group of at least 12 or more people divided into Scrum Teams of five to ten people each -Scrum of Scrums meetings, which are held once a week, twice a week, or daily. These meetings follow the same format as a Daily Scrum meeting but focus on the Scrum team. In these meetings, you'll discuss questions like: "What did the team do yesterday? What problems occurred, if any, that are negatively affecting your team? What does your team want to accomplish before we meet again? Is your team blocked from moving forward on any tasks?" -A Scrum Master or designated "ambassador" for each team that participates in the Scrum of Scrums meetings and a Scrum of Scrums Master who focuses on the overall Scrum process across multiple teams Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective meetings.

Solutions for team distress

-You could run a team brainstorm session about how to work better together. Ask the team to identify some areas to improve on. An example exercise could involve asking the team to write down stories about the worst team they've ever worked on and the best team they've ever worked on, then sharing them in a meeting. -Then you might have the team create a list of do's and don'ts for working together, based on the stories everyone shared. -Another idea is to change up the workflows. Try pairing up people to work together on a hard task or change up the way you run one of your regular meetings. It can also help to take a training class together or watch a video about team dynamics and discuss it as a group. -You can also try a retrospective technique from the internet. There are a ton of great resources out there. One of my favorite retrospective techniques is called the Six Hats.

Scrum manager as Agile Coach

1-Scrum Master designs the plays. Although the Scrum Master owns the playbook, it should be created with the whole team. designing the plays with the team 2-Provide feedback, guidance in the moment and big picture view. 3-Celebrate and learn

4 themes of agile principal

1-value delivery 2-business collaboration 3-team dynamics 4-culture and retrospectives.

coaching

1. Motivate: Coaches motivate team members to take action. They point out the value in others' work and instill within them a sense of pride in what they do. 2. Support: Coaches are an accessible resource for their team to come to when they experience problems or if they have an idea they want their feedback on. 3. Encourage and appreciate: When someone on their team is struggling with a heavy workload, a coach will acknowledge and validate the weight of their efforts and assure them that they are capable of handling the challenges ahead.

DevOps (Development and Operations)

A cultural shift toward continuous collaboration between development teams and operations teams that brings highly responsive application updates. which combines software development and IT operations. Our Google Cloud Platform Business defines DevOps as an organizational and cultural movement that aims to increase software delivery velocity, improve service reliability, and build shared ownership among software stakeholders. Like all Agile frameworks, DevOps aims to shorten the product lifecycle and deliver software products continuously and with very high-quality. DevOps emerged when software companies were faced with trying to figure out how to ensure their software products would run reliably for billions of people across the world, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. DevOps is about growing and managing teams and organizations that can build and evolve large-scale systems at a rapid pace. These systems need to be both secure and reliable, so they can better deliver value to customers and organizations.

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

A hybrid approach that combines the strategies from various Agile frameworks, including Kanban, LeSS, Lean Development, Extreme Programming, and Agile Modeling; guides people through process-related decisions and helps develop a scaled Agile strategy based on context and desired outcomes. DAD is organized into four "layers": 1. Foundations discusses the principles, guidelines, Agile concepts, roles and team structure definitions, and Way of Working (WoW). 2. Disciplined DevOps ensures that solutions are delivered to customers effectively and safely, with data and security management always at the forefront. 3. Value Streams ensures that solutions are aligned with the organization's business strategy, connecting customers, sales, and portfolio management to the framework. 4. Disciplined Agile Enterprise (DAE) connects the industry marketplace with corporate governance and larger enterprise activities.

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

A knowledge base of integrated patterns for enterprise-scale lean-agile development. SAFe is a Lean-Agile scaling framework that draws heavily on concepts from Kanban, Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), DevOps, and Design Thinking methodologies. SAFe puts the goal of delivering value above all else—the first principle of SAFe is "take an economic view." SAFe, like most Agile practices, is founded on a set of core values: -Alignment: Synchronize the planning and execution of SAFe activities at all levels of the organization. -Built-in Quality: Build quality into all stages of solution development. -Transparency: Make execution activities visible at all levels to build trust among teams and across the organization. -Program Execution: Focus on working systems and business outcomes. -Leadership: Model the values and principles of SAFe.

release goal

A release plan contains a release goal, which is an overall business goal for the features you plan to include in the release; -the list of Backlog items such as epics, user stories, or features that you require for that release goal; -an estimated release date; and any other relevant dates that impact a release, like a convention or major holiday. It's important to add all of your release plans to your value roadmap to help you stay focused on the path to your overall value goal.

value roadmap components

A typical value roadmap has three components: a product vision, a product roadmap, and release plans.

managing a stable product roadmap

Agile projects almost always experience changes in the product roadmap. Being able to respond quickly and productively to these changes is a core Agile value. But it is possible to have too much change impacting the project, which can lead to an unstable product roadmap. There are two main causes of an unstable product roadmap: 1-product ambition and 2-product assumptions

team stability

And finally, the last big challenge you might encounter with Agile and Scrum teams is a lack of team stability. When the team changes a lot, with people leaving and joining frequently, it can make things unpredictable and disrupt the flow of work. There are a few things you can do to address instability on your team. -First, have a quick onboarding process for new team members to help them get to know the rest of the team and understand the project. -Second, use a Pair Programming style, where a new team member teams up with a colleague and starts learning on the job. This also helps if people leave the team since a partner should be able to pick up where they left off. -And third, if team composition changes because members keep leaving, try having shorter Sprints. This way, team members can wrap up their last Sprint's worth of work before leaving. To recap, the three main challenges we've covered in this video are managing a stable product roadmap, incomplete implementation of Scrum, and a lack of team stability.

Personal ability

Are the individuals capable of performing the behavior? Do they have the ability, knowledge, and skills to "do what they can't"?

Personal motivation

Are the individuals motivated internally to engage in the new behavior? Can you help them "love what they hate"?

Structural ability

Are there environmental factors at play that either deter or support the new behavior? Can you make the incorrect behavior harder to do than the correct behavior? Example: Add a rule to the content management system that pre-populates the name of the Product Owner in the reviewer list.

Structural motivation

Are there rewards or incentives that they will receive if they perform the new behaviors? Example: Provide a coffee gift card Sprint award that the Product Owner gets to award after each Sprint.

Social motivation

Are there social contacts or networks encouraging or discouraging this new behavior? Example: Have the Development Team members remind each other in the Daily Scrum to email the Product Owner before they finalize the work.

VUCA

Businesses face a lot of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and they recognize that Agile and the frameworks that derive from it are a way to overcome those challenges. In this video, we'll discuss how Agile has already started evolving and explore some emerging ideas about how it might continue to evolve in the future.

case studies

Case studies—in-depth, data-driven analyses of a business, community, or organization—are valuable tools for gaining key industry insights and learning from the successes and failures of your competitors. What is the issue? What is the goal of the analysis? What is the context of the problem? What key facts should be considered? What alternatives are available to the decision-maker? What would you recommend, and why?

business collaboration issues

Collaboration is about making sure that developers are collaborating with business people on how to build the right product. There are a few common signs that your team might be experiencing business collaboration issues. 1-You might notice that the team is overwhelmed with critical feedback or change requests from business people after they reviewed the working solution. That could lead to people on your team avoiding asking for feedback or complaining about requested changes coming from the Product Owner or business team. 2- you might start to detect an "us versus them" mentality between the team doing the work and management. I've sometimes noticed this manifest in negative comments from team members like, "Don't give a demo to the salesperson. It's not ready yet, and they'll just point out what's wrong." If you notice any of these signs, there are a few things you can do to help rebuild trust and collaboration between the developers and the business people. -To start with, try addressing critical feedback and change requests by doing more demos. This ensures feedback comes in at a steady pace and that everyone involved has a shared understanding of what done means. -Next, consider conducting a Solution Design Sprint, which is an entire Sprint spent working solely on the solution design. These are most effective when the working team and the business people actually sit together and collaborate on the solution. -Finally, you can help your team focus by ensuring changes to the Backlog are introduced only in between Sprints. This prevents your team from getting distracted by possible changes which could stress them out and lead to resentment.

celebrate and learn

Congratulate the team often on a job well done, a happy customer, or a big solution launch. If the team "loses," meaning they weren't successful in fulfilling a requirement, acknowledge that loss as critical data that will help the team improve next time. It's important for the team to still feel positive about any disappointment and think of it as a learning opportunity.

other ways of team improvement - Scrum and Agile values.

Daily Standups: For example, if your team complains about Daily Standups, remind them that the purpose of Standups is to gain feedback, unblock work, ask for help, and reinforce the importance of staying focused on the Sprint goals. Roles-You can also make sure roles are well-defined and properly fulfilled. For example, ensure that all team members understand their own roles as well as the roles of their teammates and how those roles interact. -For example, the Product Owner makes sure we build the right thing -the Development Team ensures we build it right, -the Scrum Master ensures we build it fast.

Social ability

Does the team have resources within their social network to help them carry out the new behaviors? Example: Give the Development Team a tool to track all of their demos to the Product Owner during the Sprint.

team dynamics and culture

Human beings are complex creatures with lots of different motivations and styles of working, so it's likely that you'll encounter at least a few challenges in this area. Here are a few common signs of team dynamics and culture issues to watch out for: -First is low team morale. If people are super grumpy, irritated, or generally in a bad mood, then you might have some underlying team dynamics issues to sort out. -Next, watch out for signs the team is experiencing lots of conflict. If people are arguing a lot and issues aren't getting resolved, the team probably needs some help. Not everyone is going to get their way. If team members feel resentful or hold onto grudges, it'll negatively impact the team's performance. -And finally, and this might surprise you, but low conflict can also be a sign that the team is experiencing issues. We're usually taught to believe that no conflict is a good thing, right? But if a team never has disagreements, it's a sign that they might be worried about starting a conflict because they don't feel like it's a safe environment. Being open and courageous are two of our Scrum values, but it's not always easy to put them into practice. As a project manager, part of your role is helping your team get comfortable being honest with each other and working through conflicts together. If you notice these or any other clear signs of team distress, here are some ideas you can try.

value roadmap

It's an Agile way of mapping out the timelines and requirements for the product development process and can be used in all types of businesses. This roadmap is a guide that demonstrates where to go, how to get there, and what to accomplish along the way in order to maximize value. As the team follows their roadmap, they gather input from customers and stakeholders and apply their findings to each iteration of the product. Creating a roadmap helps the team explain the vision of the product and can also be used to identify important milestones. A typical value roadmap has three components: 1-a product vision 2-a product roadmap 3-and release plans.

Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)

Large-Scale Scrum is a product development framework that extends Scrum with scaling guidelines while preserving the original purposes of Scrum. is a framework that aims to maximize the Scrum team's ability to deliver value and reduce waste in larger organizations. LeSS grew out of more than 600 experiments that expanded the practice of Scrum to larger groups. LeSS teams prioritize learning, transparency, and customer needs. The ten LeSS principles are: 1. Large-scale Scrum is Scrum: Apply the values and principles of Scrum to a larger team. 2. Empirical process control: Inspect, adapt, and learn from experience to improve processes. 3. Transparency: Ensure clarity and accessibility across a project. 4. More with less: Create only necessary processes, roles, artifacts, and waste when scaling. 5. Whole-product focus: Think holistically about the product, making sure that all the parts serve the whole. 6. Customer-centric: Keep the customer's needs and values at the heart of your process. 7. Continuous improvement towards perfection: Improve the product—and your process—during every single Sprint. 8. Systems thinking: Think about the system as a whole; Don't get lost in the details. 9. Lean thinking: Seek continuous improvement, aim for perfection, and respect people. 10. Queuing theory: Embrace the Lean principles of "flow,' manage queue size," and "minimize multitasking" to keep delivering value.

product roadmap

Next, there's the product roadmap, which the Product Owner is responsible for creating and maintaining. It provides a high-level view of the expected product, its requirements, and an estimated schedule for reaching milestones. It's key to making sure your team is building the right thing. Many of those milestones will be product release dates. You'll need to ensure that product release dates are only rough estimates. This is because as an Agile team, you know, that things can and do change. This is especially true since these dates could be anywhere from several months to several years down the road. If the roadmap is too specific, it might set the team up for failure because the dates can't be guaranteed.

managing the team

Onboarding and orienting new employees Conducting meetings Delegating tasks and assignments Monitoring progress and performance against those tasks Making high-level decisions In Agile project management, however, teams are designed to be self-managing. A self-managing team has the autonomy to choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others from the top down. Agile team members should also feel empowered and equipped to problem-solve on their own.

six sources of influence

Personal Motivation Personal Ability Social Motivation Social Ability Structural Motivation Structural Ability

change management

Process of making sure changes are made smoothly and efficiently and do not negatively affect systems reliability, security, confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Change management is the process of getting folks to adopt a new product, process, or in Agile's case, a new value system.

product ambition

Product ambition poses a challenge when product leadership is overly ambitious about what the team can realistically deliver. The Product Owner is responsible for representing the project to customers and executives because the Product Owner wants to make the stakeholders happy. It can be easy for them to over-promise what the project can deliver. DANGER. Solution: - First, agree up front how to handle new opportunities, define when they are reviewed and estimated, and how customer or management commitments are made. -Second, set up regular roadmap reviews with the entire team, at least quarterly, so that everyone knows what to expect. -And third, promote sharing knowledge between the Product Owner and the Development Team so that the Product Owner knows how much effort the product takes to build and the team is aware of changes as early as possible.

Value Delivery Issues

Some signs that your team is experiencing value delivery issues could include things like the team has started missing expected delivery dates and is taking a lot longer than usual to complete tasks. Or you might notice that the team seems burned out, is working long hours, and showing signs of exhaustion. Or maybe the team has too many items in progress at any given time, preventing tasks from actually getting to done. If you start to notice your team is struggling in these areas, there are a few things you can do to help. Solutions: 1-You can try doing more demos of the solutions with the team to ensure they're delivering on the value roadmap. 2-When the team pauses to take in a big picture view of the working product, they often notice areas where they can improve and speed up the work. 3- You can also use retrospectives to ask the team if anything is slowing them down, like waiting on dependencies or communication challenges. 4- It can also help to do a quick review with the team and make sure that everyone understands what "done" means. 5-And finally, be sure to focus on only a few user stories per Sprint.

the spotify model

The Spotify organization's version of the Agile approach; focuses on culture, team autonomy, communication, accountability, and quality to increase agility. Squads: Like Scrum teams, Squads are autonomous teams of 6-12 people working toward the same outcome. All Squads include a coach (similar to a Scrum Master) and a Product Owner. Tribes: When multiple Squads work on the same feature area, they form a Tribe of 40-150 people. Each Tribe has a Tribe Lead who fosters collaboration and coordination. Chapters: Squads may be autonomous, but specialists (e.g., JavaScript developers) should still align across an organization. Chapters establish best practices and, where necessary, set standards. Guilds: Any group of people interested in a certain topic can form a Guild, where people with shared interests can come together as a community.

product vision

The first component of a value roadmap is the product vision. Your product vision is a critical step to starting any new Scrum project. Your vision is based on your user interviews and market analysis and becomes your team's north star. In other words, it's what guides your team. The product vision defines what the product is, how it supports the customer's business strategy, and who will use it.

designing the plays with the team

The playbook should include how the whole team runs a Sprint Review, how the team works day-to-day, and how the team publishes plans to stakeholders. When updates are needed to the team's plays, it's important that you involve the team in any decisions. Take them through new processes together, think through all the positions on the team, and make sure everyone notices the flow.

incremental delivery

The software is developed in increments with the customer specifying the requirements to be included in each increment.

value

The term "value" can mean different things for each customer based on what they expect the product to accomplish. The number one Agile principle is to satisfy the customer by delivering valuable software. You can always replace the term software with the words product or solution for non-software related projects. Delivering value as quickly and efficiently as possible to users is the primary reason Agile came into existence.

product release plan (product releases)

The third component of a value roadmap is a series of release plans. -The Product Owner and project manager work together to develop these plans. -Product releases occur when the team has developed a basic working version of a given feature or requirement. -A release plan includes the approximate date when the team is expected to release and deliver certain features to the customer or user. ** only the first release date should be considered to be set in stone. The rest of the release plan is based on early estimates and is subject to change as the project proceeds. It's very important that the Product Owner and Project Manager or Scrum Master work together to develop each release plan. This is because the release plans need to connect the product roadmap with the team's capacity and velocity. The capacity and velocity is the measure of the team's ability to complete work at a certain pace. **A release plan that isn't connected to the team's ability to complete work could be unrealistic and lead to an unsustainable pace for the team. Living artifact.

3 challenges to Scrum Teams

The three challenges we'll focus on are: 1- managing a stable product roadmap 2- incomplete implementation of Scrum 3-experiencing a lack of stability within the team.

incomplete implementation of Scrum

This happens when Scrum practices are only partially implemented or when Scrum practices are implemented without proper support and coaching. Scrum roles, artifacts, and activities are designed to work together as a set. If you only partially implement them, you might end up reducing their benefits. Issues: -First, it can lead to a loss of clear roles and responsibilities. To implement Scrum completely, you should define the roles for the team and then fill those roles with specific individuals. -You might also be tempted to skip some events or blend them to save time, but a lack of clear boundaries for Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, and Sprint Planning can lead to reducing transparency, inspection, and adaptation, and these are all essential to experience the full benefits of Scrum. -And finally, not providing the team with the Scrum coaching they need would also mean that you haven't fulfilled your role as Scrum Master. -It's your job to fully explain the Scrum practices and provide coaching so your team understands the reasoning behind the practices and can embrace their benefits. -The solution to all of these challenges is to implement Scrum completely.

build the right thing

To deliver value, teams need to build the right thing. To leverage this principle, the team can have a solution-oriented conversation with the customer to better understand what the customer wants and what their goals are.

cultural shift

Understanding organizational culture and the change management process is crucial when introducing new ways of working.

Six Hats Technique

Varied ways of looking at a particular issue to give you different perspectives. In this technique, each team member chooses a different hat to explore the subject of the retrospective. The different hats each involve a different objective, like discussing positives or negatives that happened during the Sprint or sharing emotive statements. This helps to ensure that the team takes a well-rounded approach to the retrospective.

provide feedback

You should always provide feedback to your team and stakeholders as early as possible and on a day-to-day basis. Just like a coach gives directions from the sidelines, the Scrum Master needs to provide guidance all the time. In addition to feedback provided in the moment, the Scrum Master also takes in a big picture view.

hybrid methodologies

hybrid of methodologies. This means that being able to blend methods will be a super useful skill to have as you start your project management career.

organizational culture

the set of values, ideas, attitudes, and norms of behavior that is learned and shared among the members of an organization. Organizational culture is based on shared workplace values and pops up in people's behaviors, activities, the way they communicate, and how they work with each other. A change that's out of sync with the existing culture is much more difficult to complete. In fact, there's research proving that companies that don't consider the cultural aspects of Agile are more likely to fail.

product assumptions

too many product assumptions! When there's uncertainty in a project, you may be required to make some assumptions to move things forward. But making too many assumptions can jeopardize the team's success. Solutions: -Document the assumptions and make them transparent. This allows you to discuss the assumptions as a team and either agree that they're safe assumptions to make or decide to question and double check them. If you do decide to double check them, you can use unbiased user research. -User research could involve conducting surveys, running focus groups, or using other methods to collect objective data about your users.