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Let's Scale Agility, But How?

03 August 2023 0 Comment

Müge İrfanoğlu // Agile Coach - Allianz Türkiye

Organizational agility is prominent in the agenda, now more than ever. The reflection of this on the institutions was the question of how they can spread agile teams more effectively throughout the organization.

The goal is to become a truly agile-thinking and agile organization rather than having agile teams. It is important to determine a structure that is suitable for the corporate culture, the way of doing business and the needs to achieve this.

So how? If we examine the frameworks used by companies that are on the path to move from a single team to organizational agility, we can find our answer.

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SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)

More than a third of organizations that promote agility use the framework developed by Dean Leffingwell in 2011. There are also many new roles, ceremonies and artifacts within the scope of SAFe, which is built on Scrum and includes scaling at 4 different levels.

Although it receives positive feedback on coordinating and synchronizing inter-team dependency, technology-oriented institutions mostly use SAFe, whose agility is sometimes questioned due to its detailed and prescriptive structure.

Scrum@Scale (a.k.a. Scrum of Scrums)

This framework, shaped in 2014 by Jeff Sutherland, one of the creators of Scrum, adopts scaling as a principle with minimal bureaucracy. It aims to extend scaling across the organization, including not just software or technology, but all support units. Taking Scrum principles as a guide for scaling, it provides coordination through team representatives instead of synchronizing all members together: Scrum Masters evaluate the "How" while Product Owners talk about what they are doing.

Hundred percent compliance with Scrum values and principles, and the effort to reduce bureaucracy are among the reasons why Scrum@Scale is preferred. The limited methods proposed for coordination between teams can make implementation difficult.

Disciplined Agile (DAD)

The Disciplined Agile framework, which argues that individuals and interpersonal relationships are the most important factor in the success of a development team, was developed in 2015. DAD can be defined as the sum of 21 different process objectives, which hybridly combines the appropriate parts of many different agile approaches such as Scrum, XP, SAFe, Kanban, Spotify model.

Companies prefer DAD which is an approach that focuses on the outputs of teams rather than defined rule sets. due to its pragmatic structure that integrates many different frameworks.

Spotify Model

The model, which was implemented first in Spotify by Henrik Kniberg and Anders Ivarsson in 2012, is not actually a standard framework. Although its founders insistently stated that copying the model one-to-one would bring more harm than benefit, today many institutions carry this model and its tribe, squad, chapter and guild-like structures into their own organizations.

In this model, squads work like Scrum teams. Tribes consist of squads that serve the same vision. Chapters, on the other hand, are matrix structures made up of people with similar competencies.

The Spotify model is based on values and principles rather than practices and written rules. In addition to being easy to understand and implement, the emphasis on concepts such as autonomy, reducing dependencies, and servant leadership increases the attractiveness of this model.

LeSS (Large Scaled Scrum) 

LeSS is a more flexible and non-prohibitive alternative for scaling teams using Scrum, with a minimum rule set and 2 different frameworks depending on the number of teams. LeSS can be thought of as a framework that structures Scrum principles, roles and ceremonies with minor changes and facilitates working on the same product, rather than a brand new structure. It can be used in organizations working with multiple teams through a single product backlog to reduce complexity, eliminate unnecessary organizational solution methods, and solve them in simpler ways.

NEXUS

NEXUS was designed by Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum, for 3-9 people Scrum teams to work together. It includes some new roles, ceremonies and artifacts aligned with Scrum.

Enterprise Scrum, Agile Portfolio Management (APM), Recipes for Agile Governance in Enterprise (RAGE) are among other preferred methods...

There are many alternatives and no single truth. There are variety of perspectives and rule sets through dependency management, synchronization of frameworks, reduction of vision to team level etc. Therefore, before making a decision, it is valuable to determine our own priorities and needs, and to examine the available alternatives in depth.

Ayrıca sadece bu çerçevelere bağlı kalmak, hatta herhangi bir çerçeveyi kullanmak zorunda da değiliz. Her kurum kendine özel. Çevik manifestoyu rehber alarak kendi yolculuğunu da buna göre şekillendirmeli. Allianz olarak uyguladığımız HEY! gibi.

We also don't have to stick to just these frameworks, or even use any framework. Every institution is unique. Taking the agile manifesto as a guide, they should shape their own journey accordingly, as Allianz HEY!.

Keeping in mind, establishing an organizational structure is definitely not enough for "organizational agility". Because scaling may cause chaos instead of a solution for institutions that cannot agile mindset and internalize agile culture in parallel.

P.S. You can contact us by clicking here to share your experiences and ask questions about the agile working method.
 

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