Agility at Scale: Deciphering Trending Frameworks

According to Gartner , SAFe, Scrum of Scrum and Spotify are the frameworks that have managed to meet more than 25% of business needs.

There are several possible cases of agility at scale

A department, division, or company

The Benefits and Challenges of Adopting Agility at Scale

Challenges

Resistance to change: Teams or staff members can resist the change in culture and work practices induced by agility at scale.

Complexity of coordination : Coordinating multiple teams working on large projects can be complex, requiring effective communication mechanisms.

Need for training: Adopting agility at scale requires substantial training for teams and leaders to understand the new frameworks and practices.

Information overload: Increasing the number of meetings and interactions can lead to information overload for teams, which can be counterproductive if not managed properly.

Communication challenges : Effective communication between many teams is essential to avoid misunderstandings or gaps in communication.

Change in organizational structure: Adopting agility at scale may require changes in organizational structure, which can lead to resistance and challenges.

Over-sizing planning: Over-planning can go against the principle of agility, requiring finding the right balance between planning and adapting.

Technological complexity : Large-scale projects can involve complex systems and architectures, making it more technically difficult to implement agility.

Study of the SAFe Framework

SAFe Levels

It defines multiple levels for organizing and managing agile activities at different levels of the business. Here is a description of the three main levels of SAFe: Portfolio, Program, and Team :

• Portfolio Level : This level focuses on vision, strategy, and investment management at the corporate level.

• Program level: At the program level, several teams work together to develop complex solutions, planning, coordinating, and executing their work.

• Team Level : Agile teams do the real-world development work, planning sprints, delivering features, and managing their own work.

These three tiers enable SAFe to adapt to large-scale agile project management within organizations.

SAFe Organization

Process SAFe

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) relies on several key processes to coordinate and manage development at scale. The following is a description of the SAFe processes:

PI Planning (Program Increment Planning):

• PI Planning is a major event in SAFe that occurs at regular intervals, usually every 8 to 12 weeks.
• The goal is to coordinate and plan the work of the different teams within the Agile Release Train (ART) for a given period of time, called “Program Increment” (PI).
• During this event, teams define PI goals and objectives, plan features to be developed, identify dependencies, and establish a delivery plan.

Program Increment (PI):

• A PI is a period of time of about 8-12 weeks where teams work together to develop features or solutions.
• Each PI has a clear purpose, and at the end of each PI, a portion of the solution is ready to be delivered.

Innovation and Planning Sprint :

• It’s a particular sprint that takes place at the end of each PI and is dedicated to innovation, identifying technical issues, and planning for the next PI.
• Teams focus on improvement, retrospective, and preparing the backlog for the next PI.

Sprints :

• Sprints are short iterations of work, typically 2-4 weeks, where teams develop and deliver features.
• Sprints allow for iterative and incremental development, with sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives at the end of each iteration.

These processes in SAFe aim to create strategic alignment and effectively coordinate the work of teams, while maintaining flexibility and adaptability to meet changing market needs. This enables large organizations to adopt agile practices while managing complex projects at scale

Spotify Case Study

Organization at Sportify

From Idea to Product

Spotify has integrated the “Think it, Build it, Ship it, Tweak it” model to develop and improve its products in an agile and iterative way, ensuring constant responsiveness to user needs and market developments. This approach has contributed to Spotify’s enduring success.

The “Think it, Build it, Ship it, Tweak it” model is an iterative process of product or software development that takes place in four steps :

• Think it : This phase involves idea generation, product goal setting, and planning.

• Build it : After the brainstorming phase, teams move on to actually building the product.

• Ship it : Once built, the product is made available to users.

• Tweak it : After launch, continuous improvements are made based on user feedback and market needs.

This model fosters agility, adaptability, and continuous innovation, allowing the product to be constantly improved in response to user feedback and market changes

Choosing an Agility Framework at Scale

CULTURE, PRACTICES AND AGILE TRANSFORMATION

• Agile frameworks at scale are for both teams and the organization
• The more agile the organization, the less important it is to define processes, roles and practices
• While it is important to change the organization and its culture, there are different approaches: Top Down and Bottom Up
• “If Revolution comes from below, Transformation comes from above”
• Managers have the central role in the agile transformation of their organization
• Becoming Agile is the right balance between Chaos and Bureaucracy

MANAGEMENT AGILE

To succeed in an agile transformation:

• You have to work with teams to make them more agile: rituals, design, testing, rhythm, collaboration and above all continuous improvement (bottom-up approach)
• You have to change the organization to change the culture

Managers have the central role in agile transformation and particularly in the following areas:

• Culture: Inspiring long-term culture change
• Organization: Breaking down silos
• Workflow Management: Getting Out of “Project Mode”
• Team development: “Leader as developper of people”

AGILE TRANSFORMATION AND CHOICE OF FRAMEWORK

We have 2 opposites:

• SAFe : Comprehensive framework with a top-down approach
• Spotify : which is not a framework but represents the successful culture change

The more historic and large the organization, the more complicated the culture change will be

• A start-up will have less trouble setting up a devops approach, a micro-services architecture that will support an agile organization and culture

The choice of the framework must be made according to many criteria: corporate culture, organizational silos, team maturity, company values, sponsorship, investment, etc.

POSSIBLE CHOICES:

1-Invest in a complete framework: Safe
Expensive and a strong top-down choice

2-Focus on corporate culture: Spotify
Not suitable for most organizations

3-Choose an “intermediate” framework: Nexus, Less
Remains limited on complex organizations or projects

4-Adapt the approach/framework to the organization
Requires management support and internalization of the approach (may be partial)

KEY TAKEAWAYS

OVERALL ORGANIZATION AND TEAM SIZE

Teams are self-sustaining with little to no dependencies on other teams

Possibility of having a cross-functional team helping other teams to be autonomous

BACKLOG & SYNCHRONIZATION

CADENCE AND COORDINATION

MANDATORY DEVOPS APPROACH

CADENCE AND CULTURE