“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” – Harvard Business School Professor Theodore Levitt “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” – Albert Einstein Design Thinking The term ‘Design Thinking’ might leave one guessing …
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) A method for objectively ranking and sequencing Product Backlog items Ensures items of highest value are delivered at the earliest opportunity. Value is based on cost of delay. Items with highest Cost of Delay and lowest cost of development (effort) are ranked higher for delivery When 2 items have the…
Agile Delivery At Scale Series Part 1: The Scaling Challenge Part 2: Organizing for Scaled Delivery Part 3: Scaling the Product Backlog Part 4: Delivery Planning and Execution at Scale Summary This post is part 1 of a 5-part series that discusses the challenges of scaled agile delivery. Non-proprietary solutions are proposed that emphasize simplification…
Organizing for Scaled Delivery Summary Getting the right organizational structure in place is a critical prerequisite for successful scaling. Traditional functional silos do not scale, and create flow-impeding dependencies between teams. A value stream mapping exercise can help ensure teams are focused on customer value delivery, have clear missions, and can operate with maximum independence…
Summary At scale, the definitions of the Product Goal and Product Backlog at scale are unchanged: the Product Goal serves as a target for the Delivery Teams to plan against, the Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything needed to meet the Product Goal. The Product Backlog should be stack-ranked by relative business value….
Summary Simple planning and execution governance is sufficient to coordinate, communicate and help keep teams and stakeholders informed and aligned. A dedicated role to support for these activities (for example ‘Chief Scrum Master’) is valuable to ensure delivery teams are not distracted from delivery tasks. Planning can be accomplished asynchronously. With appropriate planning detail, execution…
The Improvement System Summary All improvement should be connected to business outcomes. Improvement frameworks can be leveraged to ensure alignment between agile initiatives and business objectives. Improvement initiatives can be managed in the same way as the delivery of new product features: Add to Program Backlogs and apply program governance. A small number of KPIs…
On a daily basis, a Scrum Team understands its progress towards achieving the Sprint Goal, and, if necessary, adjusts its plan to maximize the probability of achieving it. This is the purpose of the Daily Scrum. It is a daily event to Inspect and Adapt. During the course of a sprint, the team may discover…