How to scale agile development across organization & industries?

 

• Agile methodology is a rising framework for large-scale enterprises but how do you transition your company into an agile framework.

Agile software development has become a benchmark for software product development and services. Right from startups to large organizations, IT companies to government agencies, agile is prominent in every industry. Its adoption has grown from being used by a small number of agile teams within a company to many agile teams, larger teams, and the entire organization itself.  

According to VersionOne 12th Annual State of Agile report, the most prominent challenges when adopting and scaling agile are organizational culture indifference with agile values, organizational resistance to change, and insufficient management support and sponsorship. Despite the challenges, 95% of the survey respondents said their enterprise practices agile development.  How can we address the obstacles?The need to scale agile has given rise to frameworks that provide guidelines for companies including Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Scrum of scrums (SoS), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD). 

 

What is Agile Software Development?

Agile Software development as you know is a methodology that is concentrated on iterative decision making where requirements and solutions are developed with the help of collaborations between different teams in the organization. Traditionally preferred by small groups, agile development has become popular among larger organizations across all industries.  

However, a scaled agile development process allows teams to deliver better products faster, efficiently, and with better quality. Scaling agile is still one of the most complicated barriers for organizations. The main reason behind this is how these companies are structured with multiple teams and more complex systems than their smaller counterparts. This article is going to look at how to scale in an enterprise environment and examine the following:

• The latest trends in the enterprise agility 
• Biggest challenges companies face in scaling agile 
• Frameworks for scaling agile in corporate environments
• Successful implementation of agile
  

5  strategies for scaling agile in the enterprise

Agile methodology is a rising framework for large-scale enterprises but how do you transition your company into an agile framework? In this article, we will provide you with five simple and effective strategies for scaling agile methodology to your particular project, team, and organization.

• Create an MVP

Continuous Delivery (CD) is a software development strategy that delivers high-quality, accessible software to clients. Releasing a minimum viable product (MVP) is important for gaining early feedback and tracking usage patterns to test theories. An MVP will prevent wasting engineering time and maintain features such as gold plating among big software teams. 

• Create a single product backlog

A product backlog is a set of tasks to finish before you release the code.  Product managers should keep a single group backlog for all teams. Having a single backlog allows you to give attention to high-priority tasks while giving access to all the contributors throughout the project. This prevents any sort of miscommunication and creates a collective project environment. 

• Employ a large-scale agile framework 

The three major frameworks used in large enterprises are SAFe, DAD, and LeSS. Well-guided, multi-level training, and certifications are ideal for small, expanding practices. Scrum of Scrums (SoS) is another widespread approach due to its acceptance of formal training.  One downside of these frameworks is that they can lead to reevaluating a hierarchical organization, which can be challenging for bigger enterprises.   

All three agile frameworks are based on ideas deriving from scrum testing. The SAFe framework consists of five to nine people and uses program, team, and portfolio levels with two-week scrum techniques in extreme programming methods. At the program level, each team’s scrum has around five to ten SAFe teams as a component of an “agile release train.” The portfolio level represents how managers and agile leaders can use processes like value streams to focus better on features. Read more- How to scale agile development across organization & industries?