What are the 3 common challenges when scaling agile and how to overcome?

 

• Even though there are challenges in scaling Agile for enterprises, it comes with several advantages as well. We have listed some of them here.

In many enterprises, Agile takes root in software development teams, striving to deliver more value to the customer at a faster pace. While this is a great step to start with, meaningful organizational change comes from scaling agile: Enabling teams across the organization to use Agile frameworks and techniques to transform the way work gets done and improve the products and services delivered to end-users. 

Agile is the most widespread project management methodology and approach implemented by businesses around the world. The problem begins to arise when you try to scale agile on a much larger enterprise. Even though there are challenges in scaling Agile for enterprises, it comes with several advantages as well. We are gonna list some of them below: 

• Helps in boosting employee engagement 
• Enhanced visibility throughout the enterprise 
• Facilitate team planning
• Improves capacity management 
• Aligns processes with operations 

Still one of the biggest advantages of scaling Agile is that it links the strategic objectives to people who are responsible for acquiring those objectives. This promotes transparency, improves cross-team collaboration and coordination, provides a faster response time, and improves organizational agility. With a scalable approach, managers can easily manage the availability of resources and workload, the same as dedicated server hosting. This lets companies bring more value without trading off innovation and flexibility. Scaling Agile throughout the organization means bringing cross-functional teams together, making team planning much easier while offering visibility to everyone into deliverables. 

What does “scaling Agile” mean?

Scaling Agile is a process of translating already established methods, like Scrum and Kanban to a larger team. According to a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), traditional Agile teams work best when there is a team of five to eleven members. As companies are focusing more on the small group because of the success they bring, they often want to replicate that kind of success for larger teams, organizations, or departments. This is where scaling agile works. 

Scaling agile however is not as easy as implementing traditional Agile principles to a larger team. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University recognized eight attributes in total that should be considered while scaling Agile:

• The size of the team 
• Each use role 
• Product owner role
• Specialization of roles 
• Iteration length
• Release definition 
• Batch size
  

Top 3 Challenges of scaling Agile

Implementing change in a small team is comparatively easier, but reshaping how an organization works and thinks is the challenge. Even the most advanced Agile software development teams forward enterprises have to go through roadblocks when they choose to scale agile. Here are three of the biggest challenges of scaling Agile that you might face and how you can overcome them. Read more- What are the 3 common challenges when scaling agile and how to overcome?