6 Ways of Scaling Agile

“Think big, start small, then scale or fail fast.”- Mats Lederhausen

Every organization aims to be big. Once they can manage and build up several teams, they turn towards scaling. Agile has helped many to achieve faster and more reliable delivery to customers. The challenge organizations see is scaling to be agile and searching for ways to do so. There are many agile frameworks designed to solve the problem of teams working on the same or closely linked products. We can find many organizations as examples that have successfully achieved scale with the techniques and tools of agile.

What does scaling agile mean?

Let’s start our discussion by answering this question first. In other words, it is the process of transforming established agile methods into larger groups of people in an organization. Even being "agile" implies using small groups of five to eleven individuals to achieve success. The organizations that have achieved this success want to replicate it in departments, larger groups, and also at an organizational level. At this scale, being agile helps an organization. While scaling agile, eight important attributes should be considered to ensure efficiency. Attributes are;

• · Team size

• · Iteration length

• · Batch size

• · User role

• · Specialization of roles

• · Product owner role

• · Synchronized cadence

• · Release definition

These important attributes of scaling agile are difficult to achieve so the organizations go with the scaling agile framework to get guidance. In this article, I will share with you the most used 6 scaling framework in agile.

Most Used Scaling Framework in Agile

SAFe

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is the most popular framework for scaling agile. With many organizational and workflow templates SAFe implements agile practices in an organization. It mainly concentrates on Agile software development, Systematic Thinking, and Lean Product Development. This agile framework is compatible with scrum, Kanban, and XP. SAFe has highly structured and prescriptive, recognized qualifications by many can be applied to other management layers, and being a market leader have plenty of support available.

S@S

Scrum at scale is the second most popular scaling agile framework. It is most compatible with scrum as its name suggests. It is generally used by organizations that already work with scrum at a team level. It follows the core concept of a scrum that includes five members team and concentrates on linear scalability and time reduction in decision making. It combines the product owner cycle and scrum master cycle. This combination manages and coordinates the effort of a team around an organization.

DAD

The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD or DA) provides a result-oriented manner of delivery in IT solutions. It is more compatible with Kanban, Scrum, and XP. It shows and explains the organization about the way different business activities interact. It also addresses and gives solutions to those activities. It gives flexibility in a recommendation. Its strength includes recognized qualification, consideration of different life cycles, and easy application to product initiation and distribution.

LeSS

Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) is a framework that includes some roles and rules like any agile framework. It is an application of regular scrum to a large-scale organization. It diverts the focus of a team on a product as a whole rather than individual parts. It is designed for eight teams maximum where each team includes eight members. Whereas, LeSS Huge is designed for a few thousand people who are working on the same or linked product. Its advantages include simplicity in use, easy understanding, and help in moving from component team to feature team. The only drawback it provides is of limiting the scaling.

Nexus

Nexus help scale agile and guides the multiple teams together working for result delivery in every sprint. To scale software development includes iterative and incremental approaches. It is a simple-to-use framework but has a limited scaling, hard-to-read and immature framework as a disadvantage.

Spotify

Spotify never wanted to work as a framework in agile but only guide employees to work autonomously and flexibly. But with evolving agile practices and principles it also developed as a framework that works autonomously. It focuses on attaching importance to corporate culture and network in organizations.

“Help your team feel more connected to your company by incorporating the right digital technology tools into their workflow.”- Andrew Meyer

There is no right or wrong choice but the challenge is to choose what’s best suits your requirements. Understand the need, personality, and background of the organization as go with the suited framework approach for scaling and overcoming the speed bumps for success.

About Advance Agility

We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.

Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. We provide various SAFe certification courses along with DevOps, Scrum, Agile Coaching and more trainings. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.